Theologian and Cherokee descendant Randy Woodley considers how the Bible offers insight into relationship with creation:
In the Genesis accounts of creation, I find a world where each part of creation is related to the other. When God makes the first human and I anticipate what will happen next, I see the requirement for Adam to name all the animals. But to name things in an Indigenous way, you have to get to know them, and to know their special characteristics. In the narrative, God is telling Adam to go out and get to know his relatives. The creation narratives in Genesis, like many Indigenous creation narratives, encourage humans to see the wider created order as part of the same “family tree of the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 2:4). [1]
The importance of the narrative is that it is not just about humans. It is also about the animal kingdom and the plants and the water and the sky and everything else.… My theology begins with the land.…
My understanding is that our responsibility as Indigenous people is to be keepers of the land. That means the whole of all the ecosystems and all the human systems…. That is my job on earth. That is the job I take seriously while I’m here. When the land is used badly, and the community of creation is mistreated, everything becomes out of balance and in disharmony. Anywhere on earth can be a place of harmony when you understand your role.…
When land is lost, a history is ended. It takes land to make history. Humanity is in direct relationship with the land and all creation, a principle found throughout the scriptures and in some of the most poetic places, like Job 12:7–10, where Job says,
Just ask the animals, and they will teach you. Ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you. Speak to the earth, and it will instruct you. Let the fish in the sea speak to you. For they all know that my disaster has come from the hand of the Lord. For the life of every living thing is in his hand, and the breath of every human being.
Woodley shares other scriptural examples of God’s love for creation:
God loves everything in creation (John 3:16). In the stories we find God counting the clouds (Job 38:37), releasing the rain (Job 5:10), directing the snow (Job 37:6; 38:22), knowing when a sparrow falls (Matthew 10:29), knowing where a donkey is tied (Matthew 21:2), knowing where the fish will swim (John 21:6), adorning the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:29–30), and comparing the ostrich and the stork (Job 39:13). At the time of Jesus, there were lots of modern mechanisms, lots of inventions [including] chariots and wheels and waterwheels and little torches and all kinds of mechanistic things. But we find Jesus mostly talking about the things that grow out of the earth and the things that fly above the earth….
God was known and praised in the natural world long before the advent of the written Scriptures. Father Richard writes:
Jewish and Christian traditions of creation spirituality have their origins in Hebrew Scriptures such as Psalms 104 and 148. It is a spirituality that is rooted, first of all, in nature, in experience, and in the world as it is. This rich Hebrew spirituality formed the mind, heart, and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
Maybe we don’t feel the impact of that until we realize how many people think religion has to do with ideas and concepts and formulas from books. That’s how clergy and theologians were trained for years. We went away, not into a world of nature and silence and primal relationships, but into a world of books. Well, that’s not biblical spirituality, and that’s not where religion begins. It begins in observing “what is.” Paul says, “Ever since the creation of the world, the invisible essence of God and God’s everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things” (Romans 1:20). We know God through the things that God has made. The first foundation of any true religious seeing is, quite simply, learning how to see and love what is. Contemplation is meeting reality in its most simple and direct form unjudged, unexplained, and uncontrolled!
If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. So, we must start with a stone! We move from the stone to the plant world and learn how to appreciate growing things and see God in them. In all of the natural world, we see the vestigia Dei, which means the fingerprints or footprints of God.
Perhaps once we can see God in plants and animals, we might learn to see God in our neighbors. And then we might learn to love the world. And then, when all of that loving has taken place, when all of that seeing has happened, when such people come to me and tell me they love Jesus, I’ll believe it! They’re capable of loving Jesus. The soul is prepared. The soul is freed, and it’s learned how to see and how to receive and how to move in and how to move out from itself. Such individuals might well understand how to love God.
Praying with Nature
Richard Rohr recalls his first experiences with the prayer of the Pueblo people in New Mexico:
In 1969 when I was a young deacon in Acoma Pueblo, one of my jobs was to take the census. Because it was summer and hot, I would start early in the morning, driving my little orange truck to each residence. Invariably at sunrise, I would see a mother outside the door of her home, with her children standing beside her. She and the children would be reaching out with both hands uplifted to “scoop” up the new day and then “pour” it over their heads and bodies in blessing. I would sit in my truck until they were finished, thinking how silly it was of us Franciscans to think we brought religion to New Mexico four hundred years ago! [1]
Though I have no family links to Indigenous religions, I have great respect for their wisdom. My early experience at Acoma Pueblo has inspired me to continue to learn about the Pueblo, Diné (Navajo), and Apache peoples here in New Mexico. But I only know enough to know that I don’t know much at all. Indigenous spirituality is not intended for non-Native use. When we try to interpret or apply these teachings in our own context, we run the risk of “severe reinterpretation” [2] according to our own cultural lens and preferences, and without enough regard for their traditional origins.
I also don’t want to romanticize Native spirituality. As in every religion, there are times, places, and people who “get it”—the mystery of divine/human union—more than others. There are different stages and states of consciousness, and all are part of the journey. Western models of development usually focus on the rational mind, which offers one way of knowing reality, but in fact, there are many other ways of perceiving and expressing human experience. [3]
Choctawelder and retired Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston offers a meditation honoring different ways of knowing that have fed his soul:
For all the great thoughts I have read For all the deep books I have studied None has brought me nearer to Spirit Than a walk beneath shimmering leaves
Golden red with the fire of autumn When the air is crisp And the sun a pale eye, watching.
I am a scholar of the senses A theologian of the tangible.
Spirit touches me and I touch Spirit Each time I lift a leaf from my path A thin flake of fire golden red Still warm from the breath that made it. [4]
Mechthild of Magdeburg lived independently as a beguine until she could no longer care for herself. James Finley highlights what we can learn from Mechthild as she approached her death:
She continued on in this way, writing and living with the beguines, into old age. She reached a point of fragility when she became blind and wasn’t able to dress or feed herself. She moved to a monastery of Cistercian nuns who took care of her. Not only did she go blind, and not only could she not do anything for herself, but God took away all traces of the felt sense of God’s love. She comes to the end of her life in a state of powerlessness. She says that if God wishes her to live this way, then she wishes it too. She begins to express deep gratitude for the nuns and the way they care for her as a way she experiences God’s love for her in her powerlessness.
Here is Mechthild’s prayer expressing her gratitude to God for her powerlessness:
Thus speaks a beggar woman in her prayer to God:
Lord, I thank You that since in Your love You have taken from me all earthly riches, You now clothe and feed me through the goodness of others, so that I no longer know those things that might clothe my heart in pride of possession.
Lord, I thank You that since You have taken my sight from me, You serve me through the eyes of others.
Lord, I thank You that since You have taken from me the strength of my hands and the strength of my heart, You now serve me with the hands and hearts of others. [1]
Finley continues:
Her life comes full circle, where the places of the ecstasy in her heart, and the places of utter poverty and brokenness form a circle, and the brokenness and the ecstasy touch each other and she becomes utterly ordinary. She becomes utterly ordinary, falling away from the ability to gain footing by her own power to do anything at all. The last two books of The Flowing Light of the Godhead are dictated because she couldn’t write anymore; she dictated it and she died writing it. She ends her book with a dialogue between her soul and her body in death:
Then we shall no longer complain. Then everything that God has done with us Will suit us just fine, If you will now only stand fast And keep hold of sweet hope. [2]
How can we learn then to be unraveled by love, as Mechthild was? I’ll put it another way: the very fact that we are being touched by the beauty of these mystics means that we are being unraveled by this love. It’s already unfolding. It’s already being laid bare in the unresolved matters of our heart. Mechthild then mentors us in this love and is unexplainably trustworthy throughout our days.
Some years ago, at a large conference, a speaker shared lots of information about unreached people groups around the world—the billions who do not yet know Christ. He reminded everyone of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. (Most of us have been reminded of the Great Commission dozens of times before.) Then the speaker began snapping his fingers as if counting time. Tears filled his eyes as he implored the audience: “Every second, thousands of people are dying without knowing Christ.” Snap. Snap. Snap. “What are you going to do about it?” Snap. Snap. Snap. The large room fell silent as he continued to snap. Many in the audience were crying. They appeared deeply moved and ready to sign up for the tremendous task of reaching their generation for Christ, no matter the cost. Perhaps you have heard sermons like that or attended conferences with this kind of presentation: 6,500 unreached people groups… 2.5 billion people never heard the name of Jesus… our evangelism and church planting aren’t working…. we are debtors to Christ… no amount of sacrifice will compare to what he has done.
Who could fail to be moved by this presentation? This kind of motivation? We call this the “gospel of knowledge and duty.” The more knowledge we have, the more we will feel obliged to serving, and therefore, the more we will serve. Yet we have several questions. Is this approach effective in the long run? Thousands or even millions of people have been motivated to ministry by this type of presentation. But, is it really good “fuel”? Is this approach healthy?
Does it result in emotionally healthy Christians? Is it biblical? Is this the kind of motivation that we see in the Bible? Effective Fuel? Healthy Fuel? Biblical Fuel? As we have said, the gospel of knowledge and duty can sound very spiritual, but we contend that these are actually inadequate types of fuel. When knowledge and duty are all we have, they are not really good news (the meaning of gospel) because, as Galatians 3:21-22 tells us, in the long run, this knowledge and duty cannot produce righteousness. Only a relationship with Jesus can do that.
Knowledge and duty produce guilt and obligation, which can be effective at starting an engine but, unfortunately, this fuel, so to speak, corrodes over time. These motivations do produce activity. However, there is a terrible price to pay when a person does not mature beyond these motivations into others more sustainable. The results are Christians who are not only exhausted, burned out and disillusioned but also thwarted in their emotional maturity and relational knowledge of God. Leaders are drawn into ministry for many reasons. Often a dramatic presentation of the great spiritual need in the world and our obligation or duty based on the Great Commission plays a significant part. Again, this conviction is not a bad thing. However, if guilt and obligation continue to be the main motivations, the results are not good. These things do not teach us what to do with our heavy emotions that come with life and ministry—emotions like grief, anger, discouragement, hopelessness and despair.
Guilt and duty are not capable of helping us through these difficult times. The shocking statistics below from one survey illustrate the long term results in the lives of pastors facing high levels of stress without an adequate joy base.
● 75% of pastors report being “extremely stressed” or “highly stressed”
● 90% feel fatigued and worn out every week
● 80% will not be in ministry 10 years later
● 91% have experienced some form of burnout in ministry
● Seminary-trained pastors average only five years in church ministry
Even more grievous than these results are the destructive behaviors that come as a result of ministering with these ineffectual motivations. In our combined years of ministry alone, we have seen numerous pastors and/or their spouses end up in inappropriate sexual relationships or substance abuse in an attempt to numb the destructive feelings they do not know how to handle. Many lives, marriages and whole communities are destroyed when this happens. We are convinced that these statistics and experiences would be different if the people of God understood the danger of living guilt-based or duty-driven compared to the amazing power of living joy-fueled.
White, John C.; Daniels, Toni M.; Smith, Dr Kent. Joy Fueled: Catalyzing a Revolution of Joyful Communities (LK10 Core Values) (pp. 11-14). LK10. Kindle Edition.
The beguines’ choice to live in cities among poor and working-class people showed their dedication to serve God by serving the “least of these.” Theologian Wendy Farley presents Mechthild’s teaching on contemplation and compassionate action:
Mechthild’s theology is driven by Lady Love, who plants a seed of compassionate action superior to the marvels of contemplation. Lofty words without compassion are useless; love of God that rages against human beings is without value. [1] We get some clues about how contemplation of Love translates into practical compassion in her advice to leaders of religious communities.
Mechthild begins with this somewhat formidable advice: compassionately and cheerfully “you should so transform your heart in God’s holy love that you love … each and every brother or sister entrusted to you in all [their] needs.” This care should be quite concrete. Community leaders should arrange for basic comforts of others. They should console the sick every day while being generous with material gifts. They should clean them, make them laugh, and carry away their waste. “Then God’s sweetness shall flow wonderfully into you.” [2]
Mechthild insists that the intimate love she and God share is made manifest in a desire to serve others:
The radical compassion she envisions as the heart of practical action cannot be generated out of a sense of obligation or duty. It is a heart-sense that makes it unbearable to be indifferent to another’s needs or to think of anyone as “below” oneself. In an echo of her trinitarian understanding of the soul, she suggests a threefold practice to support this radical compassion: detachment, which participates in the transcendent mystery of the godhead; compassion, which participates in the humanity of Christ; and desire to care for human need, which participates in the Holy Spirit. [3] In addition, she recommends that one dedicate an hour or so to undisturbed prayer. Though she is writing to people who live in religious community, the insistence that the wells of mercy and compassion are fed by prayer is pertinent to modern people as well. As many an overworked pastor or mother knows, this hour (or even twenty minutes!) is difficult to find. Yet without it, compassionate care can become exhausting rather than grace-filled and sweet. We are better able to convey love and compassion when we are grounded in the experience of being loved ourselves.…
Love of God and of humanity are not two separate things, as if one could love God but shun humanity. Compassionate action reflects and mirrors the divine image. Love is not an emotion or obligation but is God present in the soul. When we love others with warmth, affection, and care for their needs, it is God loving them through us. Mechthild hears Christ himself insist that those who know and love the preciousness of [Christ’s] freedom “cannot bear to love me only for my own sake. They must also love me in creatures. [Then] I remain what is most close to them in their souls.” [4]
Joy flows from giving and receiving love—the life of God. God is love, and where love is being expressed and received, the joy of God is also flowing. Nothing brings us closer to the center of all creative power than the joy of God. Sure enough, as scripture says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10 NIV). In a simple way, we experience this joy whenever we find ourselves in the presence of someone who makes it clear they are glad to be with us no matter what. Maybe it is the sparkle in their eyes when they look at us or a gentle touch when we are sad. The gift of their expressed love draws out our joy. We now know through studies in neuro-science that this pattern of love-sparking-joy forms the basis from earliest infancy for all healthy human development. When we witness a baby light up in the presence of her smiling mother, we’re witnessing the genesis of joy-fuel being formed in another life. This is love embodied—God’s life. The Greek language of the New Testament offers intriguing insight. The words for joy, gift and gratitude are closely related. All share the same root, char—pronounced “car.” Here’s the connection: Joy —Chara (delight) Gift or Grace—Charis (that which brings joy or delight) Gratitude—Eucharistia (joy or delight returned) These three ideas together, in any language, give us a way to describe what love-in-action looks like. Lovers give a gift to show their delight in the one they love. On receiving the gift, joy wells up in the beloved. Naturally, they say “thank you!” and deeper joy flows back to the lover. We sometimes say, “Love grows in the dance of joy between gift and gratitude.” More love, more joy. When you stop to think about it, this is astounding. What other process do we know that, all by itself, produces more than it starts with? Love-ignited joy is the one perpetual-motion fuel. Nothing else compares. This feeling of joy that flows from giving and receiving delight taps into God’s own life—the most enduring, powerful and motivational fuel of all (ref. John 15:11). Instead of living out of fear of shame, guilt or duty, when we receive from one another and God at the heart level, we experience a deep sense of joy that makes the relationship greater than any problems we face. No doubt, this is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11 NIV). Two stunning truths to notice here. First, Jesus desires that the very joy and delight in his heart would be in our hearts, that we would feel what he feels. But he doesn’t stop there. The second stunning truth is that he wants the joy in our hearts to be full to overflowing. (A better translation than “complete.”) If joy is a fuel source, Jesus is saying that he wants our “tank” to be filled beyond full. What a picture of abundance! When we share this LK10 Core Value, almost everyone says, “Well, of course! Who wouldn’t want joy to be their primary motivation for life and ministry?” What is easily missed, however, is how revolutionary this value actually is within the current Christian culture. We will say more about how we see joy as our primary fuel in later chapters. For now, let’s turn to the limited and ultimately harmful fuel source that many of us have used at some point in our lives: the gospel of knowledge and duty. This motivating source competes with joy, eventually smothering it out altogether. While appearing very spiritual, over time it will not only thwart intended character development but will erode the very lives it flows through.
White, John C.; Daniels, Toni M.; Smith, Dr Kent. Joy Fueled: Catalyzing a Revolution of Joyful Communities (LK10 Core Values) (pp. 8-10). LK10. Kindle Edition.
Author Laura Swan, a Benedictine nun, has studied Christian women’s spirituality movements and writes about the alternative lifestyle of the medieval beguines:
The beguines began to form in various parts of Europe over eight hundred years ago—around the year 1200. Beguines were laywomen, not nuns, and thus did not take solemn vows and did not live in monasteries. The beguines were a phenomenal way of life that swept across Europe, yet they were never a religious order or a formalized movement. And they did not have one specific founder or rule to live by. But there were common elements that rendered these women distinctive and familiar, including their common way of life, chastity and simplicity, their unusual business acumen, and their commitment to God and to the poor and marginalized. These women were essentially self-defined, in opposition to the many attempts to control and define them. They lived by themselves or together in so-called beguinages, which could be single houses for as few as a handful of beguines or, as in Brugge, walled-in rows of houses enclosing a central court with a chapel where over a thousand beguines might live. [1]
The inner spiritual world of the beguines was rich in imagination. These women, and some of their monastic contemporaries, instigated a seismic shift in the province of the imagination, bringing their embodied experience of God and their spiritual journey into a broadened and deepened inner realm. Beguine mystics experienced a fiercely intimate encounter with the Divine—whom they called both “God” and “the One”.…
For these women, prayer was being in the presence of God, seeking to unite their minds and hearts with the One they loved (and whom they frequently referred to as their “Beloved”). A central goal in life for beguines was unity of will—that their personal will would become so united with the will of God that they essentially functioned as a unified whole. God’s heart would be the seeker’s heart; the seeker’s heart would find a home in God and God alone. This unity of will would be evidenced by joy, mercy and compassion, and love….
Beguines exhorted their followers to recognize that there existed no impediment to a deep and meaningful prayer life. No matter what a person’s station in life, be they educated or uneducated, poor or wealthy, it did not impede or deny them awareness of God in their lives. God yearned to draw close to all. [2]
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Lie down in the Fire; See and taste the Flowing Godhead through your being. Feel the Holy Spirit moving and compelling you within the Flowing Fire and Light of God. —Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead 6.29
Mechthild of Magdeburg was a member of the beguines, lay women who lived communal lives of Christian devotion and service in the Low Countries of Western Europe and in France and Germany. Scholar Carol Lee Flinders writes:
Describing the soul’s relationship with God, [Mechthild] marvels at “the powerful penetration of all things and the special intimacy which ever exists between God and each individual soul” (Flowing Light 3.1).… The paradox enchants her: God is everywhere and surely, therefore, impersonal; and yet in relation to the individual soul, God is entirely intimate and surely, therefore, personal.
“Our redeemer has become our bridegroom!” Mechthild exults. Others had said as much, but in a relatively formal, allegorical mode. When Mechthild writes of the soul’s romance with God, she is no allegorist: in the depths of her being, she has found a lover who is fully, deliciously responsive. “Thou art my resting-place,” God tells her, “my love, my secret peace, my deepest longing, my highest honour. Thou art a delight of my Godhead, … a cooling stream for my ardour” (1.19). God is there, Mechthild insists, for every one of us, not in a general, impersonal sense, but there—so exquisitely right for you it’s as if you’d made him up. He “whispers with His love in the narrow confines of the soul” (2.23). Her language is almost shockingly erotic at times; for Mechthild, the sweet goings-on between God and the soul are the reality—all-consuming and exquisitely fulfilling—of which human sexuality is only a pale shadow.
Mechthild’s sensual language may surprise us, but it would have been familiar to readers of her own time:
Perhaps we need to emphasize this. The astonishing concreteness of Mechthild’s imagery—its unembarrassed physicality—is somewhat deceptive if she is read casually. One might think she was celebrating the senses, the body, and even sexuality in and of themselves. In a way, she is, but readers of her time would have understood unequivocally that she conjures up the pleasurable experiences of the physical realm as presentiments, or intimations, of an awakening into supreme joy—joy that is interior and immaterial and unending. Rather than distinguish sharply between the physical and spiritual realms, then, and reject the physical, she joins them in a natural continuity and progression. We are led inward by way of everything in this life: everything in this life, therefore, has its own sanctity.
Father Richard writes about God’s desire for loving intimacy with us:
Saint Bonaventure taught that we are each “loved by God in a particular and incomparable manner, as in the case of a bride and groom.” [1] Francis and Clare of Assisi knew that the love God has for each soul is unique and made to order, which is why any “saved” person feels beloved, chosen, and even “God’s favorite.” Many people in the Bible also knew and experienced this specialness. Divine intimacy is always and precisely particular and made to order—and thus “intimate.” [2]
The inner knowledge of God’s love is itself the Indwelling Presence, and it is also described as joy (John 15:11). Which comes first? Does feeling safe and held by God allow us to deal with others in the same way? Or does human tenderness allow us to imagine that God must be the same, but infinitely so? I do not suppose it really matters where we start; the important thing is that we get in on the big secret from one side or the other.
Yes, “secret,” or even “hidden secret,” is what writers like David (Psalm 25:14), Paul, Rumi, Hafiz, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and many mystics called it. And for some sad reason, it seems to be a well-kept secret. Jesus praises God for “hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them only to the little ones” (Matthew 11:25). Well, what is it that the learned and the clever often cannot see?
The big and hidden secret is this: an infinite God seeks and desires intimacy with the human soul. Once we experience such intimacy, only the intimate language of lovers describes the experience for us: mystery, tenderness, singularity, specialness, changing the rules “for me,” nakedness, risk, ecstasy, incessant longing, and also, of course, necessary suffering. This is the mystical vocabulary of the saints. [3]
The beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207–c. 1282) wrote about her experience of God’s passionate love and desire. She records a dialogue between her soul and God:
The soul begins:
Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, love me long. For the more continuously You love me, the purer I will be; the more fervently You love me, the more beautiful I will be; the longer You love me, the holier I will become here on earth.
God responds:
Because I Myself am Love, I will love you continuously. Because I long to be loved passionately, My desire is to love you fervently. Because I am everlasting and eternal, I will love you long…. [4]
When I shine, you will reflect my radiance, When I flow, you will flow swiftly, When you breathe, you draw into yourself My Divine Heart. When you cry for Me, I take you into My arms. When you love Me, we are united as one. Nothing can separate us, for we abide together joyfully. [5]
God Is Hopelessly in Love
In season eight of Turning to the Mystics, James Finley points to the guidance Mechthild of Magdeburg offers to people in relationship with God:
We turn to the guidance that Mechthild of Magdeburg offers in The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Through what we know about her life, she’s mentoring us and modeling for us this Christlike life. Mystics such as Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing all share their way as mystically awakened Christians. They try to offer guidance to help us discern our awakening, with instructions such as how to recognize our awakening starting, how to conduct ourselves, and so on. Mechthild doesn’t do that….
Mechthild shares this deepening love between herself and God, but she doesn’t share it by talking about it. She lets us in on it with the language of intimacy and bears witness to it. As we read her book, insofar as we’re touched by the beauty of what she’s saying about the deepening of this love, we’re being guided by her. The very fact that we’re touched by it and its beauty reveals that we’re also being drawn into this love—or we wouldn’t be touched by it. That’s how she guides us. That’s the intimacy of her teaching.
Finley describes how we might connect with Mechthild’s emphasis on love:
In a way, Mechthild is playing a violin with just one string on it, which is love. But the more we listen to it, it’s the beauty of the whole orchestra. It’s the beauty that permeates the reverberations of all the various aspects of this. Even though she just stays on point, never leaving this love, she makes stunning statements about love. We wonder, “Where did that come from, seriously?”When we sit with her, we learn these endless variations are unfolding in us. It’s endlessly evocative and she helps us to be sensitized to surrendering ourselves over to that flow of love….
God says to her that he’s so freely chosen to be so hopelessly in love with her, that he quite honestly doesn’t know if he could handle being God without her. And she says back to God, “Take me home with you. I’ll be your physician forever!” [1] The power of these words is that, as we’re reading them, we know they are true of us. We know that God has freely chosen to be so hopelessly in love with us, and that God doesn’t know if God can handle being God without us in our brokenness…. It circulates back around, and we give back to God the gift that God longs for, which is us!…
To sit with Mechthild and to read her is to be taken by the beauty of what she says. It is to sit in silence and ask God to deepen our capacity to realize how the love of which she speaks is already unfolding within us, and how to be faithful to that, and to carry it through the day.
Pastor and “beloved community” organizer Leroy Barber explains the importance of overcoming barriers to healthy relationships with people whom we perceive as different from us.
We humans … are made in the image of that triune God. And while the imago Dei in us has many aspects, it’s clear that we are relational beings…. We cannot help but function in community, and when we’re not in community, we suffer consequences. We were made to be together, and that’s by God’s design. Human flourishing requires that we establish, mend, and maintain relationships with other people.
Jesus exemplified and taught that those loving relationships ought to cross culture’s artificial boundaries of politics, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and socioeconomic status. But in our world today, we have become adept at erecting and fortifying these barriers. We live in the most individualistic society in history, and when we do interact with others, we do our best to make sure that those people look, talk, think, and behave just as we do. These tendencies may keep us in our comfort zones, but they are antithetical to God’s will for us. They are the enemy of God’s plan of redemption and relationship, and they keep us distant from one another and ultimately from the one who created us. [1]
CAC teacher Brian McLaren identifies how “contact bias” causes us to distance ourselves from people who don’t look, think, or act as we do.
When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Think of the child who is told by people [they trust] that people of another race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, or class are dirty and dangerous.
You can immediately see the self-reinforcing cycle: those people are dirty or dangerous, so I will distrust and avoid them, which means I will never have sustained and respectful interactive contact with them, which means I will never discover that they are actually wonderful people….
On page after page of the gospels, Jesus doesn’t dominate the other, avoid the other, colonize the other, intimidate the other, demonize the other, or marginalize the other. Instead, he incarnates into the other, joins the other in solidarity, protects the other, listens to the other, serves the other, and even lays down his life for the other. [2]
Barber concludes:
Is it possible for us to see each other the way God sees us instead of through our biases? The truth is that God doesn’t see people the way we do, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves and others that our way is the Creator’s way. In God’s eyes, each and every person is a bearer of [God’s] image. Each is a special creation, each is loved, each is in need of God’s love and forgiveness….
As ambassadors for the kingdom of God, we need to begin to see others as Christ does—as people in need of the same divine love, mercy, and grace that has been extended to us. [3]
“Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” Luke 24:52 (NIV)
Not too long ago, I found myself working through a few questions for self-reflection. They prompted me to think about my joys and my dreams, my friends and my family. Of these questions, two came in the form of charts with columns. The blank boxes beckoned me to name my wins and list my losses.
So I did.
I typed out my wins: finding a chiropractor, publishing my book, traveling to Mexico, growing stronger relationships with a few friends.
Then I also made a list of my losses: my diagnosis of Hashimoto’s disease, changes in my career path, the loss of my grandfather, the loss of many dreams. There are also the losses I wrote down with invisible ink — how I’ve lost more friends than I can count, how I wake every day with the same ache in my heart, missing my hometown and grieving the million little losses that come with moving to a new place.
It’s been said that time takes away the tears in our eyes, but this is not always true. Sometimes loss lingers long and loud. Sometimes grief grows thick with thorns. Sometimes we cannot escape our grief, cannot outrun those memories we still mourn. Sometimes we see their faces in framed photographs. Sometimes we drive past the place where we watched our dreams die — the office, the church, the courtroom that ruined our lives with its ruling.
After I spent some time tallying up my losses, I studied Luke 24, which records what happened when Jesus returned to His disciples after His resurrection. He spent time with them, unfolding the mysteries of Scripture and breaking bread. Later, He led the disciples out of Jerusalem and into Bethany, where He blessed them before ascending into heaven.
I’ve found myself pondering these two verses over and over again: “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:51-52, NIV).
Is it possible? Jesus’ disciples returned to Jerusalem with joy? Jerusalem held the memory of their greatest grief: Jesus’ death. They returned to this place laced with the memory of their loss — and they rejoiced.
I am astonished, amazed and awed by the truth and the timeline of this. Jesus resurrected and then returned to the ones He loved, walked with them in the midst of their loss, broke bread with them, listened to their every lament and complaint … Then Jesus blessed them right in the middle of their brokenness. He calmed their confusion, dispelled their doubts and promised them power — so much so that they were able to return to Jerusalem with joy.
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What does the Lord require of you? Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. —Micah 6:8
The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis recalls her mother’s deep devotion to justice:
A fierce activist for peace and justice, [my mom] dedicated herself my entire life to organizing for the human rights of all people, an end to war and global conflict, interreligious understanding, and the abolition of poverty and racism….
My mom’s favorite Bible passage … was always Micah 6:8. She knew that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God were the true instructions for living a faithful and impactful life. Her faith and activism were one.
Micah 6:6–8 is a typical story of the prophets. Biblical prophets tell the people what is necessary for honoring and worshipping God. Indeed, they all tell the same story: that God desires mercy, justice, and peace, especially for the poor, the widows, the suffering, and the victims of war. The prophets admonish us and the ruling authorities to work for peace and dedicate ourselves to ending poverty.
The book of Micah instructs that the only way to honor and worship God is to welcome the immigrant neighbor, the homeless, and the bruised and battered. Micah says we must overcome bias and inequality and advocate for all God’s children to have what they need to thrive, not merely and barely survive….
God does not ask for luxurious gifts, nor for the sacrifice of lives and livelihoods. God instead wants all people to prosper—for no one to have too much while others have too little. God demands justice, not charity or sacrifice. God longs for the righting of wrongs, the repairing of breaches….
Justice is possible. I learn this from the prophet Micah [and] from my fierce, prophetic mom. Our God will hear us. After all, God already does. [1]
The Rev. Dr. William Barber also absorbed the Bible’s prophetic call from his parents:
The Bible was not just a book of the church or a guide for personal devotion. It was the book of the movement. When we stood against social injustice, our stance had to be rooted in the word of God….
We lived in one of the poorest regions of North Carolina. My parents challenged racism and economic injustice not just because they were unjust social realities but also because the Spirit requires a quarrel with the world’s injustices. They found this mandate in the pages of the B-I-B-L-E. I was taught Micah 6: What doth the Lord require, but to do justice? Isaiah 58: We are called to be repairers of the breach, to loose the bands of wickedness. Luke 4: The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor. Matthew 25: Inasmuch as you do to the least of these, you do it unto me. These were not just texts for memorization. They were the anchors around which an authentic Christian life must be centered. [2]
One of the most striking examples of mending a breach is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up in South Africa to deal with human rights violations during apartheid. The TRC was headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931–2021) whose leadership embodied forgiveness, love, and justice.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has drawn enormous attention, and people around the world are seeking to replicate it. But the unique gift of the TRC is not that it unveiled the truth about historic injustices, but that it did so within an atmosphere of mercy and forgiveness. This was possible only because Tutu had already been transformed into a man who could not envision the future without forgiveness. In other words, if a new South Africa is not possible without the unique gifts of its TRC, the TRC was not possible without the forgiveness of Tutu. [1]
Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice describe how leaders like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) respond to breaches, which they refer to as “gaps,” and how each of us may respond as well.
Responding to a gap is not about starting everywhere but about starting somewhere. Wherever we find ourselves, there are gaps. The gap can be as small and near as people in our own family, town or congregation. The challenge is for each of us to be faithful to discern and respond to the gap God puts before us….
Leaders respond to a gap without knowing the way. They belong to the gap to such an extent that they share in its suffering. This is as far as some leaders take the journey. But this is not far enough. While many leaders bear the signs of the world’s death and suffering in their body, engaging the world’s suffering does not necessarily lead us into redemption. We are just as likely to be transformed into bitterness as into new life.
There are many casualties in the journey of responding to the gaps of the world. Many leaders end up bitter and angry. They become despairing and sometimes even destructive….
Many warriors for justice become steeped in the skills of protest and resistance. Yet they never learn the equally critical skills of pursuing new life in the gap. One of the distinguishing marks of the gentleness that communion requires is this: leaders are ones who learn to absorb pain without passing it on to others or to themselves.
This is what is so remarkable about the spirit of leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, who are undoubtedly skilled at protest and resistance. While they carried a great burden about gaps of injustice, they radiated conviction and not condemnation, redemption and not final judgment, embrace and not rejection. The truly prophetic nature of their work in South Africa was pursuing justice with a quality of mercy that shaped a quest for communion with enemies and strangers. [2]
This is exactly what we need today in American Politics (DJR)
The Creation.
James Weldon Johnson. (Black preacher-poet during Reconstruction, KKK, and Jim Crow.)
1871 – 1938
And God stepped out on space, And he looked around and said: I’m lonely— I’ll make me a world.
And far as the eye of God could see Darkness covered everything, Blacker than a hundred midnights Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled, And the light broke, And the darkness rolled up on one side, And the light stood shining on the other, And God said: That’s good!
Then God reached out and took the light in his hands, And God rolled the light around in his hands Until he made the sun; And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens. And the light that was left from making the sun God gathered it up in a shining ball And flung it against the darkness, Spangling the night with the moon and stars. Then down between The darkness and the light He hurled the world; And God said: That’s good!
Then God himself stepped down— And the sun was on his right hand, And the moon was on his left; The stars were clustered about his head, And the earth was under his feet. And God walked, and where he trod His footsteps hollowed the valleys out And bulged the mountains up.
Then he stopped and looked and saw That the earth was hot and barren. So God stepped over to the edge of the world And he spat out the seven seas— He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed— He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled— And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down.
Then the green grass sprouted, And the little red flowers blossomed, The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky, And the oak spread out his arms, The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground, And the rivers ran down to the sea; And God smiled again, And the rainbow appeared, And curled itself around his shoulder.
Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand Over the sea and over the land, And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth! And quicker than God could drop his hand, Fishes and fowls And beasts and birds Swam the rivers and the seas, Roamed the forests and the woods, And split the air with their wings. And God said: That’s good!
Then God walked around, And God looked around On all that he had made. He looked at his sun, And he looked at his moon, And he looked at his little stars; He looked on his world With all its living things, And God said: I’m lonely still.
Then God sat down— On the side of a hill where he could think; By a deep, wide river he sat down; With his head in his hands, God thought and thought, Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!
Up from the bed of the river God scooped the clay; And by the bank of the river He kneeled him down; And there the great God Almighty Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand; This great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till he shaped it in is his own image;
Then into it he blew the breath of life, And man became a living soul. Amen. Amen.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Click Image for John White's Original Vision For CO2's
