Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. —Matthew 5:4 

Father Richard dedicated many years of his ministry to working with men, emphasizing the importance of grieving.   

On men’s retreats, we always emphasize grief work. There’s a therapeutic, healing meaning to tears. Undoubtedly that’s true, even as we study what’s in tears. We speak of salt in tears but now there’s evidence of washed-out toxins. Is not weeping, in fact, necessary? Beyond that, of course, Jesus is describing the state of those who weep, who have something to mourn about. They feel the pain of the world. Jesus is saying that those who can grieve, those who can cry, are those who will understand.  

Many Christians think we know God through our minds. Yet corporeal theology, body theology, indicates that perhaps weeping will allow us to know God much better than through ideas. In this Beatitude, Jesus praises the weeping class, those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to extract themselves from it. Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an entirely different mode than self-hatred or hatred of others. The “weeping mode” allows us to carry the tragic side, to bear the pain of the world without looking for perpetrators or victims. Instead, we recognize the sad reality in which both sides are trapped. Tears from God are always for everybody, for our universal exile from home. “It is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted” (Jeremiah 31:15).  

That might seem ridiculous, and it is especially a stumbling block for many men in our culture. Young men have often been told not to cry because it will make us look vulnerable. So, we men—and many women too—stuff our tears. We must teach all young people how to cry. In the second half of my life, I understand why Saints Francis and Clare cried so much, and why the saints spoke of “the gift of tears.” [1]  

Essayist Ross Gay describes the gift he experienced when his father opened to this “weeping mode” later in life:  

My father … started crying on the regular right about the time he got to be my age. Who knows exactly why: his much younger brother died about this time. As did his beloved uncle. He developed diabetes. He was getting older. Who knows what else. Either way, he was changing, and he would weep at TV shows or bad movies, my brother’s wedding, the right song. Lifting his glasses to wipe his tears, as he did at the end there. I can almost picture it. His soft face kind of shining, the freckles like seeds on the surface of the soil. He might have even smiled a little bit when he cried sometimes, my father. He was falling apart, becoming his most radiant, his most needful. And little did I know, he was showing me how to do the same. [2]  

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Skye Jethani 5 For Friday

1.
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

• Leonard Cohen, Canadian Poet and Songwriter
   
  This is cruel, ironic, and true.  I do not understand the alchemy or the mathematics of why.  The best artists are always tortured artists in some capacity.  Perhaps it is because they are most willing and honest to the experience they are having.

Cohen reminds me of something comedian Pete Holmes says about artists: “The artists are simply reporting back to the rest of us how they see reality.”

Of course, we can always disagree with the artist and how they see the world, but that is exactly why the appreciation of art is such a subjective experience.

2.
“Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.”

• James Baldwin, American Author and Civil Rights Activist
   
  Lawrence Kohlberg, the psychologist who studied the stages of moral development, broke the stages into three larger units…

Pre-Conventional, Conventional, and Post-Conventional Ethics.

Pre-Conventional Ethics are selfish and oriented completely around the individual and their needs.  It is only held in check by or critiqued by the Conventional.

Conventional Ethics rely upon obedience to a set of rules defined by a community and its needs.  The Conventional is only held in check by or critiqued by the Post-Conventional.

Post-Conventional Ethics are more universal and timeless and deal with the ramifications or consequences that affect everyone and everything, not only the self and the community.

I think that what James Baldwin is talking about here is the shift from Conventional to Post-Conventional.  It is always the prophets of a society who shift to Post-Conventional and can critique the community and its ethics (hopefully) from a place of love.  It takes serious courage to speak out against one’s society, but at the same time, one feels a sense of responsibility to the whole world to speak out against a sick and unhealthy society.

3.
“In this (Sixth Dwelling) the soul discovers how all things are seen in God, and how He contains all things within Himself.  This is of great benefit because, even though it only lasts a moment, it remains engraved upon the soul.  And it also causes great confusion in showing us more clearly the wrongness of offending God, because it’s in God Himself-I mean, while dwelling within Him-that we do all this wrong.”

• St. Teresa de Jesus (St. Teresa of Avila) in Interior Castle
   
  This week I finished my fourth reread of Interior Castle.  My first time was somewhere around 2011, then again in 2014 (when it actually “clicked” for me), then during Covid in 2020, and just now over the past month and a half.  I am starting to have such a familiarity with the text that I can see the benefit of knowing a text so well and across multiple translations.

This time, though, the second half of the book stood out in a way that it did not before.  The first half is heavily focused on humility and self-awareness, while the second half is more focused on types of prayerful experiences and the insights gleaned from them.

Toward the end of the book, Teresa talks about the insight of “seeing all things in God and God in all things” and how that radically should change the way that we understand sin and grace.

Essentially, we all do “wrong” within God, and God with “grace” continues to carry, sustain, and hold us.  The intimacy and the deliberate love of God, even amid our self-harm and destructive behaviors, should give us pause.

4.
“It is Christ whom we follow, who led no armies, founded no empires, killed no one, and called peacemakers the blessed children of God.’ The cross is a symbol of self-giving love, not of military conquest.”

• Jim Forest, American Writer and Peace Activist
   
  If the cross is picked up and made into a symbol of conquest, if it is painted on tanks, drones, and atomic bombs, that does not mean it has “Christianized” war or sanctified the violence.  What it means is that it has been hijacked and made into propaganda for the sake of some new Babylon.

I remember the story of a pastor who was brought up on stage to pray for literal tanks and to bless F16s.  It caused him to have a radical shift in his consciousness and awareness of God’s perspective toward instruments of war.  The pastor was Brian Zahnd, who in many ways I confess I look up to.

5.
“What labels me, negates me.”

• Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher
   
  Soren Kierkegaard must have been an Enneagram 4.

Kierkegaard saw through the human tendency to label others to dismiss them.  You and I are not conservatives, or liberals, or patriots, or rebels, or rich, or poor, or what-have-you.  We are far more complex than any singular identifier or title.

However, we must admit, that it is easy to broadstroke and try to sum up one another with a label that helps us to group people as either “with us” or “against us.”

Perhaps this is why St. Paul says, “There is neither male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free.  For all are one in Christ.”  The Christian religion is not another title, label, or adjective to set people apart from others.  Rather, the Christian religion is supposed to be the great unifier, it is supposed to help us all to find solidarity and connection with everyone else (even our enemies).

So let us be mindful of labels that separate and discredit others, and pay more careful attention to the Spirit which unites.

CAC friend Mirabai Starr founded the online grief community, Holy Lament: The Transformative Path of Loss and Longing. It is a space for people to experience grief together:  

What I often say about my work with grieving and bereaved people is that it’s much more about transformation than about consolation. There are other places you can go to feel better, but to me grief is not a problem to be solved or a malady to be cured. It’s a sacred reality to be entered. For so many of us, there’s an opening to our soul’s innate birthright, I would even say, of our longing for God that often gets covered over by everyday life…. When we experience a profound loss, it strips us of those coverings … granting us special access to a profound loving intimacy with the divine…. 

Death is complicated and powerful. It’s that threshold space that we get to experience sometimes between this world and a larger reality that we’ve always intuited to be true…. It brings us into sacred space whether we like it or not. But there are many other losses besides the death of a loved one: that breakup of a relationship, … a serious health diagnosis that changes everything, an injury that reweaves the way life used to be. I guess any kind of loss that involves the death of who we used to be is a powerful catalyst for this kind of encounter with the sacred that I’m speaking of.… 

We’re an extremely grief-phobic culture, and it doesn’t help to have the religions on top of it saying, “Go this way. There lies transcendence. You can meditate your way out of your pain. You can pray your way through to relief from suffering. In fact, you can bypass it all together if you buy into this set of beliefs or practices or faith claims.” The combination of grief illiteracy in the culture, and the emphasis of the patriarchal religious structures to get us to rise above the messy realities of our humanity, is a recipe for avoiding grief.  

Starr experienced how individual loss allowed her to enter into collective belonging: 

What I experienced when my daughter died was two things. One was that nobody could possibly know what I’m going through right now. But quickly on the heels of that was, “Oh, every person ever who has experienced the death of a child knows.” I was realizing in the bones of my own body … that there had been mothers throughout time whose children had died and mothers right now [whose children are dying]…. We all belong to each other. In some ways that was the first time I ever took my seat in the web of interbeing—when I realized that I belong here and we belong to each other. Even if right now it was my turn to be held by that web, I couldn’t imagine it yet, but I knew somehow, someday I would be able to do some of that holding of the other mothers to come. And I have and I do.  

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Rest with Me a while. You have journeyed up a steep, rugged path in recent days. The way ahead is shrouded in uncertainty. Look neither behind you nor before you. Instead, focus your attention on Me, your constant Companion. Trust that I will equip you fully for whatever awaits you on your journey.
     I designed time to be a protection for you. You couldn’t bear to see all your life at once. Though I am unlimited by time, it is in the present moment that I meet you. Refresh yourself in My company, breathing deep draughts of My Presence. The highest level of trust is to enjoy Me moment by moment. I am with you, watching over you wherever you go.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Psalm 143:8 (NLT)
8 Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning,
    for I am trusting you.
Show me where to walk,
    for I give myself to you.

Genesis 28:15 (NLT)
15 What’s more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.”

Additional insight regarding Genesis 28:10-15: God’s covenant promise to Abraham and Isaac was offered to Jacob as well. But it was not enough to be Abraham’s grandson; Jacob has to establish his own personal relationship with God. God has no grandchildren; each person must have a personal relationship with him. It is not enough to hear wonderful stories about Christians in your family. You need to become part of the story yourself (see Galatians 3:6-7 – “6 In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” 7 The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.).

Collective Lament and Confession

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill call on Christians to embrace the path of lament, which includes confession. 

In his book Mirror to the Church, Emmanuel Katongole reflects on the Rwandan genocide…. Before the Rwandan genocide, the majority of Rwandans were Christians. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Easter weekend, [Katongole writes,] “Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together…. The most Christianized country in Africa became the site of its worst genocide.” [1] ….   

Reflecting on the Rwandan genocide, Katongole says, “The resurrection of the church begins with lament.” [2] This is difficult for many Americans and others living in Western countries to grasp. Our culture teaches us to embrace a triumphalistic and success-oriented posture. Thus we avoid lament. Americans are prone to move quickly to try to fix things, and often we need to lament, mourn, and grieve first to fully experience and understand what has taken place. In cases of injustice and atrocities such as genocide, the only real response we can have at first is to lament. Scripture teaches us that we can’t move toward hope, peace, transformation, and reconciliation without going through sorrow, mourning, regret, and lament…. 

Lament is a demonstrative, strong, and corporate expression of deep grief, pain, sorrow, and regret. Lament and repentance deal with issues of the heart. They pave the way for outer change. Lament is a personal and corporate response to many things: evil, sin, death, harm, discrimination, inequality, racism, sexism, colonization, oppression, and injustice. It is about mourning the painful, shameful, or sorrowful situation, about confessing sin and complicity and sorrow, about calling God to intervene and to change the situation. Finally, lament is about offering thanksgiving and praise to God, knowing that God will intervene and bring change, hope, and restoration. 

These laments by Kim and Hill offer ways for Christians in the United States to acknowledge and grieve injustice:  

We lament the exploitation and destruction of black lives and communities; the abuse of basic human rights; and systemic injustice, expressed in policing, judicial, educational, economic, social, and other systems and structures…. 

We lament corruption among politicians, police forces, and bankers; military interventions and the militarization of society and police forces; uncaring government agencies and big business; and urban poverty and homelessness….

We lament the nature, extent, and effects of white privilege, nationalism, xenophobia, and racism; the unwelcome shown to refugees and asylum seekers; and the fear, anxiety, and suffering experienced by undocumented migrants.  

We lament the treatment of women in society and church…. We lament gender inequalities, the discrimination and harassment women suffer, the sexualization of women and girls, and the domestic violence many women suffer daily.… 

We lament the colonization, devastation, and assimilation of First Nations and indigenous peoples, and the role Christianity has played…. 

We lament the silence of the people of God about many of these things. We lament the complicity of the church in many of these things.  

This practice of lament is necessary if we are to experience healing and hope and transformation.  

The Unexpected Hero

Jesus’ parables were usually marked by a surprise; a twist that forced his audience to rethink a basic assumption they held about God, the world, or themselves. In his story about a man beaten and robbed on the road, the first character to pass by is the most respected in Jewish culture—a priest. The second character, a Levite, is also admired but slightly below the priest on the social hierarchy. With these two characters, Jesus had primed his audience to expect the hero of the story to be someone below the Levite. Perhaps an ordinary Jew without much religious training. That would have been surprising enough, but Jesus’ introduction of a Samaritan as the hero was downright offensive.Jews hated Samaritans. They were viewed as apostates who had abandoned the true faith of Israel for heretical teachings. This made them even worse than gentiles whom the Jews commonly regarded as “dogs.” The hatred between Jews and Samaritans, which had smoldered for nearly 1,000 years, was still burning in Jesus’ time. Jews had destroyed the Samaritan temple, and around 6 A.D. the Samaritans retaliated by scattering human bones in the Jewish temple during Passover, defiling it so that worship was prevented. Remember, Jesus told this story because of a question asked by an expert in Jewish religious law. He wanted to know what it meant to obey the command to “love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18). In the minds of most Jews, a Samaritan was automatically disqualified from being considered law-abiding because they did not share the Jew’s theology and view of the Old Testament law. For Jesus, therefore, to make a Samaritan the hero of his story was simply unthinkable. It’s difficult for us to understand how offensive and shocking Jesus’ story would have been to his audience. Imagine asking your pastor what it means to be a good Christian and having him respond with a story about a merciful Muslim. Or, imagine the repercussions if a politician was asked what it means to be a true patriot and she pointed to an undocumented immigrant. In a way, that’s what Jesus was doing. He wasn’t just affirming a Samaritan, as scandalous as that would have been. He was also attacking the pride and self-righteousness of his fellow Jews.The parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t just about religious law. It’s not simply about answering the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ story was also about deconstructing assumptions and the cultural categories we use to elevate ourselves and devalue others. Likewise, we must ask how we have allowed our culture’s categories and labels to influence how we see ourselves and others. A follower of Christ is not identified by a label, social rank, or religious position, but by the love she shows others. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:29-37 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-3 ROMANS 2:25-29 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) Lord, we pray this day mindful of the sorry confusion of our world. Look with mercy upon this generation of your children so steeped in misery of their own contriving, so far strayed from your ways and so blinded by passions. We pray for the victims of tyranny, that they may resist oppression with courage. We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit.We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue, or rest content to have our ease at the price of other men’s sorrow and tribulation.We pray for all who have some vision of your will, despite the confusions and betrayals of human sin, that they may humbly and resolutely plan for and fashion the foundations of a just peace between men, even while they seek to preserve what is fair and just among us against the threat of malignant powers.Amen.

In her book Liberation and the Cosmos, CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes constructs imagined conversations between varied ancestors and activists in faith. Here she envisions a conversation between educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) on the healing power of tears: 

Bethune: Lament is needed as a ritual of cleansing and preparation for what is yet to come. It is a step in the process of liberation that was never completed…. The generations that have followed slavery have been crying throughout their lifetimes; they have just chosen to do it on the inside. Their spirits are riddled with the salt of unreleased tears. 

King: The whispered hope that echoes through every wail and cry of anguish is that the troubles of this world are not the end of the story. Now we see through a glass darkly and not face to face [1 Corinthians 13:12]. This generation is inundated with twenty-four-hour news stations that bring the pain of the world into your living rooms. Yet, your lives in Western societies seem to go on unchanged. You are inundated with news of disaster and death, yet even in your compassion, you seem distanced and detached from the grit and horror going on in the world.… We have forgotten the gift that lament can be.… 

Bethune: That is why my call to the next generation is to reclaim the possibility of real joy through the healing practice of lament. I am suggesting that we weep with those who weep, that we moan over the harm done on our behalf and by our hands…. We are urging the next generation to allow lament to act as a release valve for pent-up rage and generational frustration, to use lament as a teaching device for the children, and to allow the time of comfort that follows lament to knit the community together despite its differences…. I promise you that tears can be revolutionary.…   

King: It is the lament of the community that leads to healing. It may seem that you are few in number, that you don’t have the strength or means to overcome systems of oppression and death. All you have are prayers, faith, and courage. Yet, with this alone and the God who never leaves us alone, you must act.  

Communal lament opens the possibility for healing stories to be told. Through Bethune’s voice, Holmes points to contemporary versions of “griots,” traveling oral historians and storytellers from West Africa:  

Bethune: The call for lament is not an invitation to moping or sadness. It is a call for ritual reorientation. With or without tears, lament is a communal act of cosmological engagement. Ancestors on the continent of Africa knew this…. There are griots among you in this new generation. They are poets, drummers, preachers, and singers. They are found in every walk of life, and they are waiting to write and share the stories that defy the conspiracy of silence that pervades this present age.  

A Failure of Compassion

Sometimes Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan is taught in a manner that frames compassion over and against devotion to the Old Testament Law. This view holds that the priest and the Levite who passed by the man in the ditch were prevented from helping him, even if their hearts were filled with empathy because religious law forbids it. This understanding of Jesus’s story would make the Old Testament Law the problem—a reading some traditions are eager to accept. But is this accurate?Priests and Levites served at the temple in Jerusalem on rotating shifts. In Jesus’ story, it is clear they had just completed their time at the temple because they were “going down the road” indicating the declining elevation away from Jerusalem. Some speculate that the priest passed the man on the road because he appeared dead, and priests who touched a corpse were ritually unclean and could not perform their duties at the temple. However, because he had already completed his temple service this should not have prevented him from helping. The Levite faced a similar decision. While also bound by laws of cleanliness while serving at the temple, there was nothing preventing the Levite from helping the man now that his rotation in Jerusalem was complete. Like the priest, however, he also ignored the man in need. For both men, it was not devotion to religious law, but a lack of compassion, that prevented them from helping the man. The problem in Jesus’ story is not God’s Law, but the cold hearts of religious leaders who ought to know better. We should not read Jesus’ story without thinking about the modern-day priests and Levites in our own culture—religious people who use the appearance of devotion to God as an excuse for not showing compassion to those in need. I was disheartened by a conversation with a pastor a few years ago who reported his church members objected to the church’s plan to send relief funds and supplies to Syrian refugees. Such aid, they said, was the first step toward the resettlement of Muslim refugees in their community. In other words, a desire to protect their faith was their excuse for not practicing their faith.This same tendency is now evident as the United States is being rocked by protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Although more Christians of all backgrounds are engaging in the call for reform than ever before, some are still reluctant and using their faith as the reason. Rather than recognizing the ongoing reality of racial injustice and assisting their neighbors of color in need, some white Christians are quick to dismiss the movement as “political” and therefore a distraction from their commitment to the gospel. In other words, they are using their devotion to God as a reason for not helping their neighbors who are suffering. Jesus did not affirm religious devotion as an excuse for apathy, and neither should we. Like the priest and Levite, God’s law is not what prevents us from helping our neighbors. Our problem is not our faith, but a tragic failure of compassion. Here’s a simple truth: If you believe your Christian faith prevents you from helping those in need, you’re doing it wrong. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:29-37 JAMES 4:17 1 JOHN 4:18-21 WEEKLY PRAYER From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Father Richard shares the universal need to express our grief: 

The human instinct is to block suffering and pain. This is especially true in the West where we have been influenced by the “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. As anyone who has experienced grief can attest, it isn’t rational. We really don’t know how to hurt! We simply don’t know what to do with our pain. 

The great wisdom traditions are trying to teach us that grief isn’t something from which to run. It’s a liminal space, a time of transformation. In fact, we can’t risk getting rid of our pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach us, and it—grief, suffering, loss, pain—always has something to teach us! Unfortunately, many of us have been taught that grief and sadness are something to repress, deny, or avoid. We would much rather be angry than sad. 

Perhaps the simplest and most inclusive definition of grief is “unfinished hurt.” It feels like a demon spinning around inside of us and it hurts too much, so we immediately look for someone else to blame. We have to learn to remain open to our grief, to wait in patient expectation for what it has to teach us. When we close in too tightly around our sadness or grief, when we try to fix it, control it, or understand it, we only deny ourselves its lessons. 

Saint Ephrem the Syrian (303–373) considered tears to be sacramental signs of divine mercy. He instructs: “Give God weeping, and increase the tears in your eyes: through your tears and [God’s] goodness the soul which has been dead will be restored.” [1] What a different kind of human being than most of us! In the charismatic circles in which I participated during my early years of ministry, holy tears were a common experience. Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi reportedly wept all the time—for days on end! 

The “weeping mode” is a different way of being in the world. It’s different than the fixing, explaining, or controlling mode. We’re finally free to feel the tragedy of things, the sadness of things. Tears cleanse our eyes both physically and spiritually so we can begin to see more clearly. Sometimes we have to cry for a very long time because we’re not seeing truthfully or well at all. Tears only come when we realize we can’t fix and we can’t change reality. The situation is absurd, it’s unjust, it’s wrong, it’s impossible. She should not have died; he should not have died. How could this happen? Only when we are led to the edges of our own resources are we finally free to move to the weeping mode. 

The way we can tell our tears have cleansed us is that afterwards we don’t need to blame anybody, even ourselves. It’s an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul, and we know it came from God. It is what it is, and somehow God is in it. 

Job’s Emotional Courage

Richard Rohr notes the lessons on grief and lament we can learn from Job: 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we find Job experiencing some of the common emotions of grief, including denial and anger. The first seven days of Job’s time on the “dung heap” (Job 2:8) of pain are spent in silence, what we might call shock or denial. Then he taps into anger; in verse after verse Job shouts and curses at God. He says, in effect, “This so-called life I have is not really life, God, it’s death. So why should I be happy about being born?”  

Perhaps some of us have been there—so hurt and betrayed, so devastated by our losses that we echo Job’s cry about the day he was born, “May that day be darkness. May God on high have no thought for it, may no light shine on it. May murk and deep shadow claim it for their own” (Job 3:4–5). It’s beautiful, poetic imagery. He’s saying: “Uncreate that day. Make it not a day of light, but darkness. Let clouds hang over it, eclipse swoop down on it.” Where God in Genesis speaks “Let there be light,” Job insists “Let there be darkness.” A day of uncreation, of anti-creation. We probably have to have experienced true depression, betrayal, or injustice to understand such a feeling. 

There’s a part of each of us that feels and speaks that sadness. Not every day, thank goodness. But if we’re willing to feel and participate in the pain of the world, part of us will suffer that kind of despair. If we want to walk with Job, with Jesus, and in solidarity with much of the world, we must allow grace to lead us there as the events of life show themselves. I believe this is exactly what we mean by conformity to Christ (Romans 8:29).  

We must go through the stages of feeling, not only the last death but all the earlier little (and not-so-little) deaths. If we bypass these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. Many people learn that the hard way—through depression, addictions, irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course or to find some appropriate place to share them. Job is unafraid to feel his feelings. He acts and speaks them out. Emotions ought to be allowed to run their course. They are not right or wrong; they are merely indicators of what is happening. 

I am convinced that people who do not feel deeply finally do not know deeply either. It is only because Job is willing to feel his emotions that he is able to come to grips with the mystery in his head and heart and gut. He understands holistically and therefore his experience of grief becomes both whole and holy. 

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Whom Must We Love?

An expert in Jewish religious law came to Jesus with a simple but important question: “What must I do to live with God forever?” In response, Jesus asked him, “What do the Scriptures say?” The man gave a wonderful answer that Jesus affirmed: Love the Lord with all of your heart…and love your neighbor as yourself. But that was not the end of his questions. He wanted to know the minimum requirement to fulfill these commands. What is a passing grade to graduate into God’s kingdom? So he asked Jesus, who qualifies as his neighbor?He was not the first person to wrestle with this question. Since being subjugated first by Greeks and then Romans, many Jews debated the extent of the command in Leviticus 19:18 to love one’s neighbor. At the time, popular teaching excluded any non-Jews from the category of “neighbor,” and another school of thought said any personal enemy (Jew or non-Jew) was to be hated and not loved. In the first century, many Pharisees did not consider non-Pharisees their neighbors, and another rabbinical teaching said “heretics, informers, and renegades” should be left to die in ditches. Given this diversity of opinion over who qualified as one’s neighbor, the man wanted to know where Jesus drew the line. Who exactly are we called to love?We will explore Jesus’ response over the coming days, but to begin I want to share a story told by former president Jimmy Carter that captures the spirit of Jesus’ answer.Before his political career, Carter served on an evangelistic mission trip to share the gospel with poor, Spanish-speaking families in Springfield, Massachusetts. His partner was a Cuban-American pastor from Brooklyn named Eloy Cruz. Carter was amazed by Cruz’s gentle spirit and ability to connect with everyone they met. At the end of their week together, Carter asked Cruz what made him so effective as a Christian witness. Cruz replied that he tried to live by a simple rule: “You only have to have two loves in your life—for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.”In his autobiography, Carter said, “I still refer on occasion to the books on my shelves by Karl Barth, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Kung, and other theologians, but Eloy Cruz’s simple words express a profound and challenging theology that has meant more to me than those of all the great scholars.”Like the religious expert who questioned Jesus, sometimes we can become so enamored with understanding deep theological truths that we lose sight of what’s most important. When we stand before God someday, our theology will come to nothing if we have failed to love those created in his image who stand before us today. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:25-29 MATTHEW 5:43-48 LEVITICUS 19:17-18 WEEKLY PRAYER From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you.
—Romans 15:24 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the disappointment faced by individuals and communities when reckoning with unrealized dreams. Inspired by the apostle Paul’s imprisonment, King calls for radical hope and determination:   

What, then, is the answer? The answer lies in our willing acceptance of unwanted and unfortunate circumstances even as we still cling to a radiant hope…. This is not the grim, bitter acceptance of the fatalist but the achievement found in Jeremiah’s words, “This is a grief, and I must bear it” [Jeremiah 10:19]. 

You must honestly confront your shattered dream. To follow the escapist method of attempting to put the disappointment out of your mind will lead to a psychologically injurious repression. Place your failure at the forefront of your mind and stare daringly at it. Ask yourself, “How may I transform this liability into an asset? How may I, confined in some narrow Roman cell and unable to reach life’s Spain, transmute this dungeon of shame into a haven of redemptive suffering?” Almost anything that happens to us may be woven into the purposes of God. It may lengthen our cords of sympathy. It may break our self-centered pride. The cross, which was willed by wicked men, was woven by God into the tapestry of world redemption.   

Many of the world’s most influential personalities have exchanged their thorns for crowns. Charles Darwin, suffering from a recurrent physical illness; Robert Louis Stevenson, plagued with tuberculosis; and Hellen Keller, inflicted with blindness and deafness, responded not with bitterness or fatalism, but rather by the exercise of a dynamic will transformed negative circumstances into positive assets.… 

How familiar is the experience of longing for Spain and settling for a Roman prison, and how less familiar the transforming of the broken remains of a disappointed expectation into opportunities to serve God’s purpose! Yet powerful living always involves such victories over one’s own soul and one’s situation.   

King’s hope is tied to God’s faithfulness and the transforming power of nonviolence: 

We Negroes have long dreamed of freedom, but still we are confined in an oppressive prison of segregation and discrimination. Must we respond with bitterness and cynicism? Certainly not, for this will destroy and poison our personalities. Must we … resign ourselves to oppression? Of course not, for this blasphemously attributes to God that which is of the devil. To cooperate passively with an unjust system makes the oppressed as evil as the oppressor. Our most fruitful course is to stand firm with courageous determination, move forward nonviolently amid obstacles and setbacks, accept disappointments, and cling to hope. Our determined refusal not to be stopped will eventually open the door to fulfillment.…  

Some of us, of course, will die without having received the realization of freedom, but we must continue to sail on our charted course. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.   

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John Chaffee 5 For Friday

1.
“We are utterly helpless to be anything other than infinitely loved by God.”

• Dr. Jim Finley, Former Monk and Psychotherapist
   
  Utterly helpless.  I love that.  The truth of that statement is so obvious to me, and it sparks joy within me to allow that truth to hold me.

Now, just for fun…

Let’s flip the statement and see how the comparison hits us.

“We can make God infinitely revile us.”

Yikes.

In the words of an old seminary professor, Dr. Timothy Wengert, “That ain’t no Gospel.”

I’ll stick with an interpretation of Christianity more in line with Jim Finley’s interpretation.

2.
“We’re going to have to let truth scream louder to our souls than the lies that have infected us.”

• Beth Moore, Anglican Preacher and Author
   
  Beth is one of those people who seem to flip the right tables, ruffle the right feathers, and challenge the conventional status quo.  Somehow, she navigates doing it all in a more winsome way than I ever could be.  I have not engaged with her work as much as I could have by now, but everything I have come across seems spot-on.

3.
“The call to follow the crucified Messiah was, in the long run much more effective in changing the unjust political, economic, and familial structures than direct exhortations to revolutionize them would ever have been.
 
For an allegiance to the crucified Messiah— indeed, worship of a crucified God-is an eminently political act that subverts a politics of dominion at its very core.”

• Miroslav Volf in “Soft Difference”
   
  No comment.  This quote is dang good on its own.

4.
“God does nothing as a judge that he wouldn’t do as a father. And I will accept nothing in the description of God that I would find
abhorrent in a man.”

• George MacDonald, Scottish Preacher
   
  I was attending a small group meeting this past week, and this quote popped into my mind during our conversation.  The group is full of lovely people, and we were talking about the idea of God as a Loving Father.

Unsurprisingly, it is difficult for us to conceptualize God as a Loving Father.  Most of our models or archetypes for God are that of a Retributive Judge, Divine Debt Collector, or some Cosmic Mafia Don who demands fealty.  In response to this, MacDonald would likely say that many people consider themselves Christians and yet have pagan theologies or views of God.

All this reminds me of Jesus’ words, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven  give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11)

5.
“In souls, there is no illness caused by evilness [ἀπὸ κακίας] that is impossible to cure [ἀδύνατον θεραπευθῆναι] for God the Logos, who is superior to all.”

• Origen, Early Church Father
   
  Over the years, there were names I was told to beware of: Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Karl Barth, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Walter Brueggemann, and others.  Each of these people was considered movers and shakers, who were somehow revered and reviled at the same time.

Surprisingly, it was during seminary that I was told about these figures and yet we never studied them closely.  Not that I think I was given a poor education, but I have come to see that some gaps needed to be filled on my own time.

The more I engage with church history for myself and take up responsibility for reading the original sources, the more I wonder if we have lost the plot of Christianity in the West.  And yes, Origen is one of the more controversial since he was called a heretic long after he passed away (and likely a result of people misunderstanding his followers), but his writings and his systematic theology seem to make more sense of more of the New Testament than I expected.

Case in point, God is more able to heal than sin is able to destroy.

Richard Rohr describes how psychology and spirituality affirm the direction of growth. 

In the various schemas of development, psychology and spirituality come together beautifully to show us that our growth is going somewhere. The trajectory is toward union: union with God/Reality, with the self (mind, heart, and body), with others, and with the cosmos. All seem to agree that the beginning levels of our consciousness are dualistic, while the later or deeper levels are non-dual and unitive. The only way to move from stage to stage is basically by some form of wounding, failure, or darkness. All seem to agree that we have to go through a period of unknowing (which sounds like faith to me) to know at a more mature level. [1]  

But when we listen to the news or look around and within our own hearts, doesn’t it seem as if we might be going nowhere? Everyone is on their own to find and create their own personal meaning. It seems we’re all condemned to start at zero, with no shoulders to stand on, which makes the human task quite difficult in our relatively short lifetime. It basically doesn’t work, especially when we’re young and just getting started. In our postmodern age, we have rejected any strong sense of the common good or any Great Tradition. Thus, we are addictively repeating the same patterns that produce trauma, violence, suffering, emotional immaturity, low self-esteem, and far-too-premature deaths.  

For our spirituality to be authentic, we must experience things from the inside out instead of just the outside in. In the materialistic and highly overstimulated culture in which so many of us live, we tend to let others define us instead of drawing from our own deep well. (Please do not hear that in an individualistic way; it is finally the exact opposite—which is truly a paradox.) Indeed, the goal of mature religion is to help us die before we die: die to our small or passing self so we can discover our Big Self. All major religions describe this in one way or another: A false and largely self-constructed identity must be surrendered before the True Self can stand radiant and revealed. Jesus said, “Whoever would save their life shall lose it, and whoever shall lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24), and “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies, it shall yield a rich harvest” (John 12:24). This is basic and essential conversion. Good religion and good psychology agree.   

Our contemplative practice is a “laboratory” in which we learn to die to our passing identities, emotions, and thoughts so we can receive the always-permanent and perfect mirroring of the Divine gaze. The rest of our life becomes the field in which we live out this participation in Love, bouncing back the gaze of grace to the Other and then having plenty left over for all others besides. [2]   

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

I speak to you continually. My nature is to communicate, though not always in words. I fling glorious sunsets across the sky, day after day after day. I speak in the faces and voices of loved ones. I caress you with a gentle breeze that refreshes and delights you. I speak softly in the depths of your spirit, where I have taken up residence.
     You can find Me in each moment, when you have eyes that see and ears that hear. Ask My Spirit to sharpen your spiritual eyesight and hearing. I rejoice each time you discover My Presence. Practice looking and listening for Me during quiet intervals. Gradually you will find Me in more and more of your moments. You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me above all else.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 8:1-4 (NLT)
1 O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!
    Your glory is higher than the heavens.
2 You have taught children and infants
    to tell of your strength,
silencing your enemies
    and all who oppose you.
3 When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—
    the moon and the stars you set in place—
4 what are mere mortals that you should think about them,
    human beings that you should care for them?

Psalm 19:1-2 (NLT)
1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
    The skies display his craftsmanship.
2 Day after day they continue to speak;
    night after night they make him known.

1 Corinthians 6:19 (NLT)
19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself…

Jeremiah 29:13 (NLT)
13 If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.

Additional insight regarding Jeremiah 29:13:

According to God’s wise plan, his people were to have a future and a hope; consequently, they could call upon him with confidence. Although the exiles were in a difficult place and time, they need not despair because they had God’s presence, the privilege of prayer, and God’s grace. If we seek him wholeheartedly, he will be found. Neither a strange land, sorrow, persecution, nor physical problems can break our fellowship with God.

Choosing to Face Our Pain

Psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem connects our individual healing from trauma with our communal healing from racism and other social ills. He describes “clean pain” as that which is faced and transformed instead of denied:  

Healing trauma involves recognizing, accepting, and moving through pain—clean pain. It often means facing what you don’t want to face—what you have been reflexively avoiding or fleeing. By walking into that pain, experiencing it fully, and moving through it, you metabolize it and put an end to it. In the process, you also grow, create more room in your nervous system for flow and coherence, and build your capacity for further growth.  

Clean pain is about choosing integrity over fear. It is about letting go of what is familiar but harmful, finding the best parts of yourself, and making a leap—with no guarantee of safety or praise. This healing does not happen in your head. It happens in your body. And it is more likely to happen in a body that can stay settled in the midst of conflict and uncertainty.  

When you come out the other side of this process, you will experience more than just relief. Your body will feel more settled and present. There will be a little more freedom in it and more room to move. You will experience a sense of flow. You will also have grown up a notch. What will your situation look like when you come out the other side? You don’t know. You can’t know. That’s how the process works. You have to stand in your integrity, accept the discomfort, and move forward into the unknown. [1]  

Richard Rohr considers the effects of trauma in individuals and social systems:  

When people at work, in our families, in politics, or in the church seem to be completely irrational, counterproductive, paranoid, or vengeful, there’s a good chance they’re acting out of some form of the survival mode, which can be triggered in many ways. Persons with trauma deserve deep understanding (which is hard to come by), sympathy (which is difficult if we have never been there ourselves), patience (because it’s not rationally controllable), healing (not judgment), and, frankly, years of love from at least one person or animal over time. 

Could this be what mythology means by the “sacred wound” and the church meant by “original sin”—not something we did, but the effects of something done to us? I believe it is. It’s no wonder Jesus teaches so much about forgiveness, and practices so much healing touch and talk. [2] 

Menakem emphasizes the possibilities for liberation created by the settling of our bodies:  

We need to join in that collective action with settled bodies—and with psyches that are willing to metabolize clean pain. I can’t stress this enough. Bringing a settled body to any situation encourages the bodies around you to settle as well. Bringing an unsettled body to that same situation encourages other bodies to become anxious, nervous, or angry. 

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God the Party Planner

While Jesus was dining at the home of a Pharisee, another guest said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” A banquet or feast was a common image in ancient Israel to describe eternal life and the age to come. In the language of popular evangelicalism, the guest was saying, “Blessed is everyone who is saved!”Jesus responded to this declaration in a strange manner. He did not deny the blessedness of those who will share in God’s banquet, but instead told a parable to challenge popular assumptions about who will be at the table. In other words, Jesus and his religious dinner guests had very different ideas about who was “saved” and who would enter God’s kingdom. To understand Jesus’ story we must know something about banquets in his culture.Because honor and shame were utmost in ancient Israel, celebrations in a village were very carefully scheduled to avoid conflicts. If a host held a banquet at the same time as another household it would bring shame upon his neighbor as well as himself. Practically, the poorly scheduled feast may reduce the number of people able to attend, again resulting in shame for the host.For these reasons, it was common for a host to send two invitations. The first invitation announced the banquet, ensured there were no competing events on the village calendar, and requested RSVPs from all of the guests. With the date and guests determined, the host then began the preparations for the elaborate feast which could take weeks. A second invitation was then sent when the banquet was ready to tell the guests to come and dine. The emphasis of Jesus’ parable is upon God’s intentionality. Comparing the arrival of his kingdom to a banquet means the Lord, like a good host, has put thought, time, and care into ensuring the arrival of his kingdom would not be a surprise and that his people would be ready to receive it. His posture is not one of exclusion but inclusion; his goal is not to keep as many people out as possible but to ensure everyone has the opportunity to join the party. That is the point of all the careful preparations.Have you ever considered that God has been preparing for you to be with him? He is not indifferent about your presence at his table but greatly desires to welcome and serve you. God is intentional about his relationship with you. You are not an afterthought, not a distraction, and never an interruption. This raises an important question—are you intentional about your relationship with him? As we continue to look at Jesus’ parable about the banquet, we’ll discover how God responds to those who disregard his gracious hospitality. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 14:15-24 MARK 1:1-5 REVELATION 19:6-9 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Resilience Requires Flexibility

In conversation with CAC Publications Manager Mark Longhurst, author Cole Arthur Riley considered this year’s Daily Meditations theme of radical resilience:  

[Radical resilience] stirs some amount of tension and some amount of encouragement…. When you think about the origins of the word resilience, it’s closer to talking about plastic, something that returns back to its original shape after you bend it. I think humans don’t really work like that. We don’t go back to the way we were before we were broken or bent….   

I’m a recovering cynic, and I used to have so much resistance to language of resilience. It’s only really in the past few years that I’ve had to confront a kind of resilience that isn’t really about returning back to the way you were before, but is much more about reclaiming whatever new shape your form has taken. A resilience that doesn’t really ask us to forget, but that carries the memory of whatever harm or whatever fire we’ve been through. A resilience that carries that memory and still is committed to one’s survival and one’s going on in the world, however that shape looks…. 

It’s a radical idea. This is another James Baldwin quotation. He’s actually reviewing The Exorcist film and it’s this beautiful review. I recommend everyone read it because he’s talking about much more than The Exorcist; he’s talking about the terrors of the world. He says, “It was very important for me not to pretend as if the terrors of that time left no mark on me. They marked me forever.” [1] I think he’s getting at a kind of resilience that still carries memory, that still says we’re marked, we’ve been through something, but that we’re committed to ultimately surviving this thing. [2] 

CAC teacher and psychotherapist James Finley shares that it’s through the wounded places in us that God’s love reaches us:  

It is in experiencing and accepting how difficult it can be to free ourselves from our hurtful attitudes and ways of treating ourselves and others that we begin to understand that the healing path is not a linear process in which we can force our way beyond our wounded and wounding ways. Rather, it is a path along which we learn to circle back again and again to cultivate within ourselves a more merciful understanding of ourselves as we learn to see, love, and respect the still-confused and wounded aspects of ourselves. Insofar as these wounded and wounding aspects of ourselves recognize that they are seen, loved, and respected in such a merciful way, they can feel safe enough to release the pain they carry into the more healed and whole aspects of ourselves.  

We are now attempting to bear witness to the sweet secret of experiential salvation in which the torn and ragged edges of our wounded and wayward hearts are experienced as… the opening through which the gentle light of God’s merciful love shines into our lives. 

An Offer of Infinite, Not Immediate, Satisfaction

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who found a pearl of exceedingly high value, so he sold everything he had and purchased the pearl. If nothing else, this very short parable ought to convince us that Jesus and his kingdom are not opposed to self-interest. The merchant was clearly motivated by his desires when he sold everything to acquire the pearl. It was not an act of self-denial.Likewise, the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus endured the humiliation of the cross because of the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2). He knew that on the other side of his suffering was a satisfaction of infinite magnitude—he would be raised, given the name above all names, and his enemies put under his feet. Despite the claims of some contemporary worship songs, Scripture reveals that Jesus did not think about “me above all.” Shockingly, he also had his own glory in mind. Yes, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16), but the Son also knew that his self-sacrifice would result in every tongue confessing that he is Lord (Philippians 2:11). We don’t talk about it very much, but self-interest was a factor in Jesus’ death on the cross. Somehow we’ve accepted the message that faith in Christ must be a miserable calling, and that any hint of self-interest is a betrayal of the faith and a sure sign of ungodliness. This view, however, is not found in the teachings of either Jesus or his Apostles. The problem is not having self-interested desires, but how the world tells us to fulfill them. Our consumer culture tells us satisfaction should come immediately and at no cost. Rather than patiently searching for a valuable pearl and sacrificing all he had to buy it, in our culture’s version of the parable the merchant should have purchased the pearl with a click, with $0 down, 0% financing, and free two-day shipping. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a name for a faith that costs nothing: cheap grace.What Jesus offers us with his kingdom is not immediate satisfaction but infinite satisfaction, and when we recognize the magnitude of the joy that is being promised to us, like the merchant in the parable, we will gladly sacrifice everything to get it. DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 13:44-46 HEBREWS 12:1-2 PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11 WEEKLY PRAYER From Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life, except to spend them for you, with you, and in you. You alone know what is good for me; do, therefore, what seems best to you. Give to me, or take from me; conform my will to yours; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal Providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Only the Beginning 

In growing psychologically, one moves toward increasing autonomy and independence. In growing spiritually, one increasingly realizes how utterly dependent one is, on God and on the grace of God that comes through other people. —Gerald May, Will and Spirit 

Over thirty years ago, Father Richard gave a talk at the 20th anniversary of Sojourners magazine and community. He affirms the benefits of psychological growth but urges us not to become stuck in individualistic worship of the self:  

When subjectivity became the reference point for human behavior, the psychological age began; by the late 1960s it became the language of the mainstream. It was a revolution just as profound and maybe more far-reaching than political revolutions or religious reformations. All of us are deeply affected by it; it is the air we breathe.  

The Jungian psychologist James Hillman summarizes it well:  

It’s the prevailing opinion we encounter anywhere in the therapy world, the self-help world, the afternoon talk-show world. All make clear the importance of childhood, of coming out from disempowerment (“be in control”), recovering from past abuses, working through to self-acceptance (“I can be comfortable with that”), and the confessional witness of “my own journey.” [1]  

These things are good to a certain point, and have helped countless people, but are only the beginning of the journey. The subjective self in our day is sometimes treated as objective truth. It becomes the unassailable “ground of being” which often cannot be questioned or left unaffirmed.  

It seems that it has become an accepted truth that the best thing one can do is “work on oneself.” Often it’s frowned upon in some circles to repress any feelings, fears, or sexual fantasies, while it may be totally acceptable to repress the objective issues of famine, habitat destruction, access to medical care, and weapons sales. 

When psyche meets psyche there is usually insight, communion, expansion, or at least distraction. It feels alive and will always lead us to another level of revelation or confrontation. But sometimes there is no goal beyond the process itself or that elusive thing called healing. This sounds a bit hard perhaps, but the enduring philosophical traditions have never confused existence with essence as we do today. We attach enormous significance to passing feelings, hurts, and experiences, things which the great world religions have called illusion, temptation, trial, grace, opportunity, passion, or “shadow and disguise.” They are means, not ends; windows and doorways perhaps, but surely not the temple itself. 

At best, the search for understanding or sobriety or healing is seen as the early “purgative way,” but not yet the classic “illuminative” or “unitive” paths. In these, we less and less need explanations, success, or control. Healthy spirituality points us through ever-changing psyche to never-changing Spirit. The Mystery has shown itself. It’s okay. It’s enough. No one, including the self, needs be blamed, shamed, or worshiped. If that’s not the freedom of the children of God, what would it possibly be?  

A Maturing Spirituality

Richard Rohr offers his own basic overview of the stages of spiritual development, which also account for our developmentally appropriate psychological needs:  

1. My body and self-image are who I am.  
   We focus on our own security, safety, and defense needs. 
    
2. My external behavior is who I am. 
   We need to look good from the outside and to hide any “contrary evidence” from others, and eventually from ourselves. The ego’s “shadow” begins to emerge at this time.  
    
3. My thoughts and feelings are who I am.  
   We begin to take pride in our “better” thoughts and feelings and learn to control them, so much so that we do not even see their self-serving nature. For nearly all of us, a major defeat, shock, or humiliation must be suffered and passed through to go beyond this stage.  
    
4. My deeper intuitions and felt knowledge in my body are who I am.  
   This is such a breakthrough and so helpful that many of us are content to stay here, but to remain at this level may lead to inner work or body work as a substitute for any real encounter with, or sacrifice for, the “other.” 
    
5. My shadow self is who I am. 
   This is the first “dark night of the senses”—when our weakness overwhelms us, and we finally face ourselves in our unvarnished and uncivilized state. Without guidance, grace, and prayer, most of us go running back to previous identities.  
    
6. I am empty and powerless.  
   Some call this sitting in “God’s Waiting Room,” but it is more often known as “the dark night of the soul.” At this point, almost any attempt to save ourselves by any superior behavior, morality, or prayer technique will fail us. All we can do is to ask, wait, and trust. God is about to become real. The false or separate self is dying in a major way.  
    
7.  I am much more than who I thought I was.  
   We experience the permanent waning of the false self and the ascent of the True Self as the center of our being. It feels like an absence or void, even if a wonderful void. John of the Cross calls this “luminous darkness.” We grow not by knowing or understanding, but only by loving and trusting.  
    
8. “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). 
   Here, there is only God. There is nothing we need to protect, promote, or prove to anyone, especially ourselves. Our false self no longer guides the ship. We have learned to let Grace and Mystery guide us—still without full (if any) comprehension.  
    
9. I am who I am. 
   I’m “just me,” warts and all. We are now fully detached from our own self-image and living in God’s image of us—which includes and loves both the good and the bad. We experience true serenity and freedom. This is the peace the world cannot give (see John 14:27) and full resting in God.

Why We Reject God’s Kingdom

Jesus’ parables comparing the kingdom of heaven to a man who finds a treasure in a field and to a merchant who discovers a pearl of great value are meant to be understood through an economic framework. Any rational person would gladly give up something of little value to acquire something of great value. Likewise, the value of God’s kingdom is so extraordinarily high that anything sacrificed for it ought to be released without hesitation. Jesus is illustrating that his kingdom is an unbelievable bargain.If that is the case, why do so many people still struggle to accept Jesus’ invitation? There are two possibilities. First, people are not always rational. In fact, there is strong evidence that people will act irrationally and against their own self-interests even when they know they are doing so. (For more I recommend Michael Lewis’ book, The Undoing Project, about two psychologists who won the Nobel Prize for proving the human mind is hardwired to make wrong decisions.) Our bent toward self-destructive and irrational choices confirms the Christian view that humans are universally corrupted by sin. There is another possibility also rooted in the power of sin. Even if we are functioning rationally, we may not recognize the value of what is being offered to us because of our poor vision or general ignorance. For example, when my son was little he was addicted to sugar. But if said to him, “Would you like some creme brûlée?” he would have immediately refused. Those unfamiliar words might conjure images in his mind of vegetables or some other unappetizing adult cuisine. His response would be very different, however, if I said, “Would you like some vanilla pudding, covered in sugar, and cooked with a blowtorch?”Our blindness or ignorance prevents us from recognizing the true nature and value of what is being offered. As a result, we cling more tightly to what we have and dismiss the glories available to us in Christ. C.S. Lewis wrote about it this way:“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. ”DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 13:44-46 ISAIAH 5:20-21 ISAIAH 55:1-1-2 WEEKLY PRAYERFrom Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life, except to spend them for you, with you, and in you. You alone know what is good for me; do, therefore, what seems best to you. Give to me, or take from me; conform my will to yours; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal Providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.