Thursday, October 17, 2024

Theologian Elizabeth Johnson shows how our understanding of creation has evolved since Genesis:  

Ancient biblical writers, imbued with faith in God’s creative power, described poetically how God stretched out the heavens, laid firm the foundations of the land, gave the sea instructions to stay within its bounds. Their model of the cosmos put an unchanging Earth at the center with the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies circling around it under the dome of the sky, which is actually the way things appear to the unaided human eye.  

Many centuries later we have a different understanding. Scientific discoveries have led us to see the heavens and the earth as the still-unfinished result of natural processes…. Since life began on this planet more than 3.5 billion years ago, different species of plants and animals have evolved in sync with this changing environment, emerging and disappearing….  

The Bible with its belief in a Creator who makes heaven and earth and all that is in them was written centuries before this modern knowledge developed and should not be expected to possess it. What remains constant for faith, whatever model one uses to envision Earth, is the religious intuition that the living God has an ongoing creative relationship with land, sea, air, and their inhabitants that enables their existence and actions. 

Johnson invites us to think of God as Creator through a broad lens:   

The ambling character of life’s evolutionary emergence over billions of years … is hard to reconcile with a simplistic idea of God the Creator at work…. Best to let go of the idea of God as a monarch acting upon other beings. Move your mind in the direction of the living God who is infinite holy mystery. Sit with the truth that our finite minds cannot comprehend the One who is infinite; our finite hearts cannot grasp love without limit. Look toward God not as an individual actor within the range of creatures but as the unimaginable personal Source of all beings, the very Ground of being, the Beyond in our midst, a generative ocean of love, Creator Spirit. Then begin to realize that the power of the Creator Spirit is not exercised as raw power-over but as love that empowers-with. God’s creative activity brings into being a universe endowed with the innate capacity to evolve by the operation of its own natural powers, making it a free partner in its own creation.  

Expanding our view of the living God along the lines of the paradigm of the lover opens a way to respect the genuine autonomy of nature’s operation and the freedom of creatures’ behavior that the Creator God makes possible….  

As God’s good creation, the world becomes a free partner in its own becoming while the Creator enables its existence at every moment. To put this succinctly, God creates the world by empowering the world to make itself. Far from compelling the world to develop according to a pre-designed plan, the Spirit continually calls it forth to a fresh and unexpected future. 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: October 17th, 2024

Anxiety is a result of envisioning the future without Me. So the best defense against worry is staying in communication with Me. When you turn your thoughts toward Me, you can think much more positively. Remember to listen, as well as to speak, making your thoughts a dialogue with Me.
     If you must consider upcoming events, follow these rules: 1) Do not linger in the future, because anxieties sprout up like mushrooms when you wander there. 2) Remember the promise of My continual Presence; include Me in any imagery that comes to mind. This mental discipline does not come easily, because you are accustomed to being god of your fantasies. However, the reality of My Presence with you, now and forevermore, outshines any fantasy you could ever imagine.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Luke 12:22-26 (NLT)
Teaching about Money and Possessions
22 Then, turning to his disciples, Jesus said, “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear. 23 For life is more than food, and your body more than clothing. 24 Look at the ravens. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for God feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than any birds! 25 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? 26 And if worry can’t accomplish a little thing like that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things?

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

Ephesians 3:20-21 (NLT)
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

Additional insight regarding Ephesians 3:20-21: This doxology – prayer of praise to God – ends Part 1 of Ephesians. In the first section, Paul describes the timeless role of the church. In Part 2 (chapters 4-6), he will explain how church members should live in order to bring about the unity God wants. As in most of his books, Paul first lays a doctrinal foundation and then makes practical applications of the truths he has presented.

Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through the things God has made. —Romans 1:20  

Sarah Augustine, a Pueblo (Tewa) author and activist, identifies what we can learn from creation about the Creator:  

This Scripture [from Paul] is consistent with an Indigenous worldview—that the nature of the Creator is evident in the creation. What does creation tell us about God’s divine nature?… 

Faithfulness. In the environment where I live, in the foothills of Pahto, the sacred mountain of the region, I see the faithfulness of the Creator with each season. In spite of the consistent [polluting] inputs…, each spring, life returns to the soil, trees and plants flower, and pollinators do their important work to spread the miracle of life. We humans do nothing to earn this. We do not collectively give thanks. Yet each spring returns faithfully, and with it, life.  

The interconnectedness and interdependence of the entire cosmos.The Yakama practice reverence in their spring feast, giving thanks before they go to gather. The elders instruct us: take just what you need. Leave plenty for future generations. This implies that life is interdependent; what I do has a direct impact on the lives of other creatures. Living in ways that are consistent with this basic understanding results in abundance…. 

Creation is ongoing. Creation did not occur in six days and then stop; it is an ongoing process. Reverence means demonstrating deep respect for the plants and animals required to sustain my life and the lives of my family members….  

Mutual accountability. Reverence does not happen once per week; it is practiced each day faithfully, moment by moment. It is acknowledging that we are dependent on the systems of life, that they are not subordinate to us or to our will. [1] 

The Indigenous caucus at the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches shared the ecological wisdom of their traditions: 

We as Indigenous Peoples believe that the Creator is in Creation. God revealed himself/herself as Creator and Sustainer in the act of creation. The triune God along with land co-parents all life. The mystery in John chapter 1 unfolds how the Creator abides in creation. The incarnation of God in Christ becomes totality in God’s creation…. Through God all things were made, without God nothing was or is made. In God there is life, and in God is the light of all Creation. The presence of God made the world and therefore [it] is sacred. The work of creation in God is the unity of diversity, where all lives coexist in a harmonious balance because they are all from God. Each seed that sprouts begins creation anew, and not one seed can grow unless the Creator enables it. We believe that doing justice to God’s creation is the basis of liberation and the human search for selfhood. [

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Dear Nadia, Why do you believe?

Dear Nadia, Why, after your own journey, do you still find yourself believing in a personal God and in the resurrection of Jesus? I’d like to believe these things, but I struggle to find them intellectually tenable. Thanks!

Joseph

Short answer:

Dear Joseph,

None of this is intellectually tenable. So that struggle you find yourself in? You can take a break from that. Also I find the word “personal” to be kind of bullshit too. Like I can find my “Personal Lord and Savior” in my contacts somewhere between my “Personal Assistant” and my “Personal Trainer”. This, my friend, is not something you need to buy in to in order to have faith.

You need not muster up any feelings of “closeness to God”, and you need not intellectually assent to theological propositions. Maybe faith isn’t about the intellect or even “feelings”. Maybe it’s about a deep knowing. And I suspect that if you can quiet down all those church-y messages you received, you might, in the moments between your breaths, in the moments between your doubts, be just barely still enough to know that God is.

Love,

Nadia

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Long answer:

Dear Joseph

As a schoolgirl I was taught to believe that certain formulas were reliable; 1 + 1 will always equal 2. This was provable and beyond questioning. 

And then I’d go to church where we were taught to believe all this Christian stuff in the same way we believed in math.  When argued correctly, we could use human reason to prove the absolute truth of the Christian faith. All the stories in the Bible and, more importantly, all the doctrine the church made up were also reliable, provable and beyond questioning.  So having faith meant approaching the Bible and the doctrine and teachings of Christianity with as much certitude and unwavering confidence as I would simple math.   And one would never dream of doubting arithmetic.  I mean, if mathematics was the sort of thing where sometimes 1 + 1 = 2, if mathematics was the sort of thing where you know,  2,000 years ago 1+1 = 2 but with the changes in culture it just simply no longer does…well, then all of Mathematics would be up for grabs. 

By the time I left the conservative church I was raised in, I no longer believed that only Church of Christ members were “going to heaven”, or that women were spiritually inferior to men, or that God created this wild diversity of humanity but was only “pleased” with the small subset that happened to be devout Christian heterosexuals who went to church and never used swear words. This also meant that I did not believe in that whole “God loves us very much but will send us into a lake of burning fire to be tortured for eternity if we are gay or allow women to pray out loud when men are present or if we have sex before we are married.”

But when I walked away from THAT I was also walking away from the only world I had ever known: worship, hymns, retreats, camps, potlucks, devotionals, prayer, plus also: grape juice & crackers each Sunday.

It took me years to realize that the symbol system and stories and music and language and practices of Christianity formed me in ways that I could not escape by simply no longer going to church, Joseph.  But they formed me in ways that transcended the strident certainty of the Church of Christ. So I would pray without realizing I was doing it, and would be moved to tears by hearing a hymn in a movie score without wanting to be, and when my roommate would find the wallet she thought she’d lost I’d say “call the neighbors” without realizing she didn’t know the Bible like I did and wouldn’t get the joke. My life had been inflected by faith from the time I was growing in my mother’s belly and to have only negative feelings about Christianity was to also have some negative feelings about my own being.

So, Joseph, I left the church of my childhood for reasons of self-preservation, but I returned to the faith of my childhood for reasons of self-love because there were little pieces of me back in there that I eventually could see and love and well . . . I wanted them back.  Leaving Christianity felt like a way to save myself but eventually, reclaiming some aspects of Christianity felt like a way to love myself. 

Not sure if that all makes sense, Joseph and I do not know your story. But I can hear your desire to try and figure this all out, so if I had any advice for you it would be to know that you do not have to strive for something that is already woven inside of you. Whatever is there, whatever knowing, whatever love for lost things and loaves and fishes, whatever prayer your grandmother taught you that you kind of want to also teach your own children, whatever comfort in the mystery, that is faith, my friend. And it is enough.

So yeah, I believe in God and even the resurrection. But not in the way I believe in math.

I believe because, as The Hold Steady song goes,

She crashed into the Easter mass with her hair done up in broken glass
She was limping left on broken heels
And she said, “Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?

And I believe because it is in me to do so.

And I believe because I have borrowed the faith of others.

And I believe because of how bonkers all the Bible stories are not despitehow bonkers all the Bible stories are.

And “I believe, help my unbelief”.

And I believe because: 

Jesus sought me when a stranger

wandering from the fold of God.

And I believe because yesterday I saw this flower:

And I believe because I have experienced it all to be true and am unconcerned whether or not it is fact.

So, thanks for asking. And I hope your faith finds you and that you welcome whatever shape it takes and that you refrain from thinking it isn’t enough.

Be gentle with yourself, Joseph. 

Love, Nadia

Father Richard considers what we can learn from the first Bible of nature: 

The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. The first Bible is the Bible of nature. It was written at least 13.8 billion years ago, at the moment that we call the Big Bang, long before the Bible of words. “Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and divinity—however invisible—are there for the mind to see in the things that God has made” (Romans 1:20). One really wonders how we missed that. Words gave us something to argue about, I guess, while nature can only be experienced, and hopefully enjoyed and respected with admiration and awe. Don’t dare put the second Bible in the hands of people who have not sat lovingly at the feet of the first Bible. They will invariably manipulate, mangle, and murder the written text.  

The biblical account tells us God creates the world developmentally over six days, almost as if there was an ancient intuition of what we would eventually call evolution. Clearly creation happened over time. The only strict theological assertion of the Genesis story is that God started it all. The exact how, when, and where is not the author’s concern. This creation story, perhaps written five hundred years before Jesus Christ, has no intention or ability to be a scientific account. It is a truly inspired account of the source, meaning, and original goodness of creation. Thus, it is indeed “true.” Both Western rationalists and religious fundamentalists must stop confusing true with that which is literal, chronological, or visible to the narrow spectrum of the human eye. Many assume the Bible is an exact snapshot—as if caught on camera—of God’s involvement on Earth. But if God needed such literalism, God would have waited for the 19th century of the Common Era to start talking and revealing through “infallible” technology. [1]  

Science often affirms what were for centuries the highly suspect intuitions of the mystics. We now take it for granted that everything in the universe is deeply connected and linked, even light itself, which interestingly is the first act of creation (Genesis 1:3). Objects—even galaxies!—throughout the entire known universe are in orbits and cycle around something else. There’s no such thing in the whole universe as autonomy. It doesn’t exist. That’s the illusion of the modern, individualistic West, which imagines the autonomous self to be the basic building block and the true Seer. [2] 

Yet all holy ones seem to say that the independent self sees everything incorrectly. Parts can only recognize parts and so split things even further. Whole people see things in their wholeness and thus create wholeness (“holiness”) wherever they go and wherever they gaze. Holy people will find God in nature and everywhere else too. Heady people will only find God in books and words, and finally not even there. 

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Contemplation in the Desert

MARK LONGHURST OCT 6

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I’m no desert dweller. I love New Mexico’s dry dirt, short trees, and adobe houses, but I wouldn’t dare journey for days in the actual desert. When my wife and I first discussed moving to western Massachusetts, I asked, “Is there an independent movie theater? Where’s the nearest craft brewery?”

The desert, however, is a rich and longstanding image in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Ancient Christian monks wandered to the most remote and craggy outposts they could find and set up camp. The barren landscape became a spiritual metaphor for the interior purification or “letting go” process needed to meet God.

The ancient Israelites were a wilderness, nomadic people. They contemplated God in deserts, on mountaintops, on the margins, and on the move. Of course, the image of the promised land looms large in the Jewish imagination, but the desert persistently haunts the people as a symbol and harsh reality.

It’s the wilderness—in Hebrew, the same word for desert, midbar—that wields transformative, liberating power. The dramatic, mountain-quaking revelation at Sinai that Moses experiences is preceded by the people’s escape from Egyptian slavery and time spent wandering in the desert. But before Moses leads the people in the archetypal freedom flight from Empire, he goes out to the desert.

He has fled Egypt, having murdered an Egyptian and taken refuge in a land called Midian. One day, Moses is keeping the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro (Exodus 3:1). He leads his flock into the wilderness-desert and arrives at a mountain, where he stumbles across a burning bush and receives Yahweh’s liberating call.

His own divine desert encounter galvanizes his leadership.

Before the people arrive at Sinai, they, too, trek through the desert. But the desert is tough and impersonal. It does not care about people. It has its own identity and will. It does not bend easily to our desires, if at all. The desert is not only a stop on the way to the mountain or an unfortunate detour on the way to the promised land but also a destination itself.

The ancient Israelites learn this lesson with great complaint. They cross the Red Sea, fleeing Pharaoh’s chariots while divine power holds waves at bay. Once in the wilderness-desert, the people face hunger, thirst, and armed enemies. Newly liberated, they nevertheless romanticize their oppression. They start to pine for Egypt’s full meals. They become thirsty. They protest Moses’s leadership. “Why did you bring us out into the desert, to kill us?” they ask (Exodus 16:3). God sends food from heaven for sustenance. God gives water that flows out of a rock struck by Moses. They run into other desert nomads, called Amalek, and are forced to fight to protect themselves.

The desert is the in-between space of testing, divine revelation, and transformation. It’s the job loss and search, the dissolution of a marriage, the grief after a beloved’s death. It’s also the place to discover God’s freedom and presence, from which a voice cries out, “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3). The story of Israel in the desert is also the story of the gospels, the way retread by Jesus. Once baptized and immersed in water, Jesus, too, is thrust into the wilderness-desert. Moses lingers at Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights while, generations later, Jesus endures the desert and Satan’s cross-examination for forty days and forty nights.

Once tested and proven true in the desert, Jesus returns to the desert. It’s as if Jesus chooses the uncertain liminality of the desert to frame his life. Mark’s gospel includes rich, brief lines that suggest Jesus’s dedication to contemplation. They often simply read, “Jesus withdrew to a quiet place.” Writers on silent prayer have often turned to these verses hoping that Jesus, too, values silence. But Jesus’s embrace of silence is tied to landscape: the Greek word eremos means both a solitary and desert place (see Mark 6:31). When Jesus goes off to pray, he is not only stealing solitude, he is going to the desert.

The desert is the archetypal and literal place where we meet God, the place of fierce love. Deserts of loss, grief, pain, and literal sand strip down our pretensions, as if to say that preparing for God’s way requires abandonment of all our prior ways. The ways that we are in the world are all too often directed by addiction and a desire for more. The desert demands us to be emptied rather than filled, to show up and be tested, for divine fire to refine our desire, to face inner barrenness head-on, just as Jesus faces down the devil in the wilderness.

We are confronted with our naked self in the desert. There’s no place for our pride, lust, anger, resentment, or need for approval to hide. No amount of posturing will shield us from the desert sun’s unremitting glare. Its clarity may even stir us to long once again for the seemingly safe oppression of Egypt.

Or the truth that the desert peels away may cause us to plunge headlong in love with God, to say with the poet of the Song of Songs, “Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” (8:5)

The desert is a pliable metaphor for spaces of contemplation. While barren landscapes still hold transformative power, deserts are more populated these days. In a technological age, deserts are contested sites for cities, nuclear tests, oil drilling, and pipeline development. As Thomas Merton once wrote, “When man and his money and machines move out in the desert and dwell there, not fighting the devil as Christ did, but believing in his promises of power and wealth . . . then the desert moves everywhere.” Deserts symbolize the inner work of purgation and reality confrontation that would-be contemplatives must undergo wherever we find ourselves.

Father Richard Rohr describes how understanding God as Creator impacts how we treat creation:  

If Christianity would have paid attention to the teachings and example of Jesus and St. Francis, our planet—“Sister Mother Earth,” as Francis called her—would perhaps be much healthier today. But it took until the 21st century for a pope to write an entire encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our CommonHome, making this quite clear and demanding. Pope Francis writes:  

Saint Francis, faithful to Scripture, invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. “Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker” (Wisdom 13:5); indeed, “his eternal power and divinity have been made known through his works since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:20)…. The world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise. [1]  

We have not honored God’s Presence in the elemental, physical world. We made God as small as our own constricted hearts. We picked and chose, saying, “Oh, God is really only in my group, in baptized people, in moral people” and so on. Is there that little of an Infinite God to go around? Do we have to be stingy with God? Why pretend only we deserve God, and that God is not for other groups, religions, animals, plants, the elements, Brother Sun, and Sister Moon?  

God is saving creation and bringing all creatures back where they began—into union with their Creator. God loves everything that God has made! God proclaimed all created things “good” (see Genesis 1:9–31 and Wisdom 11:24–12:1). But we, with our small minds, can’t deal with that. We have to whittle God and love into small parts that our minds can handle and portion out. Human love is conditional and operates out of a scarcity model. There’s not enough to go around, just like Jesus’ disciple Andrew said about the boy’s five loaves and two small fish (John 6:9). Humans can’t conceptualize or even think infinite or eternal concepts. We cannot imagine Infinite Love, Infinite Goodness, or Infinite Mercy.  

We don’t come to the God Mystery through concepts or theories; we come by connecting with what is—with God’s immediate, embodied presence which is all around us. Notice that almost all of Jesus’ common stories and examples are nature based and relationship based—never once theology or academic theory.  

We have not recognized the one Body of Christ in creation. Perhaps we just didn’t have the readiness or training. First of all, there is the seeing, and then there is the recognizing; the second stage is called contemplation. We cannot afford to be unaware any longer. We must learn to see, listen, or touch and to recognize how broad and deep the Presence is if we are to truly care for our common home.  

Creation’s Harmony

CAC affiliate faculty member Rev. Randy Woodley recounts the biblical story of creation as a model of harmony:  

[In] Genesis 1 and 2, God creates everything, and calls it not just good, but “really good” (Hebrew tov ma-ov). Every creature and living system is excellent, in right order, and as it should be: embodying shalom. The Genesis account of creation purposefully shows the Creator taking time to fashion this harmonious cosmos. 

God begins work with the celestial water, space, and sky, and then creates the terrestrial waters and the earth, including the plants, trees, and fruits. Next, God watches the seeds from those plants bear in kind. After that the Creator sets the celestial and the terrestrial in rhythm and balance as night and day; as summer, fall, winter, and spring; and as months and years. The waters are then filled with fish and the skies with birds, which all increase. Finally, after bringing animals into being, the Creator speaks human beings, both male and female, into existence.  

One gets the sense from this Genesis account that the Creator enjoyed making the world. The work of creation was neither impetuous nor hurried, but deliberate and thoughtful, stretched out over time in order for the Creator to receive maximum pleasure. God’s creation-work is leisurely and sedate, unlike most Western capitalist modes of industrial creation. It is also remarkably diverse, unlike the homogeneity of today’s mass production systems. Each part of creation is differentiated, unique and fruitful, multiplying after its own kind. And yet, each part is incomplete without the whole; everything exists in interdependent relationships. The celestials regulate the balance of the terrestrials. The night compels all creation to rest as it brings refreshing coolness. The day provides new life and opportunities like warmth for plants, animals, and humans. The moon regulates the water. The sun regulates the seasons. The seasons regulate annual activities. Everything is in harmony, in balance with each other and with the Creator. It is a picture of a creation in community, a picture in which the audience is being asked to see both the beauty and symmetry of many parts in relation to the whole. [1]   

Randy Woodley and his wife Edith offer a word for this harmony found in creation:  

In the Cherokee language, this concept of well-being is often called Eloheh (pronounced ay-luh-HAY). The Cherokee meaning of well-being is deep and resonant, and it is hard to capture in English. Eloheh means “well-being,” yes, but it means so much more. Eloheh—what some traditions call the Harmony Way—describes a state of being when all is as it should be or as it was created to be. Eloheh means that people are at peace, not at war; that the Earth is being cared for and producing in abundance, so no one goes hungry. Eloheh means people are treating each other fairly and that no one is a stranger for very long.

Learning from the Mystics: (John Chaffee) Julian of Norwich

Quote of the Week:“And so, like a fool, I used to wonder about this.  Why wouldn’t God, in his omniscience, have prevented sin when he created us?  If he had left sin out of creation, it seemed to me, all would be well.  I know I should have abandoned this disturbing line of thought, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.  I grieved and lamented this beyond all reason and discretion.But in this showing Jesus gave me all that I needed.  ‘Sin is inevitable,’ he said, ‘yet all will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.'” – From Chapter 27 of The Showings (or Revelations) of Julian of Norwich Reflection:  You may have asked the same question to yourself.  Why would God allow sin into this world at all?  Why, if God is so good and so powerful, would sin be permitted? Julian asked the same question in her deathbed vision of Jesus. He replied that it was necessary, it was inevitable. Julian, in all of her writings, does something quite remarkable.  She finds the ability to be thankful for everything.  She is an example of an integrative thinker who seeks to bring all things together and allow them to have their place.  She even goes so far at one point to say that we can be thankful for our sins because they show us where we are still childish! As if to say that sin is a matter of childishness and right-living/right-loving is a matter of maturity! Sin is inevitable in a world where not everyone understands what it means to be properly human.  Sin, then, becomes our teacher and not simply something to deny, repress, justify or even joke about.  Sin can uniquely teach us in ways that humble us if we own up to it.  Some lessons may only be able to be learned through mistakes. A number of years ago I was talking with a college student that enjoyed partying, much to their parents’ disapproval.  I said, “You may need to walk down that road long enough to be burned by it to decide for yourself that you want to live a holy life because you want to.  We will only ever be able to give up a sin if we are willing to learn what it has to teach us.”  My comment was absolutely influenced by Julian of Norwich. Sin is inevitable in a world that is still wrestling with its childishness, but do not worry too much, in the end, all things will be well. Prayer  Lord, help us to learn from our mistakes quickly.  Help us to learn from them rather than dismiss but then repeat them.  Grant us the grace and courage to look upon our own sins truthfully and to look upon the sins of those around us mercifully.  Enable us to trust in the long arc of cosmic history, and believe with quiet confidence, that yes, all things will be well.  Amen.

Life Overview:  Who Were They: Julian, also known as Juliana Where: Norwich, England When: 1343-1416AD (During the Bubonic Plague) Why She is Important: She is the first published female in the English language, and is known for her incredibly hopeful, intimate and tender theology of God. What Was Their Main Contribution: The Showings (or Revelations) of Divine Love Please feel free to forward this to others. And, if you were forwarded this and would like to sign up…Click Here

Friday, October 11, 2024

Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” —Matthew 11:30 

Father Richard names the dance between joy and sadness as a necessary paradox of life:   

It’s hard to hear God—but it’s even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on. Enlightened people invariably describe the spiritual experience of God as restful, peaceful, delightful, and even ecstatic. John of the Cross writes of being seized by the same delight that is in God, being caught in God’s great being, and breathing God’s same air. [1] St. Bernard of Clairvaux said that for him, Jesus was “honey in the mouth, music to the ear, and joy in the heart.” [2] Sufi mystics and poets Hafiz, Rumi, Tagore, and Kabir made life with God sound downright fun and fantastic, a poem instead of a trial.  

Seek joy in God and peace within; seek to rest in the good, the true, and the beautiful. It’s the only resting place that also allows us to hear and bear the darkness. Hard and soft, difficult and easy, painful and ecstatic do not eliminate one another; they actually allow each other. They bow back and forth like dancers, although it is harder to bow to pain and to failure. We can bear the hardness of life and see through failure when our soul is resting in a wonderful and comforting sweetness and softness. Religious people would call this living in God. That’s why people in love—and often people at the end of life—have such an excess of energy for others. If God cannot be rested in, then it must not be much of a god. If God is not juice and joy, then who has created all these lilacs and lilies? [3]   

In The Book of Joy, Archbishop Desmond Tutu offers this blessing, reminding us of the joy of abiding in God’s love: 

Dear Child of God, you are loved with a love that nothing can shake, a love that loved you long before you were created, a love that will be there long after everything has disappeared. You are precious, with a preciousness that is totally quite immeasurable. And God wants you to be like God. Filled with life and goodness and laughter—and joy. 

God, who is forever pouring out God’s whole being from all eternity, wants you to flourish. God wants you to be filled with joy and excitement and ever longing to be able to find what is so beautiful in God’s creation: the compassion of so many, the caring, the sharing. And God says, Please, my child, help me. Help me to spread love and laughter and joy and compassion. And you know what, my child? As you do this—hey, presto—you discover joy. Joy, which you had not sought, comes as the gift, as almost the reward for this non-self-regarding caring for others. [4] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Beware of seeing yourself through other people’s eyes. There are several dangers to this practice. First of all, it is nearly impossible to discern what others actually think of you. Moreover, their views of you are variable: subject to each viewer’s spiritual, emotional, and physical condition. The major problem with letting others define you is that it borders on idolatry. Your concern to please others dampens your desire to please Me, your Creator.
     It is much more real to see yourself through My eyes. My gaze upon you is steady and sure, untainted by sin. Through My eyes you can see yourself as one who is deeply, eternally loved. Rest in My loving gaze, and you will receive deep Peace. Respond to My loving Presence by worshiping Me in spirit and in truth.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 
Hebrews 11:6 (NLT)
6 And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.
John 4:23-24 (NLT)
23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Thursday, October 10, 2024

In this fall’s forthcoming issue of ONEING, Dr. Jacqui Lewis considers the rich historical tradition of dance in African American culture:   

Enslaved Africans danced the Juba or the Hambone because they weren’t allowed drums on the plantations, and they used their hands and bodies to create sound, to ground themselves in their joy, which was resistance. Our people tap-danced, fusing Irish dancing, British clogging, and West African dance, making something new in their circumstances with old and new material, kind of like quilting. We danced the ring shout after picking cotton, until the Spirit hit us and reminded us we knew how to fly up into the sky. Black folks brought our dancing from Nigeria and Ghana and Trinidad and turned it into the Charleston…. 

No tragedy, no sorrow, no loss could stop the dance. Dancing was a place to meet God, a place to rehearse the freedom for which we prayed. Dancing with God as a partner was an act of prophetic resistance, a defiance of bondage, a tool for liberation.  

Lewis describes how God sustained her Middle Collegiate Church community after a fire destroyed their sanctuary:  

We were beat down with COVID, grief, and the excruciating pain of racial terror in our nation, but we knew God was able to do more than we could ask or imagine. We made it through because we kept our eyes on our partner. We kept our ears tuned in to the calling on our lives, and we knew—in our suffering—that our God did not cause it. We knew we could dance our way down to the site of fire every year and lay down our burdens because no God wants the suffering the fire caused, because no God who loves us would design our sorrow. We knew our partner could dance, could guide us through the difficult terrain. We only needed to lean on the everlasting arms…. 

We knew our dance partner’s intention for the world is for flourishing. We knew the fire was not caused by God, nor were the fires of racial injustice, the fires of economic disparity, and the fires in which gender, sexuality, religion, and age are reasons for oppression and violence…. 

Lewis emphasizes our partnership with God in the dance of creating a new world:  

We need to choreograph new theological understandings of God. What if God is not organizing the universe on our behalf after all? What if God is instead watching, listening, and waiting—waiting for our choices, our decisions, our agency to make of the world and our lives what we want? What if God is not manipulating all the things, but yearns for our partnership? What if God wants us to dance with them?  

And what if God is willing to follow our lead? What would life be like and how would we navigate hot-mess times if we felt our own power to shape the world? 

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Sara Young Jesus Calling

Take time to be still in My Presence. The more hassled you feel, the more you need this sacred space of communion with Me. Breathe slowly and deeply. Relax in My holy Presence while My Face shines upon you.  This is how you receive My Peace, which I always proffer to you.
     Imagine the pain I feel when My children tie themselves up in anxious knots, ignoring My gift of Peace. I died a criminal’s death to secure this blessing for you. Receive it gratefully; hide it in your heart. My Peace is an inner treasure, growing within you as you trust in Me. Therefore, circumstances cannot touch it. Be still, enjoying Peace in My Presence.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Psalm 46:10 (NLT)
10 “Be still, and know that I am God!
    I will be honored by every nation.
    I will be honored throughout the world.”

Numbers 6:25-26 (NLT)
25 May the Lord smile on you
    and be gracious to you.
26 May the Lord show you his favor
    and give you his peace.’

Spiritual writer Joyce Rupp understands all of creation as part of a “cosmic dance”: 

No one person has been able to fully communicate this amazing dance of life to me, but Thomas Merton comes close with his description in New Seeds of Contemplation. Merton’s use of the phrase “cosmic dance” set my heart singing. When I read it, I felt my early childhood experience [in nature] of the inner dance being echoed and affirmed:  

When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. [1] 

Rupp continues:

The soul of the world and our own souls intertwine and influence one another. There is one Great Being who enlivens the dance of our beautiful planet and everything that exists. The darkness of outer space, the greenness of our land and the blue of our seas, the breath of every human and creature, all are intimately united in a cosmic dance of oneness with the Creator’s breath of love. [2]  

Rupp celebrates the restoration that takes place by her conscious participation in the dance:  

There is such power in the cosmic dance. Each time I resonate with this energy I sink into my soul and find a wide and wondrous connection with each part of my life. I come home to myself, feeling welcomed and restored to kinship with the vast treasures of Earth and Universe. I am re-balanced between hope and despair, slowed down in my greedy eagerness to accomplish and produce no matter the cost to my soul, beckoned to sip of the flavors of creation in order to nourish my depths….  

Whenever and however I join with the cosmic dance, it jogs my memory and gives me a kind of “second sight,” a glimpse of the harmony and unity that is much deeper and stronger than the forces of any warring nation or individual. My trust that good shall endure is deepened. My joy of experiencing beauty is strengthened. My resolve to continually reach out beyond my own small walls is renewed. The energy that leaps and twirls in each part of existence commands my attention and draws me into a cosmic embrace. I sense again the limitless love that connects us all. I come home to that part of myself that savors kinship, births compassion, and welcomes tenderness. I re-discover that I am never alone. Always the dance joins me to what “is.” 

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Psalm 137: The Terrible Fate of Every Babylon

Click Here for Audio Yesterday, we examined the covenant faithfulness of God. Over and over, Psalm 136 declares that “YHWH’s hesed endures forever.” Hesed is the Hebrew word meaning “loyal-love” and refers to God’s unwavering commitment to his people. But in Psalm 137 we are jolted by a very different message. The writer describes weeping, sorrow, and anger along the rivers of Babylon. It’s a scene of God’s people living in exile after the destruction of Jerusalem. If the Lord’s loyal-love endures forever, if his covenant with his people cannot be broken, then why are they weeping? Why has the land he promised them been overtaken by outsiders? Why has Jerusalem and YHWH’s temple been destroyed? And why have God’s chosen people been taken as captives to a foreign land? Reading Psalms 136 and 137 together provokes troubling theological and moral questions. I suspect that was the intent of placing these psalms side by side.Reading Psalm 137 by itself, however, produces a different set of confusing questions. The dominant emotion of the Psalm is anger. God’s people are outraged at what the Babylonians have done to their homeland, they vow never to forget the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Psalm concludes with the hope that one day Babylon will be destroyed in return. The final line is perhaps the darkest verse in the Psalms: “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”We have already explored how to read and apply Psalms of vengeance, and why we should understand them as descriptive rather than prescriptive. (I won’t repeat the details here but I suggest reading the devotionals for Psalm 109 and Psalm 123 in the With God Daily archives.) Psalm 137 also fits into this category, but there is an important New Testament parallel we should not overlook. In the book of Revelation, Babylon is used to symbolize the ungodly and unjust empires of the world who oppose Jesus and persecute his faithful followers. In a passage that echoes the cry of Psalm 137, we hear a voice calling for God to punish Babylon. “Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double what she has done…. Give her as much torment and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself” (Revelation 18:6-7).Revelation uses the Old Testament story of the Babylonian invasion and exile as an archetype. In every generation, there is always a Babylon—an evil empire that dehumanizes, exploits, persecutes, and crushes the weak and vulnerable. And in every generation, God’s people will cry out for his vengeance against this injustice. While Psalm 137 offers no resolution to the rampaging evil of Babylon, Revelation does: “Rejoice over her, you heavens! Rejoice, you people of God!… For God has judged her with the judgments she imposed on you” (Revelation 18:20). DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 137:1-9 REVELATION 18:1-8 WEEKLY PRAYER. Alcuin of York (735 – 804) Eternal Light, shine into our hearts, eternal Goodness, deliver us from evil, eternal Power, be our support, eternal Wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance, eternal Pity, have mercy upon us; that with all our heart and mind and soul and strength we may seek your face and be brought by your infinite mercy to your holy presence; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Dr. Barbara Holmes shares her recent experience of dancing with God in a time of uncertainty: 

In more recent years, I’ve had my own dance with the divine. My health declined suddenly and precipitously. When a hip operation was postponed for a year because of other health concerns, I pondered in despair: I would be wheelchair bound for a year?  

It was at that moment that God asked, “May I have this dance?” 

“Dance?” I was outraged. “What do you mean dance? I can’t even walk.” 

And the answer came back, “Your spirit knows the steps. Breathe, relax, breathe.”  

I let go of my fears, my concerns, and melted into the arms of a loving Savior as we danced to an ethereal music of the heart that neither of us could hear. You don’t need to hear music. Life has a rhythm of its own. And when you’re out of sync, you must get aligned with the rhythm of life. 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, Holmes finds a God who dances: 

How do I know that God dances? There are only three chapters in the Book of Zephaniah. The first two chapters are rough going. God’s complaints against the people include worship of idols, deification of sun, moon, and stars, and self-sufficiency so complete that there’s no need to depend on God. But then:  

The Lord, your God, is in your midst, 
    a mighty savior, 
Who will rejoice over you with gladness, 
    and renew you in his love, 
Who will sing joyfully because of you,
    as on festival days. —Zephaniah 3:17–18 

What a surprise! Zephaniah takes us from destruction to dance and song…. As Steve Fry explains, “God’s joy knows no bounds…. In the Hebrew, [joy] literally means ‘to become excited to the point of dancing in a whirlwind’,” or dancing with such abandon that only a whirlwind can describe it. And while God is dancing, God also sings loudly. Fry continues, “Most translators have chosen a less vigorous description for our English Bibles because they can’t conceive of a God of such emotional intensity.” [1] But why not? Physicists tell us that the universe is made up of dancing particles and strings throughout the cosmos.  

Holmes reminds us that fire is a part of our dance with the Divine:  

But where does the fire come in? Well, we know we can’t see God’s countenance and live. God appears in the elements of nature, a cloud, fire, and wind. For Moses, the burning bush is God. I believe that fire, the element “shut up in our bones” [see Jeremiah 20:9], is always a part of the dance. It awakens us, it helps us to dream, it clears away debris.  

Whatever is going on in your life right now, this too shall pass. Where do you find your joy? If you don’t know how to dance, don’t worry. Your soul knows the steps. Wherever life finds you, don’t forget to dance and sing with the God who dances like the whirlwind with you.

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Psalm 136: Attempting to Define God’s Loyal-Love

Click Here for Audio Psalm 136 repeats the same phrase 26 times. That’s not a subtle clue that the writer thinks it’s important. The problem, however, is that it’s a notoriously difficult phrase to translate into English. The New International Versions says, “His love endures forever.” The Hebrew word translated “love” here is hesed, and most biblical scholars agree that it’s incredibly difficult to translate. That’s why there are so many divergent translations. Here are just a few: lovingkindness (ASV) goodness (KJV) faithful love (CSB) great loyalty (CEB) grace (CJB) overflowing with mercy (EHV) steadfast love (ESV) gracious love (ISV) loyal love (LEB) faithfulness (NASB) unfailing love (NLT) pity (KJV) favor (NIV) devotion (ESV) The problem with hesed takes on more weight when we discover it occurs nearly 250 times in the Old Testament, and it’s the most common description of God found in the Psalms. Some scholars have argued that it’s the single most important word in the Hebrew Bible. And yet, the word remains elusive. Musician and bible teacher, Michael Card, wrote an entire book about the word hesedappropriately titled “Inexpressible.” And Hebrew scholar Daniel Block explains the problem this way: “The Hebrew word hesed cannot be translated with one English word. This is a covenant term, wrapping up in itself all the positive attributes of God.” In other words, hesed is a word deeply embedded in ancient Israelite culture and within the context of Israel’s special relationship with YHWH. Therefore, we can only begin to understand the word by first understanding its covenant setting.Simply put, a covenant is a formal agreement or treaty between two parties. Sometimes a covenant was made between people of equal status and strength, but often it was between unequal parties. For example, a more powerful king might defeat the armies of a weaker territory. He would then issue a covenant between himself and the inhabitants of the land he has conquered to define their relationship and expectations. The king may promise military protection for his new subjects in exchange for their loyalty, tribute, and taxes.Hesed was a word used to describe one’s commitment to keeping a covenant. That’s why some English translations of the word emphasize loyalty or faithfulness rather than just love. Today, most people associate love with ephemeral emotions, but hesed isn’t primarily a feeling. It is the determined will, the unwavering choice, to fulfill a sacred promise no matter what.In the ancient Near East, the importance of covenant loyalty was demonstrated in a gruesome ceremony known as “cutting the covenant.” Typically, animals were sacrificed by cutting them in half and separating the parts along the ground. Then the parties entering into the covenant walked between the dead animals vowing that if either of them breaks the covenant—if they do not demonstrate hesed—their fate would be the same as the animals.A covenant cutting is also recorded in the Old Testament but with a very important twist. In Genesis 15, the Lord makes a covenant with Abraham promising to give him descendants beyond number, and he vowed to give them the land where he had called Abraham. He then commanded Abraham to sacrifice a bull, a goat, a ram, a dove, and a pigeon. Abraham cut the animals in half and arranged them on the ground before he fell into a deep sleep. In a vision, he then saw a fire representing the presence of God pass between the dead animals.Unlike typical covenant-cutting ceremonies, Abraham did not walk between the animals. YHWH walked alone to demonstrate his divine character. As he would declare centuries later to Abraham’s descendants on Mount Sinai. “I am YHWH…abounding in hesed” (Exodus 34:7). By walking between the animals alone, the Lord was saying that even if Abraham and his family failed to uphold their part of the covenant, he would never fail to fulfill his. God’s hesed, his covenant loyalty, will not be shaken by our disloyalty because it is rooted in his character and not dependent on ours.So, how does this impact the way we read Psalm 136? The writer applies YHWH’s loyal covenant love to his actions toward Israel, including their deliverance from slavery in Egypt and their occupation of the Promised Land. But he says God’s covenant love is also seen in creation—the sun, moon, seas, and skies. It’s a tantalizing clue that YHWH’s care and concern is not limited to Isreal, but extends over all he has made. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 136:1-26 EXODUS 34:5-8 WEEKLY PRAYERAlcuin of York (735 – 804) Eternal Light, shine into our hearts, eternal Goodness, deliver us from evil, eternal Power, be our support, eternal Wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance, eternal Pity, have mercy upon us; that with all our heart and mind and soul and strength we may seek your face and be brought by your infinite mercy to your holy presence; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes highlights God’s call to joy and partnership in all circumstances:  

We are born with an inner fire. I believe that this fire is the God within. It is an unquenchable, divine fire. It warms us, encourages us, and occasionally asks us to dance.  

Suppose that at the entrance to heaven there is a scale—not a scale to weigh good and bad deeds—but a scale to measure joy. Suppose our passage into the next life will not be determined by the number of souls saved, sermons preached, or holiness pursued. Just joy.  

We’ve become very somber Christians in a very somber age. It’s not that we don’t have things to be concerned about. There are wars, natural disasters, deficits, broken relationships and viruses. But in the midst of this, we’re called to joy by a joyful God and a joyful Savior. Hierarchies have always been afraid of a dancing, joyful Jesus. They’re not so worried about the institutional Christ, but they fear this living, singing Jesus who can boogie, who sings all the way to Gethsemane, and tells jokes. Remember the one he told the Pharisees about the camel and the eye of the needle?  

No matter the circumstances, we’re called to joy. 

Holmes tells a story exemplifying the surprising joy that can be found in solidarity and struggle:   

A few years ago in December, I took a group of twelve seminarians of various races and denominations to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico…. In a migrant shelter, a small man comes in for soup. His name is Manuel. He tells us he’s crossing the desert into the US tonight. He has no work. He has no idea of how far it is or how deadly the desert is. He’s wearing a thin jacket. His feet are bare inside his thin sneakers. Seeing one member of our group serving him a steaming hot bowl of soup, he smiles. 

Someone notices the filthy bandages on his foot. Without a word, students kneel to wash and bandage his feet. They rub ointment and silently pray for his safety. They anoint this person, deemed to be the least in the kingdom, but whom God loves.  

Then Sam, a very big man, takes off his huge socks and hands them to him. Manuel’s eyes dance with joy as he pulls on Sam’s socks. In the circle we pray and bless one another for the last time. He goes into the desert loved by Jesus and saved a bit from the cold by Sam’s socks. In the silence that follows, we don’t bother to debate the issue of illegal immigration or whether temporary work permits would solve the problem at the border. All we can see in our mind’s eye are Sam’s socks, white and worn and offered at the right time. We don’t know if Manuel will make it into the US…. We do know that whatever happens, his feet will be warm and that’s as good as a dance in the world.  

Brightness and Clarity

There is some inexplicable connection between suffering and joy. One of the greatest graces of this existence is that we are able to experience joy in the midst of suffering. We might not be able to experience happiness. You can’t in the midst of suffering, but there can be moments of great joy in the midst of the worst suffering. I take that to reveal that these two things are raveled up in ways that we don’t understand, but which are essential to our existence. 
—Christian Wiman, Everything Belongs podcast 

In conversation with CAC staff members Mike Petrow and Paul Swanson, Father Richard Rohr shares his deepening understanding of the relationship between tragedy, tears, and joy: 

I keep being more and more convinced that tears are an appropriate response to reality. I think they always will be, yet I don’t equate that with modern depression or cynicism. It’s the acceptance of what we cannot change that normally makes people cry: He’s dead forever; I’m never getting well; the church I love has never been perfect. The part of us that can surrender to that reality is somehow bright. Remember, God is always present in reality as it is, not merely as it should be. When we meet people who can smile in the presence of sadness, there’s a brightness about them—a clarity, a truth, and a freedom. 

Mike Petrow shares wisdom from his spiritual director that he received during a time of deep grief: 

She said, “The people I’ve known, the great teachers, the great mystics who’ve suffered and worked their way through it, find that the suffering carves a space out in your heart. In that wide open space, you can feel not only your pain but the pain of others and the pain of the world.” You are quick to tears for the rest of your life. “But,” she said, “that same space also holds joy. The people I know who’ve really faced suffering and tragedy are the quickest to tears, but also the quickest to laughter, and the quickest to joy.”  

Richard explores how facing the reality of our individual pain opens us to carrying the pain of others as well:  

The act of solidarity somehow lessens the pain. We’re able to say, “I choose to carry it with you.” It’s really an alchemy. It lives differently in our hearts. We don’t love it, but we have the grace to tolerate it. Not with resistance, but with yes. That doesn’t come in a moment. It comes with time and maturity.  

I experience this brightness as a new clarity. The light is illuminating it better. That’s what sadness often offers us: a new clarity about the tragic sense of life. It’s what Jesus had to accept on the cross—the utterly tragic sense of life. It’s not inappropriate—it’s clarifying, it’s bright.

Learning from the Mystics: Jesus of Nazareth

Quote of the Week: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” – John 14:18-20 Reflection It may seem odd to think of Jesus as a mystic, but a mystic is actually someone who experientially knows the deep mysteries of God.  A mystic is someone who bows in reverence to the mystery that is beyond human language and also seeks to dissolve all the us/them, either/or, subject/object split. Ever since the Enlightenment, western minds have fallen into dualistic thinking even more so as a default.  One could also say that people are applauded for being able to articulate nuances and differences between one thing and another. The only problem is that everything is related, or in relationship with everything else, and Jesus sees reality in this way. Modern science is even recognizing the interrelationship of all things.  Nothing can exist without influencing or being influenced by other things. There is nothing that is not already in relationship with everything else. This includes you.  Nothing can separate you from the love of God.  Relationships with God will not be impeded, destroyed, or obstructed.  The love of God will not allow it in the end.  God will not leave us as orphans, as destitute, as without.  And this is how a mystic sees, not things in parts, but things in wholes.  Not things in separateness, but things in relationship.  Not as objects and subjects, but as subjects and subjects. This mystery is also shown in Ephesians 1, that “all things will be gathered up under the headship of Christ.”  All things, in their wholeness, will be gathered up into the oneness of God.  (“Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God is One.”)  Jesus was inviting us into this mystery from the start, the only problem is that we assume that the starting point is disconnection, and therefore the ending point is a possibility of disconnection as well. However, Jesus experientially knows the deep mystery of God that we are in Christ and Christ is in God and God is in us… if only we could wake up to the reality that all things are already related to God. Prayer  Lord, help us to remember that we are never alone.  You will not leave us or forsake us.  You will not leave us as orphans.  Help us to settle into the mystery that we are already in you and you are already in us, that all things are held together in you.  It is easy to forget, to dismiss, to distrust this reality so help us to have open eyes and open hearts to this mutual indwelling and live from that deep reality.  Amen.

Richard Rohr names the passing on of love as the great gift of Francis of Assisi: 

Contemplative minds and hearts such as those of Francis and Clare are alone prepared to hand on the Great Mystery from age to age and from person to person. The utilitarian and calculating mind distorts the message at its core. The contemplative, nondual mind inherently creates a great “communion of saints,” which is so obviously scattered, hidden, and amorphous that no one can say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” but instead it is always “among you” (Luke 17:21)—invisible and uninteresting to most, but obvious and ecstatic to those who seek (see Matthew 22:14).  

From the Trinity to Jesus, the energetic movement of receiving and giving Love begins. Then, from Jesus to many—Francis and Clare, Bonaventure and Scotus, Thérèse of Lisieux, Teilhard de Chardin, Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Pope Francis, and now we ourselves—we are all part of this one great parade, “partners in God’s triumphal procession,” as Paul calls it, “spreading the knowledge of God like a sweet smell everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14), much more a transmission of authentic life and love than of mere ideas or doctrines.  

It is remarkable to know that findings about mirror neurons almost prove that this energetic movement is the case, even physiologically and interpersonally. [1] It is not just pious poetry. If we have never received a gaze of love, we do not even have the neural ability to hand it on. We cannot really imagine love, much less pass it on, until we have accepted that someone—God, another person, or even an animal—could fully accept us as we are.  

Human history is one giant wave of unearned grace, and each of us is now another wave crashing onto the sands of time, edged forward by the many waves behind us. We are fully loved and adopted children in God’s one eternal family which is open to all. To accept such an objective truth is the best and deepest understanding of how the Risen Christ spreads his forgiving heart through history. It is Love that we are passing from age to age—even the very love of God.  

Our only holiness is by participation and surrender to the Body of Love, and not by any private performance. This is the joining of hands from generation to generation that still can—and will—change the world, because Love is One, and this Love is either shared and passed on or it is not the Great Love at all. The One Love is always eager, and, in fact, such eagerness is precisely the giveaway that we are dealing with something divine and eternal.  

Francis’ revolution is still in process, and it cannot fail, because it is nothing more or less than the certain unfolding of Love itself, which, as Paul declares, “never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8). 

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I am the Creator of Heaven and Earth; Lord of all that is and all that will ever be. Although I am unimaginably vast, I choose to dwell within you, permeating you with My Presence. Only in the spirit realm could Someone so infinitely great live within someone so very small. Be awed by the Power and the Glory of My Spirit within you!
     Though the Holy Spirit is infinite, He deigns to be your Helper. He is always ready to offer assistance; all you need to do is ask. When the path before you looks easy and straightforward, you may be tempted to go it alone instead of relying on Me. This is when you are in the greatest danger of stumbling. Ask My Spirit to help you as you go each step of the way. Never neglect this glorious source of strength within you.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

John 14:16-17 (NLT)
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.

Additional insight regarding John 14:15,16: Jesus was soon going to leave the disciples, but he would remain with them. How could this be? The Advocate – the Spirit of God himself – would come after Jesus was gone to care for and guide the disciples. The regenerating power of the Spirit came on the disciples just before Jesus’ ascension (John 20:22), and the Spirit was poured out on all the believers at Pentecost (Acts 2), shortly after Jesus ascended to heaven. The Holy Spirit is the very presence of God within us and all believers, helping us live as God wants and building Christ’s church on earth. By faith, we can appropriate the Spirit’s power each day.

Additional insight regarding John 14:16: The word translated “Advocate” combines the ideas of comfort and counsel. The word could also be translated as Comforter, Encourager, or Counselor. The Holy Spirit is a powerful person on our side, working for and with us.

Additional insight regarding John 14:17: The following chapters teach these truths about the Holy Spirit. Many people are unaware of the Holy Spirit’s activities, but to those who hear Christ’s words and understand the Spirit’s power, the Spirit gives a whole new way to look at life. The Holy Spirit will never leave us (14:14); the world at large cannot receive him (14:17); he lives with us and in us (14:17); he teaches us (14:26); he reminds us of Jesus’ words (14:26; 15:26); he convinces us of sin, shows us God’s righteousness, and announces God’s judgements on evil (16:8); he guides us into truth and gives insight into future events (16:13); he brings glory to Christ (16:14).

John 16:7 (NLT)
7 But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you.
Additional insight regarding John 16:7: Unless Jesus did what he came to do, there would be no Good News. If he did not die, he could not remove our sins; he could not rise again and defeat death. If he did not go back to the Father, the Holy Spirit would not come. Christ’s presence on earth was limited to one place at a time. His leaving meant he could be present to the whole world through the Holy Spirit.

Zechariah 4:6 (NLT)
6 Then he said to me, “This is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel: It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
Additional insight regarding Zechariah 4:6: Many people believe that to survive in this world a person must be tough, strong, unbending, and harsh. But God says, “Not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit.” The keywords are “by my Spirit.” It is only through God’s Spirit that anything of lasting value is accomplished. The returned exiles were indeed weak – harassed by their enemies, tired, discouraged, and poor. But actually, they had God on their side! As you live for God, determine not to trust in your own strength or abilities. Instead, depend on God and work in the power of his Spirit! (See also Hosea 1:7: “But I will show love to the people of Judah. I will free them from their enemies—not with weapons and armies or horses and charioteers, but by my power as the Lord their God.”)