Father Richard Rohr describes how nature reflects and reveals the wisdom and presence of the Divine:  

In the backyard of our Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, a massive 150-year-old Rio Grande cottonwood tree spreads its gnarled limbs over the lawn. An arborist once told us that the tree might have a mutation that causes the huge trunks to make such circuitous turns and twists. One wonders how it stands so firmly, yet the cottonwood is easily the finest work of art that we have at the Center, and its asymmetrical beauty makes it a perfect specimen for one of our organization’s core messages: Divine perfection is precisely the ability to include what seems like imperfection. Before we come inside to pray, work, or teach any theology, its giant presence has already spoken a silent sermon over us.  

Have you ever had an encounter like this in nature? Perhaps for you, it occurred at a lake or by the seashore, hiking in the mountains, in a garden listening to a mourning dove, even at a busy street corner. I am convinced that when received, such innate theology grows us, expands us, and enlightens us almost effortlessly. All other God talk seems artificial and heady in comparison.  

Indigenous religions largely understand this, as do the Scriptures (see Psalms 98, 104, 148, or Daniel 3:57–82 [1]). In Job 12:7–10, and most of Job 38–39, YHWH praises strange animals and elements for their inherently available wisdom—the “pent up sea,” the “wild ass,” the “ostrich’s wing”—reminding humans that we’re part of a much greater ecosystem, which offers lessons in all directions.   

God is not bound by the human presumption that we are the center of everything, and creation did not actually demand or need Jesus (or us, for that matter) to confer additional sacredness upon it. From the first moment of the Big Bang, nature was revealing the glory and goodness of the Divine Presence. Jesus came to live in its midst, and enjoy life in all its natural variations, and thus be our model and exemplar. Jesus is the gift that honored the gift, we might say.  

Strangely, many Christians today limit God’s provident care to humans, and very few of them at that. How different we are from Jesus, who extended the divine generosity to sparrows, lilies, ravens, donkeys, the grasses of the fields (Luke 12:24, 27–28). No stingy God here! But what stinginess on our side made us limit God’s concern—even eternal concern—to just ourselves? If God chooses and doles out care, we are always insecure and unsure whether we’re among the lucky recipients. Yet once we become  aware of the generous, creative Presence that exists in all things by their very nature, we can honor the Indwelling Spirit as the inner Source of all dignity and worthiness. Dignity is not doled out to the supposedly worthy; it grounds the inherent worthiness of things in their very nature and existence.  

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God is Closer Than You Think 

how to notice the Spirit’s movements

CHRIS EW GREEN APR 29

Someone sent me this question the other day: 

“When someone is searching for connection with God but doesn’t know that God is already walking with them, trying to connect in powerful ways they’re not open to—how do you guide them into opening themselves to God?”

Here’s the first thing to understand: we can’t make ourselves—or anyone else—open to God, not by any direct effort of will. All we can do is allow, invite, welcome, permit. In truth, God’s presence often appears most clearly when we’ve stopped striving, when we’ve given up trying to make anything happen. It’s like remembering a word that’s stuck on the tip of your tongue—the harder you chase it, the more it eludes you. Only when you let go does it surface. Remember this: “I am found by those who do not seek me” is as true as “seek and you shall find,” so we do not need to fret. God will make himself known. All in good time. 

That said, here’s how I’d try to help if someone came to me wanting to be open to God, but simply unsure how to be: Think back to those moments when goodness caught you by surprise. You know the moments I mean—something happened that you couldn’t have planned or made happen for yourself but suddenly you were made aware of how deeply known and loved you are. Remember moments when you found yourself thrilled to be alive, glad that this is your life. These are the clearest signposts of God’s presence, moments when the fabric of ordinary life become thin enough for us to catch a glimpse of what’s always there, holding everything together. 

You may struggle to identify these moments in your own life. If so, don’t worry. Sometimes it’s easier to spot God moving in someone else’s life—or to spot what seems to be a lack of movement from God. Maybe you’ve encountered something so gorgeous it left you aching and speechless, or a kindness so pure it felt like light itself. Maybe you’ve witnessed someone coming fully alive, seen them truly beside themselves with joy? Or perhaps you’ve been stopped in your tracks by suffering—a moment when your heart broke open and you knew, without doubt, that this pain mattered infinitely and you found yourself grieved at the absence of God. All of these stirrings in you are created by the passing of God, the way a curtain stirs when the wind comes through an open window. 

When it comes down to it, there are two particular stirrings of the heart that I think best signal God’s work—compassion that draws us out of our self-focus toward others’ suffering, and gratitude that opens our eyes to the countless gifts we’ve received. These aren’t just feelings, mind you. They’re more like practices, in fact, ways of engaging with the world that, though rooted in emotion, reshape how we live. Like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, they prepare the way for meeting Jesus, bringing down mountains of pretension and raising up valleys of despair so that our path to God runs level and straight.

Compassion breaks open the heart, sensitizing us to reality in and around us. And thanksgiving clears the air, driving back the darkness and the powers of evil that try cloud our minds and to break our spirit. When we name what we’re grateful for, even if we do not couch it in explicitly theological terms, we possess our souls in patience, refusing to bow to doubt, fear, intimidation, despair. And that does not fail to work good in us. Like turning on the lights in a dark house, room by room, every spoken gratitude pushes back shadow, helps us breathe easier, lets us see more clearly, frees us to move. 

God works through other emotions too, of course, though they’re trickier to navigate. Take guilt, for instance—not the crushing shame that makes us want to hide, but the gentle conviction that makes us aware of how what we’ve done or left undone has harmed others, even slightly, making it harder for them to sleep well at night, to enjoy the good things in life, to dwell in the joy of the Lord, and to do right for those in their life who need them most. The same goes for anger—especially anger on behalf of the most vulnerable, those who have been wronged by people who are actually responsible for protecting the vulnerable and weak. Sorting out the difference between righteous anger and unrighteous anger, between good guilt and bad guilt is itself a work of the Spirit, and the work of doing sorting makes us more truthful. And the more truthful we are, the purer our hearts are and the readier we are for God to “show up” in our lives.

Learning to read these signals takes time and practice. It’s like learning a new language—and crucially, it’s not one we can learn alone. Some works of God we simply cannot spot in ourselves; we need others to witness it for us, to midwife our recognition. This is part of why we need to belong to a community of faith. Sometimes, we can only see God through our neighbor’s eyes. As we practice this discipline of recognition together, helping each other notice and name God’s movements, we begin to realize that God is already there in every center and circumference of our lives—and has always been there, even when we were not ready to make contact, speaking life.

Which brings me back to that original question about guiding someone into being open to God. As I said at the start, we can’t force this opening—in ourselves or anyone else. And here’s the beautiful thing: we never need to. If they want to be guided, even slightly, that desire itself is proof that God is already at work in them, already leading them. Our task is simply to help them notice what’s already happening, to name the ways God is already moving in their lives. And the very fact that we are there, desiring this good for them, is a sign to them as well as to us that God has been at work in secret for a very long time before anyone noticed. 

Richard Rohr with CAC’s Daily Meditation Team, Mark Longhurst (left) and Ali Kirkpatrick (right).

SUPPORT THIS WORK

Dear CO Few,

As I sit here in my 83^rd year, I’m delightfully surprised I am still writing to you! God has given me more time and energy than I could ever have hoped for. Lately, I’ve been reflecting—sometimes even dreaming at night—about my time in college, my years intensely studying theology, and how earnest yet ego-driven I was to get ordained and become a priest. But I am immensely grateful for how God has used it all. The more I reflect, the more I think, “God, you were so gracious and patient with me! I didn’t always get it right, but you still used me.” And that is how it is for you and everyone else as well. God uses us in ways that we cannot possibly imagine, and often in spite of ourselves.  

Throughout all these years I’ve tried to pass my words through three gates: “Is it true? Is it loving? Is it necessary?” Because we must be sustained by a sense of what we are for, and not just what we are against. The contemplative path isn’t primarily about learning—it’s about living. Through contemplation, we begin to see differently, to love more deeply, and to act with courage. Spreading this message seems to be needed now more than ever, and with your support, that is exactly what we will do. 

Twice per year, we pause and ask for your financial support. If you have been impacted by the CAC’s programs, including our Daily Meditations, please consider donating. We appreciate every gift, regardless of the amount.

One of my greatest joys is to continue seeing the ripples of loving action that this CAC community and our Daily Meditations make around the world. Please read the letter below from CAC’s Executive Director Michael Poffenberger who we recently celebrated for his tenth anniversary with CAC. Tomorrow, the Daily Meditations will continue exploring the theme of “Seeing Nature Through New Eyes.”  

Peace and Every Good, 

Richard Rohr, OFM

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Learning from the Mystics: Maximus the Confessor

Quote of the Week:  “We are his members and his body, and the fullness of Christ of God who fills all things in every way according to the plan hidden in God the Father before the ages.  And we are being recapitulated in him through his Son our Lord Jesus the Christ of God.” – Ambiguum 7. Reflection  Maximus the Confessor was a fascinating person from history.  He was nearly martyred for his faith but has come to be known as one of the more profound and enigmatic writers of the church. As a Greek-speaking and writing theologian, this meant that he had a particular perspective that he was coming from.  He was not learning from the Bible through a secondary language, he was learning from the New Testament as a primary source, directly!  Believe it or not, the famous Augustine of Hippo only read the Bible and wrote about it in Latin.  This may not seem as though it is a major issue, but in reality, it means that Maximus might have thought closer to the New Testament writers than Augustine!  In Philippians 2:5-11, we have the famous hymn which Paul wrote in his letter. “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:Who, being in the very nature God,did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;rather, he made himself nothingby taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.And being found in appearance as a man,he humbled himselfby becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!Therefore God exalted him to the highest placeand gave him the name that is above every name,that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow,in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue openly and joyfully profess that Jesus Christ is Lord,to the Glory of God the Father.”  When we say that Jesus “emptied” Himself, it is using a famous Greek word, “kenosis.”  It describes the process of pouring out.  This means that the English translation here is quite good! However, if God is pouring Himself out, what is God pouring Himself out into? Well, the letter to the Ephesians highlights this mystery as does several other letters from the apostle Paul. In other writings from Paul, he writes about God “filling” things up.  The Greek word here is “plerosis.”  It means to “fill” something.  For Maximus the Confessor, this is a primary mystery of the cosmos, God “filling all things in every way.”  You, me, the trees, the skies, the rivers, our neighbors, the movie theater, Easter candy, sunrises, and sunsets.  All things… And, for Maximus the Confessor, all things means all things! This means that the only thing missing is our perception, appreciation, and wonder at this mystery of God “filling all things in every way.”   The fact that we cannot see it or have difficulty believing it does not make it untrue.  In reality, if only we had the spiritual eyes to see this reality, it would change the way we do practically everything! May we have the eyes to see and the faith to apprehend God “filling all things in every way!” Prayer  Heavenly Father, who has chosen to self-reveal in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, by Your Spirit help us to apprehend this mystery… That you have chosen to pour Yourself out, that You then fill all things!  This is a mystery beyond our comprehension but grant us the eyes to see this truth in the reality around us!  Amen and amen!

Life Overview:  Who is He:  Maximus of Constatinople (also known as Maximus the Confessor)  When:  Born in Haspin, Israel and died on August 13th, 662AD.  Why He is Important:  Maximus was a theologian that still worked within the Greek of the New Testament.  At the time, there was a growing divide between the Greek speaking theologians and the Latin speaking theologians.  Maximus is considered an underrated Greek speaking theologian.  Most Known For:  Although he was not a martyr, he died shortly after refusing to recant his Christian beliefs and therefore had his hand cut off (so he could not write anymore) and his tongue cut out (so he could not teach anymore).  Hence, the moniker, ‘the Confessor.”  During his life he was tried as a heretic, but later cleared and venerated as a saint for holding so devoutly to the Chalcedonian Creed.. Notable Works to Check Out: On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus ChristOn the Ecclesiological MystagogyTwo Hundred Chapters on Theology  Books About Maximus the Confessor:The Whole Mystery of Christ by Jordan Daniel WoodCosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor by Hans Urs von Balthasar

In season seven of the podcast Learning How to See, Brian McLaren and guests explore how different ways of relating to nature can inspire new approaches to reality. McLaren begins:   

We see the natural world from different vantage points. For example, a real estate developer might look at a beautiful landscape and think, “Wow, we could make a road, build some housing, and dam this creek. We could create an incredible housing development with a lake. It would be worth a fortune.” A paper manufacturer sees a forested mountainside and thinks about how much lumber and paper he could make from those trees and how much return on investment he could get for leasing that mountainside. Meanwhile, an angler would see in that view a trout stream coming down the mountainside that he’d like to protect. An ecologist might see an endangered species of fish that needs to be preserved. A theologian, depending on his or her background, might see theological justifications for selling that land to the real estate developer or manufacturer, or for preserving it with the angler and ecologist.  

Every tree, every meadow, every stream, every wave rolling in on the beach … each of us sees them with different vision. We bring our own different backgrounds, perspectives, needs, interests, desires, and problems to whatever we see. [1] 

McLaren uses the language of friendship and respect to describe his own relationship with nature:  

Every night we have a little herd of iguanas on our roof, including about a five-foot-long iguana that we’ve nicknamed T-Rex—he’s big, male, and a bright orange color. He’s gotten used to me and I’ve gotten used to him. Of course, if I were to get too close, he would whack me with his tail. But we have a respectful relationship, similarly with a gopher tortoise that has dug its burrow outside my front sidewalk, and some burrowing owls that live in the neighborhood. 

I have to respect their space. To me, this kind of respecting of space is a part of friendship. We have a term for people who don’t respect boundaries: We call them narcissists. They’re always impeding and crossing boundaries to take advantage of us. We humans tend to have a narcissistic relationship with our fellow creatures, but there’s an option for generous friendship that creates a kind of reverence, respect, and enjoyment.  

I think this is one of our real struggles with the natural world, of which we are a part. We’re so used to being in control of things that when the natural world demands legitimate respect from us, we think it’s being hostile. This is part of our current life curriculum as human beings—to learn appropriate respect after centuries and centuries of domination. It’s parallel to what people with privilege need to learn—whether it’s white privilege, male privilege, or the privilege of the rich. Privileged people are so used to acting in domineering ways that when you ask them to show proper respect, they feel they’re being deprived or persecuted. But this respect is something we need and it’s a matter of survival right now for us to learn it.

=======================

Flourishing Is Mutual

If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the “Sun” of a human gift economy, the source that constantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love.
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry 

Reflecting on the abundant Juneberries she has been gifted from a nearby tree, Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer considers the gift economy of natural processes:  

This pail of Juneberries represents hundreds of gift exchanges that led up to my blue-stained fingers: the Maples who gave their leaves to the soil, the countless invertebrates and microbes who exchanged nutrients and energy to build the humus in which a Serviceberry seed could take root, the Cedar Waxwing who dropped the seed, the sun, the rain, the early spring flies who pollinated the flowers, the farmer who wielded the shovel to tenderly settle the seedlings. They are all parts of the gift exchange by which everyone gets what they need.  

Many Indigenous Peoples, including my Anishinaabe relatives and my Haudenosaunee neighbors, inherit what is known as “a culture of gratitude,” where lifeways are organized around recognition and responsibility for earthly gifts, both ceremonial and pragmatic. Our oldest teaching stories remind us that failure to show gratitude dishonors the gift and brings serious consequences. 

Receiving gifts naturally leads to gratitude and ongoing generosity: 

Enumerating the gifts you’ve received creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you already have what you need. Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more…. Ecopsychologists have shown that the practice of gratitude puts brakes on hyper-consumption. The relationships nurtured by gift thinking diminish our sense of scarcity and want. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver…

If our first response to the receipt of gifts is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return. What could I give these plants in return for their generosity? I could return the gift with a direct response, like weeding or bringing water or offering a song of thanks that sends appreciation out on the wind. I could make habitat for the solitary bees that fertilized those fruits. Or maybe I could take indirect action, like donating to my local land trust so that more habitat for the gift givers will be saved, speaking at a public hearing on land use, or making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity. I could reduce my carbon footprint, vote on the side of healthy land, advocate for farmland preservation, change my diet, hang my laundry in the sunshine. We live in a time when every choice matters.  

Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. Can we imagine a human economy with a currency which emulates the flow from Mother Earth? A currency of gifts?  

---

John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

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After the Worst Has Happened
by Stephanie Duncan Smith
from Even After Everything

Holy Week holds the highest of highs and lowest of lows on the spectrum of human emotion. It holds shouts of hosanna, the hope of the people, the conspiring of political powers, breaking bread among friends, blood money, midnight prayers, the final exhale of God as it gives way to earthquakes, and the — and then, two of the most beautiful words I know — it holds stones rolled back, death denied, the undoing of entropy. 

After so much has happened, we need a way to shake off all that adrenaline and signal to our bodies that we are safe now. I have come to see the Paschal cycle as its own stress cycle, and we need a way to complete it.

Completing our stress cycle is a sacred act. This is the very invitation I see pulsing at the heart of the most beautiful benediction I know, when the resurrected Christ appeared to his friends and said, “Peace be with you.” 

After everything, these are the four words that hold the world. Peace is the only power capable of breaking the brutal hold of fight, flight, freeze. Peace is the bear hug, the belly laugh, the huge, sweeping exhale capable of ushering our bodies from shock into divine shelter. 

Only one who has experienced death can speak this peace honestly, and as such, the peace of Christ is a peace that will never overpromise, a peace we can trust with the full weight of our being. This peace is a person whose voice has cracked, whose memory holds complex trauma, and whose body bears scars, and his promise is not safety, but presence: Love is with us through the Paschal cycle, the stress cycle, the circle of time and all it might hold. 

Peace be with you implies a parallel benediction: Vigilance be released from you. In receiving Christ’s peace, we are freed to release our high-alert adrenaline and our cortisol-pumping crisis response. In the light of the resurrection, our nervous system can close its stress loop. We can let all that pent-up tension give way to the exhale of relief, and even laughter. 

Listen closely: Can you hear the laughter of the holy? Eastertide is vibrating with the sonic joy of the Trinity, and you are invited to join the full-throated laughter of God. Yes, the scars are real, but so are the endorphins rushing through your vital systems now as you share in the divine joke. 

Maybe Holy Week can be for us a space to name our lions: all that we have endured, all the shock it has brought to our vital systems. This is witnessed and validated by a God who suffers with us, in the solidarity of radical empathy. 

And maybe Eastertide can be for us the practice of exhale: releasing all that has held us in high alert, so the body and soul might indeed receive the peace of Christ. 

Seeing Nature Differently

In season seven of the podcast Learning How to See, Brian McLaren and guests explore how different ways of relating to nature can inspire new approaches to reality. McLaren begins:   

We see the natural world from different vantage points. For example, a real estate developer might look at a beautiful landscape and think, “Wow, we could make a road, build some housing, and dam this creek. We could create an incredible housing development with a lake. It would be worth a fortune.” A paper manufacturer sees a forested mountainside and thinks about how much lumber and paper he could make from those trees and how much return on investment he could get for leasing that mountainside. Meanwhile, an angler would see in that view a trout stream coming down the mountainside that he’d like to protect. An ecologist might see an endangered species of fish that needs to be preserved. A theologian, depending on his or her background, might see theological justifications for selling that land to the real estate developer or manufacturer, or for preserving it with the angler and ecologist.  

Every tree, every meadow, every stream, every wave rolling in on the beach … each of us sees them with different vision. We bring our own different backgrounds, perspectives, needs, interests, desires, and problems to whatever we see. [1] 

McLaren uses the language of friendship and respect to describe his own relationship with nature:  

Every night we have a little herd of iguanas on our roof, including about a five-foot-long iguana that we’ve nicknamed T-Rex—he’s big, male, and a bright orange color. He’s gotten used to me and I’ve gotten used to him. Of course, if I were to get too close, he would whack me with his tail. But we have a respectful relationship, similarly with a gopher tortoise that has dug its burrow outside my front sidewalk, and some burrowing owls that live in the neighborhood. 

I have to respect their space. To me, this kind of respecting of space is a part of friendship. We have a term for people who don’t respect boundaries: We call them narcissists. They’re always impeding and crossing boundaries to take advantage of us. We humans tend to have a narcissistic relationship with our fellow creatures, but there’s an option for generous friendship that creates a kind of reverence, respect, and enjoyment.  

I think this is one of our real struggles with the natural world, of which we are a part. We’re so used to being in control of things that when the natural world demands legitimate respect from us, we think it’s being hostile. This is part of our current life curriculum as human beings—to learn appropriate respect after centuries and centuries of domination. It’s parallel to what people with privilege need to learn—whether it’s white privilege, male privilege, or the privilege of the rich. Privileged people are so used to acting in domineering ways that when you ask them to show proper respect, they feel they’re being deprived or persecuted. But this respect is something we need and it’s a matter of survival right now for us to learn it.

---

John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

---

Flourishing Is Mutual

If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the “Sun” of a human gift economy, the source that constantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love.
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry 

Reflecting on the abundant Juneberries she has been gifted from a nearby tree, Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer considers the gift economy of natural processes:  

This pail of Juneberries represents hundreds of gift exchanges that led up to my blue-stained fingers: the Maples who gave their leaves to the soil, the countless invertebrates and microbes who exchanged nutrients and energy to build the humus in which a Serviceberry seed could take root, the Cedar Waxwing who dropped the seed, the sun, the rain, the early spring flies who pollinated the flowers, the farmer who wielded the shovel to tenderly settle the seedlings. They are all parts of the gift exchange by which everyone gets what they need.  

Many Indigenous Peoples, including my Anishinaabe relatives and my Haudenosaunee neighbors, inherit what is known as “a culture of gratitude,” where lifeways are organized around recognition and responsibility for earthly gifts, both ceremonial and pragmatic. Our oldest teaching stories remind us that failure to show gratitude dishonors the gift and brings serious consequences. 

Receiving gifts naturally leads to gratitude and ongoing generosity: 

Enumerating the gifts you’ve received creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you already have what you need. Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more…. Ecopsychologists have shown that the practice of gratitude puts brakes on hyper-consumption. The relationships nurtured by gift thinking diminish our sense of scarcity and want. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver…

If our first response to the receipt of gifts is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return. What could I give these plants in return for their generosity? I could return the gift with a direct response, like weeding or bringing water or offering a song of thanks that sends appreciation out on the wind. I could make habitat for the solitary bees that fertilized those fruits. Or maybe I could take indirect action, like donating to my local land trust so that more habitat for the gift givers will be saved, speaking at a public hearing on land use, or making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity. I could reduce my carbon footprint, vote on the side of healthy land, advocate for farmland preservation, change my diet, hang my laundry in the sunshine. We live in a time when every choice matters.  

Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. Can we imagine a human economy with a currency which emulates the flow from Mother Earth? A currency of gifts?  

---

---

After the Worst Has Happened
by Stephanie Duncan Smith
from Even After Everything

Holy Week holds the highest of highs and lowest of lows on the spectrum of human emotion. It holds shouts of hosanna, the hope of the people, the conspiring of political powers, breaking bread among friends, blood money, midnight prayers, the final exhale of God as it gives way to earthquakes, and the — and then, two of the most beautiful words I know — it holds stones rolled back, death denied, the undoing of entropy. 

After so much has happened, we need a way to shake off all that adrenaline and signal to our bodies that we are safe now. I have come to see the Paschal cycle as its own stress cycle, and we need a way to complete it.

Completing our stress cycle is a sacred act. This is the very invitation I see pulsing at the heart of the most beautiful benediction I know, when the resurrected Christ appeared to his friends and said, “Peace be with you.” 

After everything, these are the four words that hold the world. Peace is the only power capable of breaking the brutal hold of fight, flight, freeze. Peace is the bear hug, the belly laugh, the huge, sweeping exhale capable of ushering our bodies from shock into divine shelter. 

Only one who has experienced death can speak this peace honestly, and as such, the peace of Christ is a peace that will never overpromise, a peace we can trust with the full weight of our being. This peace is a person whose voice has cracked, whose memory holds complex trauma, and whose body bears scars, and his promise is not safety, but presence: Love is with us through the Paschal cycle, the stress cycle, the circle of time and all it might hold. 

Peace be with you implies a parallel benediction: Vigilance be released from you. In receiving Christ’s peace, we are freed to release our high-alert adrenaline and our cortisol-pumping crisis response. In the light of the resurrection, our nervous system can close its stress loop. We can let all that pent-up tension give way to the exhale of relief, and even laughter. 

Listen closely: Can you hear the laughter of the holy? Eastertide is vibrating with the sonic joy of the Trinity, and you are invited to join the full-throated laughter of God. Yes, the scars are real, but so are the endorphins rushing through your vital systems now as you share in the divine joke. 

Maybe Holy Week can be for us a space to name our lions: all that we have endured, all the shock it has brought to our vital systems. This is witnessed and validated by a God who suffers with us, in the solidarity of radical empathy. 

And maybe Eastertide can be for us the practice of exhale: releasing all that has held us in high alert, so the body and soul might indeed receive the peace of Christ. 

An Ongoing Celebration

Friday, April 25, 2025

CAC Dean of Faculty Brian McLaren encourages us to make Easter an expansive celebration of resurrection.  

What might happen if every Easter we celebrated the resurrection not merely as the resuscitation of a single corpse nearly two millennia ago, but more—as the ongoing resurrection of all humanity through Christ? Easter could be the annual affirmation of our ongoing resurrection from violence to peace, from fear to faith, from hostility to love, from a culture of consumption to a culture of stewardship and generosity … and in all these ways and more, from death to life.

What if our celebration of Easter was so radical in its meaning that it tempted tyrants and dictators everywhere to make it illegal, because it represents the ultimate scandal: an annual call for creative and peaceful insurrection against all status quos based on fear, hostility, exclusion, and violence? What if we never stopped making Easter claims about Jesus in AD 33, but always continued by making Easter claims on us today declaring that now is the time to be raised from the deadness of fear, hostility, exclusion, and violence to walk in what Paul called “newness of life”?

What if Easter was about our ongoing resurrection “in Christ”—in a new humanity marked by a strong-benevolent identity as Christ-embodying peacemakers, enemy lovers, offense forgivers, boundary crossers, and movement builders? What kind of character would this kind of liturgical year form in us? How might the world be changed because of it? [1] 

Retired Episcopal bishop and Choctaw citizen Steven Charleston offers this celebratory song for the coming of new light and new hope:  

Rise up, faithful friends. Wake up, sleepers in the shadows. Wake up to see bright banners on your horizon. Wake up to see your redemption coming to you, the answer to so many of your prayers, the fulfillment of your dream from long ago. Rise up, faithful friends, to shout the good news to the morning sun: justice has arrived at last, mercy has returned, love has won the day. Rise up, good people of many lands, for this is the moment of change, the time when hope starts to be real and truth begins to speak to every courageous heart. Wake up, rise up, and rejoice! [2] 

McLaren imagines the impact of the ongoing recognition that we meet the risen Christ in all we encounter:  

I can imagine Easter opening a fifty-day period during which we constantly celebrate newness, freedom, change, and growth. As we would retell each year the story of the risen Christ appearing in the stranger on the Emmaus Road, so part of every Easter season for us would mean meeting and inviting to our tables strangers, aliens, refugees, people of other religions or no religion at all, to welcome them as we would Christ, and to expect to meet Christ in them. [3]  

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

Grace and Peace, All! First off, let me begin by stating the obvious: I am not formally a Catholic.  I was, however, raised Lutheran, and that means that I have many Catholic tendencies.  Liturgy has a high value for me, as does the Church calendar, and the place of a pastor or priest as an archetypal stand-in and representative of Christ.   Over the years, I have studied many aspects of Catholicism and have been deeply enriched by learning from that tradition. That said, this past Monday morning, I read the news headlines that Pope Francis had passed away.  I was surprised by how sad I was for the rest of the morning as I reflected on his character and leadership aspects that I appreciated.  As a figure who has taken a vow of poverty, Pope Francis did not do the usual pomp and circumstance expected of a Pope.   He often snuck out of the Vatican to give money to the poor while dressed in regular clothes.  He only slept in the guest house rather than the normal Papal residence. Although he was a Jesuit, I think he stayed close to the life of his namesake, Francis of Assisi. This week’s five quotes are all from Pope Francis, the first Spanish-speaking Pope in hundreds of years and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. I hope you find his words challenging and inspiring. As always, thank you for reading!

(In 2013, Pope Francis embraced and blessed a man suffering from neurofibromatosis in front of the man’s mother, an act echoing St. Francis of Assisi stopping to bless the lepers.)1.”It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help… If I say I am Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.”- Pope Francis The Parable of the Good Samaritan was scandalous when Jesus first taught it, and it continues to be a scandalous now. At a time in human history when we are being pulled back into tribal affiliations while being invited into a larger narrative of solidarity, the Parable of the Good Samaritan points us in a particular direction. Jesus paints the Samaritan, a religious and racial outsider to the first-century Pharisees, as the story’s hero. He encounters a victim of circumstance and devotes his time, energy, and money to caring for the person. The striking thing is that the religious leaders of the day passed the poor man on the other side of the road because they failed to recognize that compassion and love are the higher laws. Since then, the Samaritan has become a symbol or archetype for the person with compassion for the outsider. This same person is also willing to throw religious categories to the wind to help others, thereby actually fulfilling the Spirit of the Law at the expense of the Letter of the Law. Many people took issue with Pope Francis’ insistence on caring for the poor and marginalized.  I cannot understand why, though.  We must acknowledge that caring for the other, the outsider, the ones we scorn, is less likely a reflex and more of a conscious decision to show compassion and love to them. And not only that, but to insist on having the title of being a Christian, while overlooking the poor and downtrodden, lacks integrity and is rightfully called hypocritical. 2.”A Christian who doesn’t safeguard creation, who doesn’t make it flourish, is a Christian who isn’t concerned with God’s work, that work born of God’s love for us.”- Pope Francis Most people didn’t know it, but Pope Francis had a master’s degree in chemistry.  This means he was very well-studied on the processes of nature, atomic structures, and more.  Although he was not a Franciscan, he was very much in tune with the natural world. For Pope Francis, it was vitally important to care for the earth.  Yes, there is one Earth, and it will outlive all of us, but we have a spiritual responsibility to give the next generation a world that is very much healthy. The Christian ought to be concerned with the wholesale flourishing of the earth.  This value can be traced back to the early chapters of Genesis, in which humanity is responsible for stewarding the world, not pillaging it for resources. 3.”The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal.”- Pope Francis What I find fascinating here is that the issue of the “cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal” is considered a form of idolatry. Many of us are willing to sacrifice time, energy, money, family, the environment, and more, hoping Mammon (the false god of money) will shine favorably on us.  As I have said at other times and in different places, sin distorts us and makes us less and less human.  We should not be surprised that we can become inhumane if we commit devaluing sins against ourselves and others. The word economy has roots that trace back to the language of the New Testament.  Did you know that? Oikos is the word for “household,” and Nomos is “rule or law.”  Taken together, the Oikonomia is the “rule or law of the household. “One way to evaluate our fidelity to God is to ask, “What kind of economy/household rule have we created?” Does our economy affirm, protect, and uplift human dignity?  Or does it do the opposite?  Does our economy benefit a select few at the Top at the expense of those at the Bottom? I believe Pope Francis was right to challenge us about our “golden calf,” and all the ways in which we are willing to sacrifice others at the altar of money. 4.”Too often we participate in the globalization of indifference. May we strive instead to live global solidarity.”- Pope Francis Tribalism vs Solidarity. It is the tale as old as time. Perhaps we are all born into Tribalism and find our identity and sense of belonging by being a part of a group.  Then, at some point in our lives, we either begin enacting violence on people of a different tribe or tongue, or we transcend our own tribe and learn to identify with others who are different than us.For some people, religion reinforces the ideology of Tribalism, and for others, religion invites them into global human solidarity.It all depends on how you interpret your faith and whether or not you have the maturity to hear the invitation into global human solidarity. 5.”We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.”- Pope Francis It’s all about hope vs despair. Hope points toward the world we want to see more of, while despair points toward the world we fear might already exist. Hope, though, is not inactive.  It does not mean sitting back on the couch and hoping for the world to improve.  No.  Hope demands work.  Or rather, it reminds us that change is possible, but only if we are willing to put some damn skin in the game. Despair, on the other hand, is futile.  Why bother trying if nothing is going to change substantially? That is the damning question that permits our laziness. Young people are encouraged to despair, the old are often left lonely, we have a tilt toward the old and familiar, and we show love with conditions.  Many of us hope to be rich in comparison to the poor.  We tend to exclude others due to fear, and that same mindset can lead us into war.  This cannot continue if the human race is going to fully flourish and become what it is intended to be: unique incarnations of the love of God. The Gospel is not merely the announcement of a message of restoration; it is an invitation to BE that message of restoration.

Easter People in a Good Friday World

Thursday, April 24, 2025

We are an Easter people, moving through a Good Friday world.
—Barbara Harris, Hallelujah, Anyhow! 

Episcopal Bishop Barbara Harris (1930–2020) explores how we can celebrate Easter, even in the midst of difficult “Good Friday” circumstances:  

The world is full of the misery and pain of Good Friday. We only have to open our daily newspapers, turn on the television to the nightly news … for fresh reminders of the violence, cruelty, want, and need that permeates our world. We have only to examine and reflect on our own lives, our own trials and tribulations, our own cares and woes. We have only to consider how we relate to each other and to our world neighbors. But we are Easter people, and we are supposed to be different.  

There are some distinctive characteristics about Easter people that keep us in close touch with this Jesus who says to a grieving Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” [John 11:25–26]. 

Easter people are believers. We believe not only in the possible, we believe also in the impossible. We believe that the lame were made to walk, and the mute made to speak, that lepers were cleansed and the blind received their sight…. We can believe also that with the helpful presence of God’s Holy Spirit, we are strengthened and sustained on our earthly pilgrimage. Further, we can believe that we can fashion new lives committed to love, to peace, to justice, and to liberation for all of God’s people.   

Easter people grieve and need to be comforted. And, yes, Easter people get angry … but we must seek to channel that anger in constructive ways. Be angry enough to say and to seriously mean, I will commit my life to living out the Baptismal Covenant: seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself, striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.   

Easter people hang in until the end. Like the women who stood by the cross, Easter people live by the words of the old spiritual: “I will go, I shall go to see what the end will be.” [1] 

Benedictine nun and poet Mary Lou Kownacki (1941–2023) embraces this resurrection wisdom:  

Easter grabs us by the throat and shouts, “Live.” The radiant Jesus who leaves the tomb challenges our complacency with the forces of death, be they hopelessness, fear, discouragement, or lack of will. Don’t let death have the last word in your story, Jesus urges. None of us has the right to sleep in death. Even if there is no angel to help you, grab the door of the tomb that holds you back and rip its seal. There’s too much goodness in you that still needs to rise, and there’s too much work in the world that still needs to be done. [2]  

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Sarah Young

This is the day that I have made. Rejoice and be glad in it. Begin the day with open hands of faith, ready to receive all that I am pouring into this brief portion of your life. Be careful not to complain about anything, even the weather, since I am the Author of your circumstances. The way to handle unwanted situations is to thank Me for them. This act of faith frees you from resentment and frees Me to work My ways into the situation, so that good emerges from it.
     To find Joy in this day, you must live within its boundaries. I knew what I was doing when I divided time into twenty-four-hour segments. I understand human frailty, and I know that you can bear the weight of only one day at a time. Do not worry about tomorrow or get stuck in the past. There is abundant Life in My Presence today.

RECOMMENDED BIBLE VERSES:
Psalm 118:24 NLT
24 This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Philippians 3:13-14 NLT
  13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,
  14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Today’s Prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father,

On this day that You have lovingly crafted, I come before You with an open heart and hands of faith and belief. Help me to receive Your blessings with gratitude, trusting in Your vision for my life.

Grant me the grace to refrain from complaining by recognizing Your sovereignty in every circumstance. May my gratitude pave the way for Your transformative power to work many wonders in my life.

Guide me to embrace the present moment by understanding my human limitations. Let me not be consumed by the past or anxious about the future. Instead, let me find abundant life in Your presence here and now.

As I journey through this day, may I rejoice in Your creation and remain steadfast in pursuing Your purpose for me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Sisters and brothers, especially those of you experiencing pain and sorrow, your silent cry has been heard and your tears have been counted; not one of them has been lost!… The resurrection of Jesus is indeed the basis of our hope. For in the light of this event, hope is no longer an illusion…. That hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; it does not delude, but empowers us.  
—Pope Francis (1936–2025), “Urbi Et Orbi,” Easter, 2025

Father Richard shares how we can receive the miracle of new life by embracing our own difficulties and “deaths” as Jesus did.   

Death is not only physical dying. Death also means going to the full depths of things, hitting the bottom, going beyond where we’re in control. In that sense, we all go through many deaths in our lives, tipping points when we have to ask, “What am I going to do?” Many people turn bitter, look for someone to blame, and close down. Their “death” is indeed death for them because there is no room for growth after that. But when we go into the full depths and death of anything—even, ironically, the depths of our own sin—we can come out the other side transformed, more alive, more open, more forgiving of ourselves and others. And when we come out the other side, we know that we’ve been led there. We’re not holding on; we’re being held by a larger force, by a larger source that is not our own. That’s what it means to be saved! It means that we’ve walked through the mystery of transformation.  

The miracle of it all—if we are to speak of miracles—is that God has found the most ingenious way to transform the human soul. God uses the very thing that would normally destroy us—the tragic, the sorrowful, the painful, the unjust deaths that lead us all to the bottom of our lives—to transform us. There it is, in one sentence. Are we prepared to trust that?  

Jesus’ death and resurrection is a statement of how reality works all the time and everywhere. He teaches us that there’s a different way to live with our pain, our sadness, and our suffering. We can say, “Woe is me,” and feel sorry for ourselves, or we can say, “God is even in this.”  

None of us crosses over this gap from death to new life by our own effort, our own merit, our own purity, or our own perfection. Each of us—from pope to president, from princess to peasant—is carried across by unearned grace. Worthiness is never the ticket, only deep desire. With that desire the tomb is always, finally empty, as Mary Magdalene discovered on Easter morning. Death cannot win. We’re finally indestructible when we recognize that the thing which could destroy us is the very thing that could enlighten us.  

Friends, the Easter feast is a reminder to all of us to open our eyes and our ears and to witness what is happening all around us, all the time, everywhere. God’s one and only job description is to turn death into life. That’s what God does with every new springtime, every new life, every new season, every new anything. God is the one who always turns death into life, and no one who trusts in this God will ever be put to shame (Psalm 25:3). 

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APR 23, 2025 The Resurrection Means Matter Matters

Gnosticism is an ancient heresy that is still very much alive today. The Gnostics were false teachers in the early church who were deeply influenced by Greek philosophy and knowledge that exalted the spiritual and condemned the material. They taught that intangible things like the souls, spirits, and wisdom were divine, while the physical world, bodies, and matter were inherently evil. When this Greek understanding was mixed with Christianity, it led to some troubling ideas—chiefly that Jesus’ incarnation was just an illusion because God, who is spirit, would never inhabit something as evil and corruptible as a human body. Of course, with no body, Jesus could not have died on the cross, and if he never died, there’s no reason to believe in his physical resurrection. The Apostle John was targeting this Gnostic heresy when he wrote that every spirit that does not acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh “is the spirit of the antichrist” (1 John 4:2-3). Not only did Gnosticism deny the core message of the gospel, it also permitted all manner of sexual immorality and debauchery. After all, if our physical bodies don’t matter because God is only interested in our immaterial souls, then neither does what we do with them.  Today, Gnosticism remains a common false teaching among Christians, although it manifests very differently. Many Christians still assume God cares only about souls and spirits, and that the physical world and our bodies don’t ultimately matter. This subtle form of Gnosticism is often reinforced with unbiblical visions of the afterlife occupied by disincarnate spirits in a celestial heaven. And within evangelical communities, Gnosticism has been supported by “purity culture,” which spotlights the dangers of sexuality and implicitly communicates the inherent evil of the body and its desires. Taken together, this focus on “saving souls” and avoiding the “temptations of the flesh” has made pop Christianity into a kind of neo-Gnosticism that celebrates the spiritual and condemns the physical.But this understanding contradicts everything the New Testament says about Jesus’ ministry and his miracles. If he were only concerned with saving souls, why did Jesus spend so much time healing bodies? And if physical matter isn’t part of God’s redemptive plan, why does the New Testament aggressively and repeatedly emphasize the physical resurrection of Jesus? Yesterday, we saw that his resurrection is identified as the “first fruits” or the prototype for the rest of God’s salvation. Paul says that our bodies will also be raised, transformed, and glorified like his when Christ returns. And the physical creation itself will share in this glory and be set free from its captivity to death and decay (Romans 8:20-21). In other words, the physical reality of Jesus’ resurrection is why we believe in our physical salvation and the physical salvation of the world. Put simply, the bodily resurrection of Jesus means matter matters.This has huge implications for our lives and callings as Christians. It means we must reject both the overt and subtle forms of Gnosticism that infect our faith, like the tendency to celebrate vocations that care for souls and focus on heaven, and dismiss vocations that care for bodies and the earth. And uprooting the assumption in many Christian communities that God cares about the next world but has given up on this one, or that a spiritually mature Christian must transcend their body and its weaknesses to occupy a realm of ideas, theology, and knowledge alone. Too many of us live as if God created the heavens and the earth and then retired into full-time ministry. The resurrection reveals that God cares about all of his creation—both the material and the spiritual—and he is redeeming all of it. DAILY SCRIPTURE 1 JOHN 4:1-3 JOHN 20:24-29 WEEKLY PRAYER from Hippolytus of Rome (170 – 235) Christ is Risen: The world below lies desolate Christ is Risen: The spirits of evil are fallen Christ is Risen: The angels of God are rejoicing Christ is Risen: The tombs of the dead are empty Christ is Risen indeed from the dead, the first of the sleepers, Glory and power are his forever and ever. Amen.

Mary [of Magdala] stood weeping outside the tomb…. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher. —John 20:11, 15–16 

In her homily at the 2019 CAC Universal Christ conference, Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis reminds us that we are each called by the resurrected Christ who knows us by name:  

Mary is the first preacher in the gospel ... not because she recognizes Jesus, but because he knows her, and what she can do, and what she’s got to give. Amen. In the moment of speaking and seeing, in the moment of revelation and connection, there is a passing on, an apostolic succession, that goes to this woman on the outside of her society, who has no status, no stature, except that Jesus sees her, and knows who she is, and whose she is.  

So, my friends, Jesus sees you. The Christ knows you. The Christ knows you even when you don’t know the Christ. Do you understand what I mean? You are known. You are seen. You are loved. You are baptized into the work of the Living God, and you are catechized into the work of the Holy [Spirit], which is no less than the healing of the world. This is your job, too. You’re not preaching the first sermon. That’s happened already, but you’ve got sermons to preach. I have seen the Lord, because you have.…  

I have seen the crucified Body of Christ in all those places: in Indigenous people, in the broken heart of Mama Earth, in the brown bodies on the border, in the Black bodies languishing in prisons, I have seen the Lord in the struggling transwoman coming out…. I have seen the Lord in the teen who doesn’t know how to tell his pastor he’s queer. I have seen the Lord in the woman wrestling with the decisions about her body. I’ve seen the Lord in divorcing couples. I’ve seen the Lord in the troubled ones all over my life. I’ve seen the Lord, and I’m going to tell you about it. My job is to speak the truth to power. That’s your calling and mine: To listen deeply to the hearts of those who are languishing, to listen for their hopes, dreams, passions, fears, to love the hell out of them and to speak the truth.  

Christ is everywhere. Christ is in all things. We are all one. When you’re hungry, my stomach growls. When someone chops down a tree, I’m cut. When the oceans are being poisoned, I feel thirsty for something different. This is our calling, because we’ve been ordained, just like Mary, by the One who knows all about us. I’m inviting you to look in the mirror and see yourself. Recognize yourself as deputized by the Living God. Amen. 

…… from Chuck DeGroat author of Healing What’s Within

Longing for Hope

How I’m Straining To See Easter Light Amidst The Darkness

The older I get, the more I experience much of the talk about hope as cheap.

The promises of politicians with their visions of greatness feel vacuous.

The motivational pep talks of many preachers ring hollow.

The older I get, the more my eyes must strain toward a glimpse of hope – not the kind peddled in slogans or applause lines, but a hope that rises, quietly, from the compost of loss.

A hope born not in bypassing death, but in walking through it.

A hope that pulses from deeper soil.

Gerard Manley Hopkins is a poet who I return to in times like this. His God’s Grandeur stings with its honest account of (late 19th century) modern life:

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

Life’s monotony is felt-through in his repetition of “trod” – the lifeless routine, the pervading automaticity of so of much what we do.

His prophetic musing of a life “seared with trade” speaks of an earth desecrated by human exploitation. Our feet insulated from the soil of God’s green earth, where we might even spot (or feel with our toes!) life springing anew. 

Humans dulled by utility and noise. 

It’s a cry from the heart for ecological and spiritual renewal.

And yet, he continues:

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

Here’s the hinge – the resurrection turn. 

Despite everything, creation is not exhausted. 

Even beneath the scars, there is an abiding freshness, a sacred resilience. Places of refugia, as author Deb Rienstra reminds us – sacred sanctuaries where life abides, even when death surrounds it. 

I’m straining to bear witness to the light in spring rhythms of Resurrection, even as the first seeds sprout out of death and decomposition, even if my tired eyes can barely see the new, greening tree buds after a long Michigan winter. As St. John says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

I’m allowing myself to pause for a moment when I hear the loud, trumpeting call of a sandhill crane migrating back home again after snow-birding down south for the winter. 

As I’m sitting with counseling clients, I’m remembering that so much of the work is ultimately a letting go of what no longer serves. A synaptic pruning is afoot – neural pathways weakening and dying off as new, pathways-of-hope come online. Our brains a testimony to Resurrection life. The tears and fresh smiles of my clients testimonies of renewal and goodness. 

I’m reminding myself that this is the pattern – the ancient way of ego death, the dark night before the dawn. The spiritual life is cruciform, inviting us to die to illusions so that we may rise in love.

I’m recalling the biblical politics of death-to-life – how Ezekiel 26-28 and Isa. 23 describe Tyre and Sidon as powerful cities, symbols of wealth and imperial arrogance, ultimately worshipping the gods of economic and spiritual self-sufficiency. The fall of these kingdoms represent the vacuousness of a particular vision of human flourishing, one we’re too-familiar with today. 

And I’m bearing witness to John-the-Revelator’s apocalytic vision of Babylon-fallen in Rev. 18 – a vision that ultimately indicts Rome amidst its injustices, too – reminding us that empires that exploit the weak and seduce human beings with promises of wealth and power will be revealed as empty and powerless. 

I’m straining to see what Isaiah sees:

“See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
¹⁹ I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
²¹ They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
²³ They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
they and their descendants with them.
²⁴ Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
²⁵ The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.” (portions of Isa. 65)

Don’t you, like me, long to see?

And so we look and listen, with Hopkins: 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.

A Universal Message

In his homily on Easter Sunday 2019, Father Richard Rohr shared the good news of the resurrection:  

The Brazilian writer and journalist Fernando Sabino wrote, “In the end, everything will be all right. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.” [1] That’s what today is all about: “Everything will be okay in the end.”  

The message of Easter is not primarily a message about Jesus’ body, although we’ve been taught to limit it to this one-time “miracle.” We’ve been educated to expect a lone, risen Jesus saying, “I rose from the dead; look at me!” I’m afraid that’s why many people, even Christians, don’t really seem to get too excited about Easter. If the message doesn’t somehow include us, humans don’t tend to be that interested in theology. Let me share what I think the real message is: Every message about Jesus is a message about all of us, about humanity. Sadly, the Western church that most of us were raised in emphasized the individual resurrection of Jesus. It was a miracle that we could neither prove nor experience, but that we just dared to boldly believe.  

But there’s a great secret, at least for Western Christians, hidden in the other half of the universal church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church—in places like Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Egypt—Easter is not usually painted with a solitary Jesus rising from the dead. He’s always surrounded by crowds of people—both haloed and unhaloed. In fact, in traditional icons, he’s pulling people out of Hades. Hades isn’t the same as hell, although we put the two words together, and so we grew up reciting in the creed that “Jesus descended into hell.”  

Instead, Hades is simply the place of the dead. There’s no punishment or judgment involved. It’s just where a soul waits for God. But we neglected that interpretation. The Eastern Church was probably much closer to the truth that the resurrection is a message about humanity and all creation. It’s a message about history. It’s a corporate message, and it includes you and me and everyone else. If that isn’t true, it’s no wonder that we basically lost interest.  

Today is the feast of hope, direction, purpose, meaning, and community. We’re all in this together. The cynicism and negativity that our country and many other countries have descended into show a clear example of what happens when people do not have hope. If it’s all hopeless, we individually lose hope too. Easter is an announcement of a common hope. When we sing in the Easter hymn that Christ destroyed death, that means the death of all of us. It’s not just about Jesus; God promises to all, “Life is not ended, it merely changes,” as we say in the funeral liturgy. That’s what happened in Jesus, and that’s what will happen in us. In the end, everything will be all right. History is set on an inherently positive and hopeful tangent.  

An Example for Us All

In this Easter message, Richard Rohr teaches that Jesus’ resurrection is a universal pattern we can trust:  

Let’s try to get to what I think is something basic, because the basic is beautiful, but to most people, it’s utterly new.  

We got into trouble when we made the person and the message of Jesus into a formal religion, whereby we had an object of worship; then we had to have a priesthood, formal rules and rituals. I’m not saying we should throw those things out, but once we emphasize cult and moral code, we have a religion. When we emphasize experience, unitive experience, we have the world Jesus is moving around in. Once we made Jesus into a form of religion, we projected the whole message onto him alone. He died, he suffered, he rose from the dead, he ascended and returned to God. We thought that by celebrating these wonderful feasts like Easter that this somehow meant that we were members of the club.  

But you know what? I’m quite sure that was not intended as the message! Jesus was not the lone exemplar. Jesus was not the standalone symbol for the pattern of the universe. Resurrection is just the way things work! When we say hallelujah on this Easter morning, we’re also saying hallelujah to our own lives, to where they’re going, to what we believe in, and hope for.  

Reality rolls through cycles of death and resurrection, death and resurrection, death and resurrection. In the raising up of Jesus, we’re assured that this is the pattern for everything—that we, and anybody who is suffering—is also going to be raised up. This is what God does for a suffering reality. What we crucify, what reality crucifies, God transforms. I don’t think it’s naive to say hallelujah. We have every reason, especially now, since biology and science are also saying this seems to be the shape of everything. It just keeps changing form, meaning, focus or direction, but nothing totally goes away.  

Of course, it’s an act of faith on our side. In our experience, our most cherished people, pets, and even places, fade away—but Jesus is the archetype of the shape of the universe. To believe in Jesus is to believe that all of this is going somewhere and that God is going to make it so. All we have to do is stay on the train, stay on the wave, trusting that by our crucifixions, we would be allowed to fail, fumble and die, and be transformed by grace and by God.  

Easter is the great feast of the triumph of universal grace, the triumph of universal salvation, not just the salvation of the body of Jesus. What we’re talking about creates a people of hope, and a culture of hope that doesn’t slip into cynicism and despair. Easter is saying, we don’t need to go there. Love is going to win. Life is going to win. Grace is going to win. Hallelujah! 

Pope Francis

The Pope’s final sermon began with the words, “Mary Magdalene.”

DIANA BUTLER BASSAPR 21

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Pope Francis died today, on this Easter Monday. 

Throughout his papacy, and despite the vast differences between our lives, I always felt a profound spiritual kinship with him. And I’ve been deeply grateful that he was a moral leader with a unique and important call and message for global community in these days. 

I will pray for him and for the Catholic Church in these hard and holy days. If you are a praying person, I hope you will, too. Who is the leader of the world’s Catholics is important — especially important in these days of authoritarian cruelty. 

It is obvious Pope Francis understood that. He didn’t shy away from that responsibility in his final writings and remarks.

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As the commemorations spread in the news and online, you will probably see many comments on his final remarks to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”). The address is a small masterwork in theology and politics — as so many of Pope Francis’ addresses have been:

The light of Easter impels us to break down the barriers that create division and are fraught with grave political and economic consequences. It impels us to care for one another, to increase our mutual solidarity, and to work for the integral development of each human person…

I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the “weapons” of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death!

You probably will NOT see, however, Pope Francis’ final sermon, one he wrote but was spoken on his behalf at the Easter mass in addition to his public remarks. 

The Pope’s final sermon began with the words, “Mary Magdalene.”

The entire sermon is beautiful — and I found it spiritually stunning. In it, Pope Francis elevated Mary Magdalene to the same status (maybe even a higher status!) as Peter and John, the two most significant disciples. Some of this happens “between the lines,” but there’s a lot happening theologically in this homily. He transformed the witness of two into a triad of three, lifting her (he continually lists her first) as a model for the entire church and faithful discipleship. 

From his Easter sermon: 

Mary Magdalene, seeing that the stone of the tomb had been rolled away, ran to tell Peter and John. After receiving the shocking news, the two disciples also went out and — as the Gospel says — “the two were running together” (Jn 20:4). The main figures of the Easter narratives all ran! On the one hand, “running” could express the concern that the Lord’s body had been taken away; but, on the other hand, the haste of Mary Magdalene, Peter and John expresses the desire, the yearning of the heart, the inner attitude of those who set out to search for Jesus. He, in fact, has risen from the dead and therefore is no longer in the tomb. We must look for him elsewhere.

This is the message of Easter: we must look for him elsewhere. Christ is risen, he is alive! He is no longer a prisoner of death, he is no longer wrapped in the shroud, and therefore we cannot confine him to a fairy tale, we cannot make him a hero of the ancient world, or think of him as a statue in a museum! On the contrary, we must look for him and this is why we cannot remain stationary. We must take action, set out to look for him: look for him in life, look for him in the faces of our brothers and sisters, look for him in everyday business, look for him everywhere except in the tomb.

We must look for him without ceasing. Because if he has risen from the dead, then he is present everywhere, he dwells among us, he hides himself and reveals himself even today in the sisters and brothers we meet along the way, in the most ordinary and unpredictable situations of our lives. He is alive and is with us always, shedding the tears of those who suffer and adding to the beauty of life through the small acts of love carried out by each of us.

For this reason, our Easter faith, which opens us to the encounter with the risen Lord and prepares us to welcome him into our lives, is anything but a complacent settling into some sort of “religious reassurance.” On the contrary, Easter spurs us to action, to run like Mary Magdalene and the disciples; it invites us to have eyes that can “see beyond,” to perceive Jesus, the one who lives, as the God who reveals himself and makes himself present even today, who speaks to us, goes before us, surprises us. Like Mary Magdalene, every day we can experience losing the Lord, but every day we can also run to look for him again, with the certainty that he will allow himself to be found and will fill us with the light of his resurrection.

Today, Pope Francis ran into the tender embrace of a loving God. 

This is the beginning of the Easter season. May we who are Christians, run toward Jesus, the one risen liberating love. Like Mary Magdalene. 

May we find the arms of God wide open. And may we open our arms to the newness of life offered in the embrace, embracing all others with that same love.

May we follow Christ through and inspired by Mary Magdalene.

In the final prayer he wrote for the Easter mass, may we find ourselves in Pope Francis’ holy hope:

Sisters, brothers, in the wonder of the Easter faith, carrying in our hearts every expectation of peace and liberation, we can say: with You, O Lord, everything is new. With you, everything begins again.

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It is worth noting that Pope Francis continually re-imagined and re-presented Mary Magdalene over the course of his papacy. As recently as February, in a Jubilee audience at the Vatican, he held her up as the model of discipleshipand transformation for a “new world.”

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The jubilee is for people and for the Earth a new beginning; everything must be rethought within the dream of God.

— Pope Francis

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INSPIRATION

Breaking through the powers of darkness
bursting from the stifling tomb
he slipped into the graveyard garden
to smell the blossomed air.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
that I have journeyed far
into the darkest deeps I’ve been
in nights without a star.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
that fear will flee my light
that though the ground will tremble
and despair will stalk the earth
I hold them firmly by the hand
through terror to new birth.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
the globe and all that’s made
is clasped to God’s great bosom
they must not be afraid
for though they fall and die, he said,
and the black earth wrap them tight
they will know the warmth
of God’s healing hands
in the early morning light.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
smelling the blossomed air,
tell my people to rise with me
to heal the Earth’s despair.

— Edwina Gateley

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Love has triumphed over hatred, light over darkness and truth over falsehood. Forgiveness has triumphed over revenge. Evil has not disappeared from history; it will remain until the end, but it no longer has the upper hand; it no longer has power over those who accept the grace of this day.

Sisters and brothers, especially those of you experiencing pain and sorrow, your silent cry has been heard and your tears have been counted; not one of them has been lost! In the passion and death of Jesus, God has taken upon himself all the evil in this world and in his infinite mercy has defeated it. He has uprooted the diabolical pride that poisons the human heart and wreaks violence and corruption on every side.

— “URBI ET ORBI” MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
Easter 2025

Praying for Softened Hearts

Friday, April 18, 2025

Good Friday

Father Richard Rohr invites us to consider how loving surrender leads to softened hearts. 

It is true that each of us will die, and yet “I am certain of this, neither death nor life, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, not any height nor depth, nor any created thing can ever come between us and the love of God” (Romans 8:38–39). 

On Good Friday, we lament Jesus’ death while living in hope that death does not have the last word on our destiny. We are born with a longing, desire, and deep hope that this thing called life could somehow last forever. It is a premonition from something eternal that is already within us. Some would call it the soul. Christians would call it the indwelling presence of God. It is God within us that makes us desire and seek God.  

Yes, we are going to die, but we have already been given a kind of inner guarantee and promise right now that death is not final—and it takes the form of love. Deep in the heart and psyche, love, both human and divine, connotes something eternal and gratuitous, and it does so in a deeply mysterious and compelling way. We see this in simple acts of love in the everyday and in times of crisis. Isn’t it amazing how a small act of love or gratitude can imprint a deeper knowing on our soul? [1]  

The crucifixion of Jesus is the preeminent example of God’s love reaching out to us. It is at the same moment the worst and best thing in human history. The Franciscans, led by John Duns Scotus, even claimed that instead of a “necessary sacrifice,” the cross was a freely chosen revelation of total love on God’s part.  

In so doing, they reversed the engines of almost all world religion up to that point, which assumed that we had to spill blood to get to a distant and demanding God. On the cross, the Franciscans believed, God was “spilling blood” to reach out to us! This is a sea change in consciousness. The cross, instead of being a transaction, was seen as a dramatic demonstration of God’s outpouring love, meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back toward trust and love of the Creator. [2]  

I believe that the cross is an image for our own time and every time: We are invited to gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus to soften our hearts toward all suffering. The cross beckons us to what we would call “grief work,” holding the mystery of pain, looking right at it, and learning from it. With softened hearts, God leads us to an uncanny and newfound compassion and understanding. [3]  

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Good Friday Devotional: Unfettered Love

Scripture:

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
— Romans 5:8 (NIV)

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On this solemn day—Good Friday—we remember the darkest, most beautiful moment in human history: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is a day of mourning, but also of immeasurable love—a love that knows no bounds, no limits, no conditions.

Unfettered love is love without restriction. It isn’t cautious or calculating. It doesn’t wait for us to be ready or worthy. It moves first, reaches far, and gives all.

That is the love Jesus poured out on the cross.

He didn’t wait for the world to understand or appreciate His sacrifice. He didn’t require our obedience before He laid down His life. He saw our brokenness, our rebellion, our need—and still, He stretched out His arms in total surrender.

This is the love that speaks louder than words:
A love that bleeds.
A love that forgives.
A love that redeems.

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Reflection:

Take a moment today to sit in the weight of the cross—not in guilt, but in awe. Christ didn’t go to the cross because we deserved it. He went because His love couldn’t be contained. It was too wild, too powerful, too holy to be held back by fear, rejection, or even death.

What kind of King dies for His enemies?

Only One—Jesus, whose love is unfettered.

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Prayer:

Lord Jesus,
Today I stand before Your cross, overwhelmed by the depth of Your love.
You gave everything for me—not because I earned it, but because You are love itself.
Thank You for not holding anything back.
Help me to love like You—freely, fiercely, and without conditions.
Let Your unfettered love fill my heart today and always.
Amen.

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Meditation Prompt:

How might your life look different if you fully embraced the truth that you are loved—without restraint, without condition, without end?

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A devotional thought from April 2011

April 27, 2011

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

The distinction is subtle and yet substantial. A relationship based on love not leverage? I suspect that in the right relationship with You, our desire is not for heaven or blessings or rescue. You do not desire a relationship based on what You can and will do for us, but a relationship based on Your love. All else will follow and is incidental to our relationship.

And God says…” You are starting to understand the relationship I want with you. The relationship I desired when I first created Adam, and the relationship I enjoy with My Son.  I understand your needs and I will meet all your needs…but I seek a relationship based on love, not wants or needs. The depth of My sacrifice is a testimony to My love for you.  And I give you My love freely, without reservation or requirement. Simply accept My love and the sacrifice of Jesus. Come and rest in relationship with Me.”