[Jesus] burnt himself out totally, like a candle, to give light to the people living under the power of darkness
—Choan-Seng Song, Jesus, The Crucified People

Father Richard encourages us to find the wisdom revealed in the paradoxical nature of reality. 

On the last day of the year, I generally withdraw to pray. A few years ago, I asked myself: What should I pray for this year? What do we need in these turbulent times? Naturally, I was strongly tempted to pray for more love. But it occurred to me that I’ve met so many people in the world who are already full of love and who really care for others. Maybe what we lack isn’t love but wisdom. 

We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love rightly. How should we love so that life will really come from it? The answer to that question requires wisdom. I’m very disappointed that the Church has passed on so little wisdom. We’ve typically taught people to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve mandated things or forbidden them, but we haven’t helped people enter upon the narrow and dangerous path of true wisdom. On wisdom’s path we take the risk of making mistakes. On this path we take the risk of being wrong. That’s how wisdom is gained.

It looks as if we will always live in a world that is a mixture of good and evil. Jesus called it a field in which wheat and weeds grow alongside each other. We say, “Lord, shouldn’t we go and rip out the weeds?” But Jesus says: “No, if you try to do that, you’ll probably rip the wheat out along with the weeds. Let both grow alongside each other in the field till harvest” (Matthew 13:24–30). We need a lot of patience and humility to live with a field of both weeds and wheat in our own souls.

Jesus came to teach us the way of wisdom. He brought us a message that offers to liberate us from both the lies of the world and the lies lodged in ourselves. The words of the Gospels create an alternative consciousness, solid ground on which we can really stand, free from every social order and from every ideology. Jesus called this new foundation the reign of God, and he said it is something that takes place in this world and yet will never be completed in this world. This is where faith comes in. It’s so rare to find ourselves trusting—not in the systems and -isms of this world—but standing at a place where we offer our bit of salt, leaven, and light. Even then, we have no security that we’re really right. This means that we have to stand in an inconspicuous, mysterious place, a place where we’re not sure that we’re sure, where we are comfortable knowing that we do not know very much at all.

New Year’s Longings

Leaving “Resolutions” Behind | Listening From The Heart

CHUCK DEGROATDEC 31

Every January, we’re handed the same script.

Lose weight.
Drink less.
Pray more. 

I’ve already received an email asking, “Chuck, what do you resolve to do beginning on January 1?” And they’ll gladly sell me their book on bettering myself. 

New Year’s resolutions are often built on sheer willpower, even mind over matter.

YOU CAN DO THIS the headline reads, with 20 people on gym bicycles at 5:30am. But you’re just trying to catch a few extra minutes of sleep at that time after your kid comes wandering in saying, “Mommy, is it morning yet?” 

And the subtle message if you fail at resolving to be your best you? Shame on you for not trying harder. 

This can’t be it, friends. 

What if the deeper invitation of the new year isn’t exhausting effort, but attunement?

Not pushing through, but listening deeply?

From Resolutions to Longings

Resolutions ask: What should I do differently this year?
Longings ask: What is stirring within me?

And that’s not a small shift.

In the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t offer transformation-by-checklist. Rather, he offers a Beatitude vision of the kind of happy (read: flourishing and whole)person you can become by taking the unlikeliest path: surrender, grief, humility, desire, mercy, integrity, shalom, and security. And throughout his public ministry, Jesus asks one sort of question, over and over—a question so simple and so disarming that you might miss it while looking for to-do lists:

“What do you want?”

No, it’s a not a ‘what do you want for Christmas’ kind of question. It’s asking: At your depths, what you most deeply long for? 

And it’s an invitation to begin anew, not in wearying willpower but soul-empowering grace. 

Grace and Desire

The great early church saint Augustine once mused, “The desire for grace is the beginning of grace.” I read it like this: Grace isn’t passive. 

We too often juxtapose will and grace, as if the latter is passive. It’s not. Augustine reminds us that the wide open field of grace reveals itself in-and-through our desires. After all, as he famously said elsewhere, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.” 

CS Lewis said something similar: longing is a signal, a homing beacon, an echo of Eden. It’s a reminder that your heart still pulses within, that beneath the mad and mundane of your everyday life is a hunger for goodness. 

Grace awakens in your heart as desire, as you tap into an underground current, one that never stops flowing even if you live unaware of it. 

What if tuning in was the call of the new year? 

Working With the Body, Not Against It

This posture of longing doesn’t just make theological sense, it makes physiological sense.

So much of our resolution-making assumes that our bodies are obstacles to overcome. If we could just outthink our anxiety, override our exhaustion, or push past our limits, then we’d finally become the people we want to be. 

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” my Mom used to say. By late January or early February, however, we’ve only lost momentum and found exhaustion. 

But our nervous systems don’t change through force. And our longings don’t awaken in the fight-or-flight hustle of chronic sympathetic nervous system activation. 

Our hearts awaken amidst the tender conditions of safety, attunement, and connection, as I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within. Here, connected to our nervous system’s “Home” state, as I call it, psyche and soma unite in a dance of desire, opening us to goodness, to hope, even to the kinds of internally-aligned choices that manifest in deep and lasting change. 

How do I retune to Home? you ask. Consider:

• Where do I notice a gentle inner yes…in my body, not just my thoughts?
• What does my heart most need right now…connection, rest, belonging, meaning, dignity?
• What relationships or practices give me life…and which quietly drain it?
• Which choices reflect my truest self, and which are coping strategies in disguise?
• What is the one core thing I long for amidst the many things that demand my attention? 
• What is one small, faithful step today that honors my heart, body, and mind?

Not ten sure-fire steps. Not a mind-over-matter plan to change your life in 30 days. 

But tender, gentle, attuned movements of listening attentively and acting intentionally. 

This is the kind of inner spiritual and emotional formation that works with us in both body and soul, not against us.

A Different Way Into the New Year

Like some of you, I live under the weight of all the should’s. 

I should put that Planet Fitness membership we have to good use and get to the gym more regularly, I should manage my time better, I should clean up my inbox every week, I should stop snacking in the evenings, I should commit to justice-keeping and peace-making in concrete ways, and I should save more money. 

I feel the anxious churn underneath, even the whispers of, “The calendar is turning—now’s your chance, Chuck!” 

Resolutions often collapse under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Longings, by contrast, are sustainable. They meet us where we actually are. This is reflected in the spiritual practice of creating a Rule of Life, which (ironically) isn’t about hard-and-fast rules at all, but about stepping into what we long for and what aligns most deeply with our hearts and values in various areas—our relationships, our work, our justice-keeping, our body-tending, our everyday spending, our hobbies, and more. 

Imagine that list I just shared articulated as longing:

• I long to inhabit my body with greater care and vitality, moving in ways that help me feel grounded and alive.
• I long for my days to feel more spacious and intentional, rather than hurried and fragmented.
• I long for clarity and lightness in my work life, releasing what no longer needs my constant attention.
• I long to end my days feeling settled and nourished, not reaching for food to soothe exhaustion or unease.
• I long to live with a steady commitment to justice and peace, expressed through faithful, concrete practices rather than abstract ideals.
• I long for a deeper sense of sufficiency and trust, so that money becomes a tool for freedom rather than a source of anxiety.

Imagine, then, awakening each day to these longings, with attention and intention given to living in alignment with them. Instead of awakening to a list, I’m awakening to my heart. 

If, as Augustine says, “the desire for grace is the beginning of grace,” then when my actions don’t match my deepest longings, I don’t beat myself up—I return to my longings. 

It’s a posture I adopted for myself more than 25 years ago, not after reading some self-help book, but after reading theologian Cornelius Plantinga’s stirring book on sin, of all things. There are few passages I’ve quoted more over the years than this one from the book:

“What does a spiritually whole person look like? A spiritually whole person longs in certain classical ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.” – Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary On Sin

It’s an extraordinary vision. But notice what he doesn’t say—he doesn’t say, “When her longings dim, she beats herself up for not doing better.” Rather, Plantinga says, “she longs to long again.” 

Such grace. Even for you, and even when the best laid plans seem to fail. 

Perhaps the most faithful question in this season isn’t: What should I change? 

But rather:

What is my heart quietly longing for?

---

READ IN APP

Every January, we’re handed the same script.

Lose weight.
Drink less.
Pray more. 

I’ve already received an email asking, “Chuck, what do you resolve to do beginning on January 1?” And they’ll gladly sell me their book on bettering myself. 

New Year’s resolutions are often built on sheer willpower, even mind over matter.

YOU CAN DO THIS the headline reads, with 20 people on gym bicycles at 5:30am. But you’re just trying to catch a few extra minutes of sleep at that time after your kid comes wandering in saying, “Mommy, is it morning yet?” 

And the subtle message if you fail at resolving to be your best you? Shame on you for not trying harder. 

This can’t be it, friends. 

What if the deeper invitation of the new year isn’t exhausting effort, but attunement?

Not pushing through, but listening deeply?

From Resolutions to Longings

Resolutions ask: What should I do differently this year?
Longings ask: What is stirring within me?

And that’s not a small shift.

In the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t offer transformation-by-checklist. Rather, he offers a Beatitude vision of the kind of happy (read: flourishing and whole)person you can become by taking the unlikeliest path: surrender, grief, humility, desire, mercy, integrity, shalom, and security. And throughout his public ministry, Jesus asks one sort of question, over and over—a question so simple and so disarming that you might miss it while looking for to-do lists:

“What do you want?”

No, it’s a not a ‘what do you want for Christmas’ kind of question. It’s asking: At your depths, what you most deeply long for? 

And it’s an invitation to begin anew, not in wearying willpower but soul-empowering grace. 

Grace and Desire

The great early church saint Augustine once mused, “The desire for grace is the beginning of grace.” I read it like this: Grace isn’t passive. 

We too often juxtapose will and grace, as if the latter is passive. It’s not. Augustine reminds us that the wide open field of grace reveals itself in-and-through our desires. After all, as he famously said elsewhere, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.” 

CS Lewis said something similar: longing is a signal, a homing beacon, an echo of Eden. It’s a reminder that your heart still pulses within, that beneath the mad and mundane of your everyday life is a hunger for goodness. 

Grace awakens in your heart as desire, as you tap into an underground current, one that never stops flowing even if you live unaware of it. 

What if tuning in was the call of the new year? 

Working With the Body, Not Against It

This posture of longing doesn’t just make theological sense, it makes physiological sense.

So much of our resolution-making assumes that our bodies are obstacles to overcome. If we could just outthink our anxiety, override our exhaustion, or push past our limits, then we’d finally become the people we want to be. 

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” my Mom used to say. By late January or early February, however, we’ve only lost momentum and found exhaustion. 

But our nervous systems don’t change through force. And our longings don’t awaken in the fight-or-flight hustle of chronic sympathetic nervous system activation. 

Our hearts awaken amidst the tender conditions of safety, attunement, and connection, as I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within. Here, connected to our nervous system’s “Home” state, as I call it, psyche and soma unite in a dance of desire, opening us to goodness, to hope, even to the kinds of internally-aligned choices that manifest in deep and lasting change. 

How do I retune to Home? you ask. Consider:

• Where do I notice a gentle inner yes…in my body, not just my thoughts?
• What does my heart most need right now…connection, rest, belonging, meaning, dignity?
• What relationships or practices give me life…and which quietly drain it?
• Which choices reflect my truest self, and which are coping strategies in disguise?
• What is the one core thing I long for amidst the many things that demand my attention? 
• What is one small, faithful step today that honors my heart, body, and mind?

Not ten sure-fire steps. Not a mind-over-matter plan to change your life in 30 days. 

But tender, gentle, attuned movements of listening attentively and acting intentionally. 

This is the kind of inner spiritual and emotional formation that works with us in both body and soul, not against us.

A Different Way Into the New Year

Like some of you, I live under the weight of all the should’s. 

I should put that Planet Fitness membership we have to good use and get to the gym more regularly, I should manage my time better, I should clean up my inbox every week, I should stop snacking in the evenings, I should commit to justice-keeping and peace-making in concrete ways, and I should save more money. 

I feel the anxious churn underneath, even the whispers of, “The calendar is turning—now’s your chance, Chuck!” 

Resolutions often collapse under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Longings, by contrast, are sustainable. They meet us where we actually are. This is reflected in the spiritual practice of creating a Rule of Life, which (ironically) isn’t about hard-and-fast rules at all, but about stepping into what we long for and what aligns most deeply with our hearts and values in various areas—our relationships, our work, our justice-keeping, our body-tending, our everyday spending, our hobbies, and more. 

Imagine that list I just shared articulated as longing:

• I long to inhabit my body with greater care and vitality, moving in ways that help me feel grounded and alive.
• I long for my days to feel more spacious and intentional, rather than hurried and fragmented.
• I long for clarity and lightness in my work life, releasing what no longer needs my constant attention.
• I long to end my days feeling settled and nourished, not reaching for food to soothe exhaustion or unease.
• I long to live with a steady commitment to justice and peace, expressed through faithful, concrete practices rather than abstract ideals.
• I long for a deeper sense of sufficiency and trust, so that money becomes a tool for freedom rather than a source of anxiety.

Imagine, then, awakening each day to these longings, with attention and intention given to living in alignment with them. Instead of awakening to a list, I’m awakening to my heart. 

If, as Augustine says, “the desire for grace is the beginning of grace,” then when my actions don’t match my deepest longings, I don’t beat myself up—I return to my longings. 

It’s a posture I adopted for myself more than 25 years ago, not after reading some self-help book, but after reading theologian Cornelius Plantinga’s stirring book on sin, of all things. There are few passages I’ve quoted more over the years than this one from the book:

“What does a spiritually whole person look like? A spiritually whole person longs in certain classical ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.” – Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary On Sin

It’s an extraordinary vision. But notice what he doesn’t say—he doesn’t say, “When her longings dim, she beats herself up for not doing better.” Rather, Plantinga says, “she longs to long again.” 

Such grace. Even for you, and even when the best laid plans seem to fail. 

Perhaps the most faithful question in this season isn’t: What should I change? 

But rather:

What is my heart quietly longing for?

Every January, we’re handed the same script.

Lose weight.
Drink less.
Pray more. 

I’ve already received an email asking, “Chuck, what do you resolve to do beginning on January 1?” And they’ll gladly sell me their book on bettering myself. 

New Year’s resolutions are often built on sheer willpower, even mind over matter.

YOU CAN DO THIS the headline reads, with 20 people on gym bicycles at 5:30am. But you’re just trying to catch a few extra minutes of sleep at that time after your kid comes wandering in saying, “Mommy, is it morning yet?” 

And the subtle message if you fail at resolving to be your best you? Shame on you for not trying harder. 

This can’t be it, friends. 

What if the deeper invitation of the new year isn’t exhausting effort, but attunement?

Not pushing through, but listening deeply?

From Resolutions to Longings

Resolutions ask: What should I do differently this year?
Longings ask: What is stirring within me?

And that’s not a small shift.

In the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t offer transformation-by-checklist. Rather, he offers a Beatitude vision of the kind of happy (read: flourishing and whole)person you can become by taking the unlikeliest path: surrender, grief, humility, desire, mercy, integrity, shalom, and security. And throughout his public ministry, Jesus asks one sort of question, over and over—a question so simple and so disarming that you might miss it while looking for to-do lists:

“What do you want?”

No, it’s a not a ‘what do you want for Christmas’ kind of question. It’s asking: At your depths, what you most deeply long for? 

And it’s an invitation to begin anew, not in wearying willpower but soul-empowering grace. 

Grace and Desire

The great early church saint Augustine once mused, “The desire for grace is the beginning of grace.” I read it like this: Grace isn’t passive. 

We too often juxtapose will and grace, as if the latter is passive. It’s not. Augustine reminds us that the wide open field of grace reveals itself in-and-through our desires. After all, as he famously said elsewhere, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.” 

CS Lewis said something similar: longing is a signal, a homing beacon, an echo of Eden. It’s a reminder that your heart still pulses within, that beneath the mad and mundane of your everyday life is a hunger for goodness. 

Grace awakens in your heart as desire, as you tap into an underground current, one that never stops flowing even if you live unaware of it. 

What if tuning in was the call of the new year? 

Working With the Body, Not Against It

This posture of longing doesn’t just make theological sense, it makes physiological sense.

So much of our resolution-making assumes that our bodies are obstacles to overcome. If we could just outthink our anxiety, override our exhaustion, or push past our limits, then we’d finally become the people we want to be. 

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” my Mom used to say. By late January or early February, however, we’ve only lost momentum and found exhaustion. 

But our nervous systems don’t change through force. And our longings don’t awaken in the fight-or-flight hustle of chronic sympathetic nervous system activation. 

Our hearts awaken amidst the tender conditions of safety, attunement, and connection, as I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within. Here, connected to our nervous system’s “Home” state, as I call it, psyche and soma unite in a dance of desire, opening us to goodness, to hope, even to the kinds of internally-aligned choices that manifest in deep and lasting change. 

How do I retune to Home? you ask. Consider:

• Where do I notice a gentle inner yes…in my body, not just my thoughts?
• What does my heart most need right now…connection, rest, belonging, meaning, dignity?
• What relationships or practices give me life…and which quietly drain it?
• Which choices reflect my truest self, and which are coping strategies in disguise?
• What is the one core thing I long for amidst the many things that demand my attention? 
• What is one small, faithful step today that honors my heart, body, and mind?

Not ten sure-fire steps. Not a mind-over-matter plan to change your life in 30 days. 

But tender, gentle, attuned movements of listening attentively and acting intentionally. 

This is the kind of inner spiritual and emotional formation that works with us in both body and soul, not against us.

A Different Way Into the New Year

Like some of you, I live under the weight of all the should’s. 

I should put that Planet Fitness membership we have to good use and get to the gym more regularly, I should manage my time better, I should clean up my inbox every week, I should stop snacking in the evenings, I should commit to justice-keeping and peace-making in concrete ways, and I should save more money. 

I feel the anxious churn underneath, even the whispers of, “The calendar is turning—now’s your chance, Chuck!” 

Resolutions often collapse under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Longings, by contrast, are sustainable. They meet us where we actually are. This is reflected in the spiritual practice of creating a Rule of Life, which (ironically) isn’t about hard-and-fast rules at all, but about stepping into what we long for and what aligns most deeply with our hearts and values in various areas—our relationships, our work, our justice-keeping, our body-tending, our everyday spending, our hobbies, and more. 

Imagine that list I just shared articulated as longing:

• I long to inhabit my body with greater care and vitality, moving in ways that help me feel grounded and alive.
• I long for my days to feel more spacious and intentional, rather than hurried and fragmented.
• I long for clarity and lightness in my work life, releasing what no longer needs my constant attention.
• I long to end my days feeling settled and nourished, not reaching for food to soothe exhaustion or unease.
• I long to live with a steady commitment to justice and peace, expressed through faithful, concrete practices rather than abstract ideals.
• I long for a deeper sense of sufficiency and trust, so that money becomes a tool for freedom rather than a source of anxiety.

Imagine, then, awakening each day to these longings, with attention and intention given to living in alignment with them. Instead of awakening to a list, I’m awakening to my heart. 

If, as Augustine says, “the desire for grace is the beginning of grace,” then when my actions don’t match my deepest longings, I don’t beat myself up—I return to my longings. 

It’s a posture I adopted for myself more than 25 years ago, not after reading some self-help book, but after reading theologian Cornelius Plantinga’s stirring book on sin, of all things. There are few passages I’ve quoted more over the years than this one from the book:

“What does a spiritually whole person look like? A spiritually whole person longs in certain classical ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.” – Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary On Sin

It’s an extraordinary vision. But notice what he doesn’t say—he doesn’t say, “When her longings dim, she beats herself up for not doing better.” Rather, Plantinga says, “she longs to long again.” 

Such grace. Even for you, and even when the best laid plans seem to fail. 

Perhaps the most faithful question in this season isn’t: What should I change? 

But rather:

What is my heart quietly longing for?

READ IN APP

Every January, we’re handed the same script.

Lose weight.
Drink less.
Pray more. 

I’ve already received an email asking, “Chuck, what do you resolve to do beginning on January 1?” And they’ll gladly sell me their book on bettering myself. 

New Year’s resolutions are often built on sheer willpower, even mind over matter.

YOU CAN DO THIS the headline reads, with 20 people on gym bicycles at 5:30am. But you’re just trying to catch a few extra minutes of sleep at that time after your kid comes wandering in saying, “Mommy, is it morning yet?” 

And the subtle message if you fail at resolving to be your best you? Shame on you for not trying harder. 

This can’t be it, friends. 

What if the deeper invitation of the new year isn’t exhausting effort, but attunement?

Not pushing through, but listening deeply?

From Resolutions to Longings

Resolutions ask: What should I do differently this year?
Longings ask: What is stirring within me?

And that’s not a small shift.

In the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t offer transformation-by-checklist. Rather, he offers a Beatitude vision of the kind of happy (read: flourishing and whole)person you can become by taking the unlikeliest path: surrender, grief, humility, desire, mercy, integrity, shalom, and security. And throughout his public ministry, Jesus asks one sort of question, over and over—a question so simple and so disarming that you might miss it while looking for to-do lists:

“What do you want?”

No, it’s a not a ‘what do you want for Christmas’ kind of question. It’s asking: At your depths, what you most deeply long for? 

And it’s an invitation to begin anew, not in wearying willpower but soul-empowering grace. 

Grace and Desire

The great early church saint Augustine once mused, “The desire for grace is the beginning of grace.” I read it like this: Grace isn’t passive. 

We too often juxtapose will and grace, as if the latter is passive. It’s not. Augustine reminds us that the wide open field of grace reveals itself in-and-through our desires. After all, as he famously said elsewhere, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.” 

CS Lewis said something similar: longing is a signal, a homing beacon, an echo of Eden. It’s a reminder that your heart still pulses within, that beneath the mad and mundane of your everyday life is a hunger for goodness. 

Grace awakens in your heart as desire, as you tap into an underground current, one that never stops flowing even if you live unaware of it. 

What if tuning in was the call of the new year? 

Working With the Body, Not Against It

This posture of longing doesn’t just make theological sense, it makes physiological sense.

So much of our resolution-making assumes that our bodies are obstacles to overcome. If we could just outthink our anxiety, override our exhaustion, or push past our limits, then we’d finally become the people we want to be. 

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” my Mom used to say. By late January or early February, however, we’ve only lost momentum and found exhaustion. 

But our nervous systems don’t change through force. And our longings don’t awaken in the fight-or-flight hustle of chronic sympathetic nervous system activation. 

Our hearts awaken amidst the tender conditions of safety, attunement, and connection, as I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within. Here, connected to our nervous system’s “Home” state, as I call it, psyche and soma unite in a dance of desire, opening us to goodness, to hope, even to the kinds of internally-aligned choices that manifest in deep and lasting change. 

How do I retune to Home? you ask. Consider:

• Where do I notice a gentle inner yes…in my body, not just my thoughts?
• What does my heart most need right now…connection, rest, belonging, meaning, dignity?
• What relationships or practices give me life…and which quietly drain it?
• Which choices reflect my truest self, and which are coping strategies in disguise?
• What is the one core thing I long for amidst the many things that demand my attention? 
• What is one small, faithful step today that honors my heart, body, and mind?

Not ten sure-fire steps. Not a mind-over-matter plan to change your life in 30 days. 

But tender, gentle, attuned movements of listening attentively and acting intentionally. 

This is the kind of inner spiritual and emotional formation that works with us in both body and soul, not against us.

A Different Way Into the New Year

Like some of you, I live under the weight of all the should’s. 

I should put that Planet Fitness membership we have to good use and get to the gym more regularly, I should manage my time better, I should clean up my inbox every week, I should stop snacking in the evenings, I should commit to justice-keeping and peace-making in concrete ways, and I should save more money. 

I feel the anxious churn underneath, even the whispers of, “The calendar is turning—now’s your chance, Chuck!” 

Resolutions often collapse under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Longings, by contrast, are sustainable. They meet us where we actually are. This is reflected in the spiritual practice of creating a Rule of Life, which (ironically) isn’t about hard-and-fast rules at all, but about stepping into what we long for and what aligns most deeply with our hearts and values in various areas—our relationships, our work, our justice-keeping, our body-tending, our everyday spending, our hobbies, and more. 

Imagine that list I just shared articulated as longing:

• I long to inhabit my body with greater care and vitality, moving in ways that help me feel grounded and alive.
• I long for my days to feel more spacious and intentional, rather than hurried and fragmented.
• I long for clarity and lightness in my work life, releasing what no longer needs my constant attention.
• I long to end my days feeling settled and nourished, not reaching for food to soothe exhaustion or unease.
• I long to live with a steady commitment to justice and peace, expressed through faithful, concrete practices rather than abstract ideals.
• I long for a deeper sense of sufficiency and trust, so that money becomes a tool for freedom rather than a source of anxiety.

Imagine, then, awakening each day to these longings, with attention and intention given to living in alignment with them. Instead of awakening to a list, I’m awakening to my heart. 

If, as Augustine says, “the desire for grace is the beginning of grace,” then when my actions don’t match my deepest longings, I don’t beat myself up—I return to my longings. 

It’s a posture I adopted for myself more than 25 years ago, not after reading some self-help book, but after reading theologian Cornelius Plantinga’s stirring book on sin, of all things. There are few passages I’ve quoted more over the years than this one from the book:

“What does a spiritually whole person look like? A spiritually whole person longs in certain classical ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.” – Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary On Sin

It’s an extraordinary vision. But notice what he doesn’t say—he doesn’t say, “When her longings dim, she beats herself up for not doing better.” Rather, Plantinga says, “she longs to long again.” 

Such grace. Even for you, and even when the best laid plans seem to fail. 

Perhaps the most faithful question in this season isn’t: What should I change? 

But rather:

What is my heart quietly longing for?

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Every January, we’re handed the same script.

Lose weight.
Drink less.
Pray more. 

I’ve already received an email asking, “Chuck, what do you resolve to do beginning on January 1?” And they’ll gladly sell me their book on bettering myself. 

New Year’s resolutions are often built on sheer willpower, even mind over matter.

YOU CAN DO THIS the headline reads, with 20 people on gym bicycles at 5:30am. But you’re just trying to catch a few extra minutes of sleep at that time after your kid comes wandering in saying, “Mommy, is it morning yet?” 

And the subtle message if you fail at resolving to be your best you? Shame on you for not trying harder. 

This can’t be it, friends. 

What if the deeper invitation of the new year isn’t exhausting effort, but attunement?

Not pushing through, but listening deeply?

From Resolutions to Longings

Resolutions ask: What should I do differently this year?
Longings ask: What is stirring within me?

And that’s not a small shift.

In the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t offer transformation-by-checklist. Rather, he offers a Beatitude vision of the kind of happy (read: flourishing and whole)person you can become by taking the unlikeliest path: surrender, grief, humility, desire, mercy, integrity, shalom, and security. And throughout his public ministry, Jesus asks one sort of question, over and over—a question so simple and so disarming that you might miss it while looking for to-do lists:

“What do you want?”

No, it’s a not a ‘what do you want for Christmas’ kind of question. It’s asking: At your depths, what you most deeply long for? 

And it’s an invitation to begin anew, not in wearying willpower but soul-empowering grace. 

Grace and Desire

The great early church saint Augustine once mused, “The desire for grace is the beginning of grace.” I read it like this: Grace isn’t passive. 

We too often juxtapose will and grace, as if the latter is passive. It’s not. Augustine reminds us that the wide open field of grace reveals itself in-and-through our desires. After all, as he famously said elsewhere, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.” 

CS Lewis said something similar: longing is a signal, a homing beacon, an echo of Eden. It’s a reminder that your heart still pulses within, that beneath the mad and mundane of your everyday life is a hunger for goodness. 

Grace awakens in your heart as desire, as you tap into an underground current, one that never stops flowing even if you live unaware of it. 

What if tuning in was the call of the new year? 

Working With the Body, Not Against It

This posture of longing doesn’t just make theological sense, it makes physiological sense.

So much of our resolution-making assumes that our bodies are obstacles to overcome. If we could just outthink our anxiety, override our exhaustion, or push past our limits, then we’d finally become the people we want to be. 

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” my Mom used to say. By late January or early February, however, we’ve only lost momentum and found exhaustion. 

But our nervous systems don’t change through force. And our longings don’t awaken in the fight-or-flight hustle of chronic sympathetic nervous system activation. 

Our hearts awaken amidst the tender conditions of safety, attunement, and connection, as I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within. Here, connected to our nervous system’s “Home” state, as I call it, psyche and soma unite in a dance of desire, opening us to goodness, to hope, even to the kinds of internally-aligned choices that manifest in deep and lasting change. 

How do I retune to Home? you ask. Consider:

• Where do I notice a gentle inner yes…in my body, not just my thoughts?
• What does my heart most need right now…connection, rest, belonging, meaning, dignity?
• What relationships or practices give me life…and which quietly drain it?
• Which choices reflect my truest self, and which are coping strategies in disguise?
• What is the one core thing I long for amidst the many things that demand my attention? 
• What is one small, faithful step today that honors my heart, body, and mind?

Not ten sure-fire steps. Not a mind-over-matter plan to change your life in 30 days. 

But tender, gentle, attuned movements of listening attentively and acting intentionally. 

This is the kind of inner spiritual and emotional formation that works with us in both body and soul, not against us.

A Different Way Into the New Year

Like some of you, I live under the weight of all the should’s. 

I should put that Planet Fitness membership we have to good use and get to the gym more regularly, I should manage my time better, I should clean up my inbox every week, I should stop snacking in the evenings, I should commit to justice-keeping and peace-making in concrete ways, and I should save more money. 

I feel the anxious churn underneath, even the whispers of, “The calendar is turning—now’s your chance, Chuck!” 

Resolutions often collapse under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Longings, by contrast, are sustainable. They meet us where we actually are. This is reflected in the spiritual practice of creating a Rule of Life, which (ironically) isn’t about hard-and-fast rules at all, but about stepping into what we long for and what aligns most deeply with our hearts and values in various areas—our relationships, our work, our justice-keeping, our body-tending, our everyday spending, our hobbies, and more. 

Imagine that list I just shared articulated as longing:

• I long to inhabit my body with greater care and vitality, moving in ways that help me feel grounded and alive.
• I long for my days to feel more spacious and intentional, rather than hurried and fragmented.
• I long for clarity and lightness in my work life, releasing what no longer needs my constant attention.
• I long to end my days feeling settled and nourished, not reaching for food to soothe exhaustion or unease.
• I long to live with a steady commitment to justice and peace, expressed through faithful, concrete practices rather than abstract ideals.
• I long for a deeper sense of sufficiency and trust, so that money becomes a tool for freedom rather than a source of anxiety.

Imagine, then, awakening each day to these longings, with attention and intention given to living in alignment with them. Instead of awakening to a list, I’m awakening to my heart. 

If, as Augustine says, “the desire for grace is the beginning of grace,” then when my actions don’t match my deepest longings, I don’t beat myself up—I return to my longings. 

It’s a posture I adopted for myself more than 25 years ago, not after reading some self-help book, but after reading theologian Cornelius Plantinga’s stirring book on sin, of all things. There are few passages I’ve quoted more over the years than this one from the book:

“What does a spiritually whole person look like? A spiritually whole person longs in certain classical ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.” – Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary On Sin

It’s an extraordinary vision. But notice what he doesn’t say—he doesn’t say, “When her longings dim, she beats herself up for not doing better.” Rather, Plantinga says, “she longs to long again.” 

Such grace. Even for you, and even when the best laid plans seem to fail. 

Perhaps the most faithful question in this season isn’t: What should I change? 

But rather:

What is my heart quietly longing for?

Dissolving into Love

CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher speaks of how we can become agents of transformation and healing by giving of ourselves like salt and light:

We human beings are forgetful. We need reminders of important things, including the gospel that feeds the soul and illuminates the divine loving self within. Mindful of the world’s beauty and violence, let’s steep for a moment in these encouraging and inspiring words:

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has become insipid, how will it be made salt again? It’s no longer good for anything then, except being thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill can’t be hidden and people don’t hide an oil lamp under a two-gallon basket. They put it on a lampstand where it gives light for everybody in the house. Give light for other people. Live so they see your compassionate acts and praise your divine Father (Matthew 5:13–16).

We all need the nourishment of the gospel’s good news so that a dire news overload of despotism, division, and moral outrage doesn’t glut and dictate our inner lives and our outer kind actions. In our screen-heavy days, it’s so easy to forget how potent salt and light are. So let’s remember together.

Salt ultimately comes from the ocean by the action of light. So, in this Gospel, Jesus is saying poetically, you all are, in essence, the ocean, one made by and of love. May we remember our shared, stable, divine center and that, when by deep listening, we honor the sacred worth of our own and of another’s life, our empathy dissolves into transformative compassion. Salt has power to disinfect wounds. May we remember that accepting ourselves and each other—both—as imperfect and “unshakably good,” as Father Greg Boyle reminds, is strong medicine that creates a community of cherished belonging. Small kind acts are never small. Salt can also melt snow and ice from roads and walkways, making clear passage. May we remember our kind divine parent, and may this awareness melt the iciness of perfectionism, the illusion of separation and anxiety, steadying our steps together.

Obviously salt and light look different on the surface, but they both fulfill their powerful natures by giving away or losing themselves. “You are salt and light” is a counter-cultural revolutionary statement, rich with psychological and embodied, empowering wisdom. May we remember that like the wise self-emptying of kenosis, being salt and light reminds us that no matter how broken or broken-hearted by the world’s suffering, we are love and are most ourselves when giving ourselves away, embracing grief’s salty tears.

May we remember we are God’s children. As Howard Thurman writes: “[Whoever] knows this is able to transcend the vicissitudes of life, however terrifying and look out on the world with quiet eyes.” [1]

May you and I see the world and everyone in it with quiet eyes and may we act in the world with kind hearts, being salt and light. Amen.

DEC 30, 2025. Skye Jethani Many Shepherds, One Lord

There are many challenges facing the modern church, but some of these are self-inflicted. A case could be made that a fair number are the result of church leaders taking upon themselves responsibilities that rightfully belong to Christ alone. This tendency for leaders to overstep their calling is nothing new. In fact, we see it with the very first leader of the church, Peter. After the resurrection, Jesus restores Peter and calls him to shepherd his flock. Three times, Jesus calls him to “feed” or “tend” his sheep and concludes with an allusion to Peter’s eventual martyrdom. Perhaps Peter was less than thrilled with this assignment, because he immediately noticed another disciple, John, and asked Jesus about his calling. The Lord swiftly rebukes him, “If is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22).In this story, we see Peter’s temptation to overstep his role. He wants to know, and perhaps influence John’s calling. But Jesus makes it clear that calling is not one of Peter’s responsibilities. Essentially, Jesus says, “You feed. You tend. You do not call. That is my prerogative. You are the servant; I am the Master.”This has always been the temptation for the church’s shepherds. Knowing how helpless and stupid sheep can be, some shepherds come to believe that without their guidance, Christ’s people can do nothing. So beyond feeding and tending, they assume it is also their responsibility to call—to tell Christ’s sheep what they are to do. It’s an easy mistake to make because it is partially true. Feeding and tending include teaching. Church leaders are called to instruct God’s flock from Scripture and teach them to obey all he has commanded. The general commands from the Bible that apply to all disciples are sometimes known as our corporate or common callings.Church leaders overstep as shepherds when they assume the responsibility for our specific callings. This is what Peter attempted to do with John, and it’s a tendency often encouraged by our culture’s understanding of leadership. In corporate America, the leader is the person with the vision. She then calls others to a single task and sets forth to accomplish it. We’ve accepted this view of leadership within the church too. We often believe the pastor’s role is to articulate a vision from God and then call all people to that single work without any thought to the possibility that Christ might call his sheep to works outside the church or apart from the pastor’s involvement.In some communities, church leaders spend an incredible amount of energy calling people to their mission, to advance their church, to be evangelists, or even better to be missionaries, and they do this with the best of intentions. They want to see God’s work accomplished. What pastors can sometimes forget, however, is that Christ has called them to be shepherds who feed and tend, not masters who call. That is his job; they are, after all, his sheep.Even in Matthew 9 when Jesus recognizes “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” he does not tell his disciples to find, call, and send out more laborers. He instructs them to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.” Jesus never outsources his authority to call his people to the work he has for them. Remembering that would not only encourage church members to foster their own, unmediated communion with Christ, it would also keep pastors from overstepping their roles by reminding them that God’s sheep need shepherds, but they already have a Lord. DAILY SCRIPTURE JOHN 21:15-22 MATTHEW 9:35-37 WEEKLY PRAYER. From John Knox (1513 – 1572) O God of all power, you called from death the great pastor of the sheep, our Lord Jesus: comfort and defend the flock which he has redeemed through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Increase the number of true preachers; enlighten the hearts of the ignorant; relieve the pain of the afflicted, especially of those who suffer for the testimony of the truth; by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We close our 2025 Daily Meditations reflecting on what “being salt and light” means for Christians and all people of good will. Father Richard Rohr writes: 

Have you ever noticed that the expression “the light of the world” is used to describe the Christ (John 8:12), while Jesus also applies the same phrase to us? (Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world.”)

Apparently, light is less something we see directly, and more something by which we see all other things. In other words, we have faith in Christ so we can have the faith of Christ. That is the goal. Jesus Christ seems quite happy to serve as a conduit, rather than a provable conclusion. (If the latter was the case, the incarnation of Jesus would have happened after the invention of the camera and the video recorder!) We need to look at Jesus until we can look out at the world with his kind of eyes. The world no longer trusts Christians who “love Jesus” but do not seem to love anything else. In Jesus Christ, God’s own broad, deep, and all-inclusive worldview is made available to us. 

That might just be the whole point of the Gospels. We have to trust the messenger before we can trust the message, and that seems to be Jesus’s strategy. Too often, we have substituted the messenger for the message. As a result, we spent a great deal of time worshiping the messenger and trying to get other people to do the same. Too often this obsession became a pious substitute for actually following what Jesus taught—he asked us several times to follow him, and never once to worship him. 

If we pay attention to the text, we’ll see that John’s Gospel offers a very evolutionary notion of the Christ message. Note the active verb that is used here: “The true light that enlightens every person was coming (erxomenon) into the world” (John 1:9). In other words, we’re not talking about a one-time Big Bang in nature or a one-time incarnation in Jesus, but an ongoing, progressive movement continuing in the ever-unfolding creation. Incarnation did not just happen two thousand years ago. It has been working throughout the entire arc of time and will continue. This is expressed in the common phrase the “second coming of Christ,” which was unfortunately read as a threat (“Wait till your dad gets home!”), whereas it should more accurately be spoken of as the “forever coming of Christ,” which is anything but a threat. In fact, it is the ongoing promise of eternal resurrection. 

Christ is the light that allows people to see things in their fullness. The precise and intended effect of such a light is to see Christ everywhere else. In fact, that is my definition of a true Christian. A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail us, always demand more of us, and give us no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.

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Living in the Light of God’s Love

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. 
—John 8:12

CAC faculty member James Finley poetically envisions how Jesus is the light of the world: 

Jesus reveals himself to us as the light of the world and lets us know that anyone who follows him will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

This is what I think this light is: Jesus said, “Fear not; I’m with you always” (see Matthew 28:20). He didn’t say, “Don’t be afraid because I’ll personally see to it that nothing unfair or cruel or traumatizing happens to you.” Look what happened to him. He was crucified. God is a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. Salvation is experientially dropping down into the intimate realization of that in this way.

We live on and on in the ongoing fragility and brokenness of ourselves, but we don’t walk in the darkness that surrounds us. Rather, we live in the light that transcends, permeates, and unexplainably shines through that darkness. We walk in the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not grasp it. Although the darkness cannot grasp it, even the darkness can realize it’s being unexplainably illumined by light.

Likewise, sometimes we can get disheartened about ourselves, like Paul’s thorn in the flesh. While we need to do our best to get past the things that are hurtful to myself and others, can I place my faith in the love that’s infinitely in love with me and my inability to get past the stumbling place? As a matter of fact, the thorn in the flesh, the stumbling place, may be my teacher where I depend on the mercy of God that is oceanic and endless in all directions.

In a similar way, sometimes when we look at the world, we can get disheartened by the outcome of the world because the intensity and density closes off experiential access to this love that utterly transcends and unexplainably permeates the very suffering of the world itself, unexplainably and forever this way.

This then is our walk: How can I learn to be healed from what hinders me from being ever more habitually established in the divine light that shines, transcends, and utterly permeates the broken edges of my life? The very ragged edges of my heart are the configurations of the light that shines through the broken places as mercy, as amazement, and as gratitude.

Although I can’t experience it all the time, I know the importance of the daily rendezvous with God, the quiet space in which I become ever more receptively vulnerable to being instilled by this light that permeates and guides me through my days. Hopefully, this poetic expression then will be a way of helping us to sit with and be present to this light, shining into our own lives in the midst of the unresolved matters of our hearts.

A Universal Christ

Friday, December 26, 2025

Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio focuses on the theology of the incarnation and the universal nature of the Christ mystery:

The Christian message is that God has become flesh [sarx in Greek or “matter”]—not a part of God or one aspect of God but the whole infinite, eternal God Creator has become matter. The claim—God has become flesh—is so radical that it is virtually unthinkable and illogical. Christianity is the most radical of all world religions because it takes matter seriously as the home of divinity. [1]

So does everyone have to become Christian to know the Christ? Absolutely not. Christ is more than Jesus. Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality—every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit, and human person. Everything is christified because everything expresses divine love incarnate. However, Jesus Christ is the “thisness” of God, so what Jesus is by nature everything else is by grace (divine love). We are not God, but every single person is born out of the love of God, expresses this love in [their] unique personal form, and has the capacity to be united with God…. Because Jesus is the Christ, every human is already reconciled with every other human in the mystery of the divine, so that Christ is more than Jesus alone. Christ is the whole reality bound in a union of love.

We are transformed by experiencing the presence Christ in all things.

We cannot know this mystery of Christ as a doctrine or an idea; it is the root reality of all existence. Hence, we must travel inward, into the interior depth of the soul where the field of divine love is expressed in the “thisness” of our own, particular life. Each of us is a little word of the Word of God, a mini-incarnation of divine love. The journey inward requires surrender to this mystery in our lives, and this means letting go of our “control buttons.” It means dying to the untethered selves that occupy us daily; it means embracing the sufferings of our lives, from the little sufferings to the big ones; it means allowing God’s grace to heal us, hold us, and empower us for life; it means entering into darkness, the unknowns of our lives, and learning to trust the darkness, for the tenderness of divine love is already there; it means being willing to surrender all that we have for all that we can become in God’s love; and finally, it means to let God’s love heal us of the opposing tensions within us. When we can say with full voice, “You are the God of my heart, my God and my portion forever” [Psalm 73:26], then we can open our eyes to see that the God I seek is already in me … and in you. We are already One. [2]

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.”

– CS Lewis, British Author

The Incarnation, the Infinite becoming Finite, is something that we cannot fully comprehend…

But we can apprehend it!

They say that you cannot pour the sea into a thimble, but you can pour through a thimble into the sea.

Well, the Christmas story subverts that by saying that the sea can be poured into a thimble and that we then catch all of the overflow.

2.

“It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

– Charles Dickens, English Novelist

Kids are great.

You know what?  I would love to read a book about Charles Dickens’ magnum opus, A Christmas Carol.  I would bet there were plenty of influences that converged to help him write that story.

What was his religious upbringing?  How did he think about the rich and the poor?  How were children valued in his personal life?  What did he believe about spirits or angels/messengers?

I cannot imagine writing a piece that would eventually become almost synonymous with the Christmas story.

3.

“To work for a just world where there is not servitude, oppression, or alienation is to work for the advent of the Messiah.”

– Gustavo Gutierrez, Peruvian Priest and Theologian

I admit that I have not read much of Gustavo Gutierrez; however, he has shaped much of my thinking.

Gutierrez was important because he wrote some of the most influential works on liberation theology, which brought to the forefront the idea that God cares about the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, and those at the bottom of society.

In some ways, his theological conservativism led him to be more “progressive” in his political values.  While working as a priest in Peru, his own Catholicism led him to side with the country’s poor, which angered many who wanted him to uphold conventional religious wisdom and not ruffle feathers.

4.

“God became man that man might become God.”

– St. Athanasius of Alexandria, 4th Century Church Father

This is known as theosis, the process of becoming gods.

This may sound revolutionary or potentially even heretical, but it was a central doctrine of the early church.  In fact, when the Pharisees are interrogating Jesus, he even quotes Psalms, as it calls all human beings “gods.”

Some early church theologians believe that Adam and Eve were always supposed to become like God;QA the problem is that they chose to achieve it through their own means instead.  As a result, God had to intervene and provide a way for us to become like God on God’s terms.

In Western Christianity, this idea is nearly non-existent.  This is, in part, due to our overemphasis on sin and forgiveness as the culmination of the Gospel; however, forgiveness occurs along the way to restoration and theosis.

If you are interested in how the early church taught about becoming like God on God’s terms, I invite you to read more of Athanasius or to examine some of the core teachings of Eastern Orthodoxy, which preserved this doctrine better than the West did.

Specifically, check out the work of Sergius Bulgakov.

5.

“It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you.”

– Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Albanian Catholic Nun

At best, we are either working with or against the flow of the Love of God in the world.

This quote made me think of a video I made 5 years ago when we were all in the thick of Covid and I was just starting to make videos from my apartment.  I hope you enjoy it!

To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to kneel at the manger and gaze upon that little baby who is radiant with so much promise for our world today.
—Brian McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking

Brian McLaren invites us to see the birth of Jesus as the dawning of divine life and aliveness in creation: 

Do you remember how the whole biblical story begins? “In the…” And do you remember the first creation that is spoken into being? “Let there be…”

On Christmas Eve, we celebrate a new beginning. We welcome the dawning of a new light. 

A new day begins with sunrise. A new year begins with lengthening days. A new life begins with infant eyes taking in their first view of a world bathed in light. And a new era in human history began when God’s light came shining into our world through Jesus.

The Fourth Gospel tells us that what came into being through Jesus was not merely a new religion, a new theology, or a new set of principles or teachings—although all of these things did indeed happen. The real point of it all, according to John, was life, vitality, aliveness—and now that Jesus has come, that radiant aliveness is here to enlighten all people everywhere.

Some people don’t see it yet. Some don’t want to see it. They’ve got some shady plans that they want to preserve undercover, in darkness…. They don’t welcome the light, because transparency exposes their plans and deeds for what they are: evil. So they prefer darkness.

But others welcome the light. They receive it as a gift, and in that receiving, they let God’s holy, radiant aliveness stream into their lives. They become portals of light in our world….

What do we mean when we say Jesus is the light? Just as a glow on the eastern horizon tells us that a long night is almost over, Jesus’ birth signals the beginning of the end for the dark night of fear, hostility, violence, and greed that has descended on our world. Jesus’ birth signals the start of a new day, a new way, a new understanding of what it means to be alive.

Aliveness, he will teach, is a gift available to all by God’s grace. It flows not from taking, but giving, not from fear but from faith, not from conflict but from reconciliation, not from domination but from service. It isn’t found in the outward trappings of religion—rules and rituals, controversies and scruples, temples and traditions. No, it springs up from our innermost being like a fountain of living water. It intoxicates us like the best wine ever and so turns life from a disappointment into a banquet. This new light of aliveness and love opens us up to rethink everything—to go back and become like little children again. Then we can rediscover the world with a fresh, childlike wonder—seeing the world in a new light, the light of Christ.

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DEC 24, 2025 Ps 22: Never Abandoned by God

In Jesus’ final moments of suffering on the cross, he quoted Psalm 22. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Although the gospels only record Jesus saying the opening verse, it is fair to read the entire psalm as messianic, as it captures both the agony (vs. 1-21) and glory (vs. 22-31) of the Christ. If we only see Psalm 22 as referring to the messiah, however, we may miss how it applies to each one of us. The fact that Jesus speaks these words as his own simultaneously emphasizes their divine meaning as well as Jesus’ profound humanity because moments of feeling abandoned by God are an undeniable part of every person’s experience in our fallen world.The struggle articulated in Psalm 22 is not a doubt about God’s presence or existence, but a questioning of his goodness. When Jesus prays, “Why have you forsaken me?” it’s not because he thinks God isn’t present. It’s precisely the opposite. He prays knowing God can hear his cry. As John Goldingay says, “God’s abandonment lies not in going away but in being present and yet doing nothing.”Why would God not intervene to help an innocent victim? Why does God allow terrible evil to rampage through his world when he has the power to stop it? Why would he watch passively as his people suffer? These are the honest questions that every person of faith must wrestle with, and Psalm 22 is not afraid to acknowledge them. The fact that Jesus himself felt the pain of these questions—and felt it more acutely than we can ever imagine—validates their legitimacy. And yet Psalm 22 lifts our eyes beyond our momentary suffering and reaffirms the goodness of the Lord. “For he has not despised or abhorred the afflictions of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard… The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord!” This Psalm, perhaps more than any other, articulates the weariness of God’s people at the time of Jesus’ birth. For hundreds of years, they had lived under foreign oppression, and with no word from the Lord or his prophets. They felt abandoned and forgotten. Some had given up hope and turned from God’s covenant. Others turned to violence and trusted in their own power for deliverance.But the birth of Jesus proved God had not abandoned them, and he was not silent. At Christmas, we remember and celebrate our Lord, who is the opposite of indifferent. So many today are wondering if God hears them. Does he see their pain? Does he care enough to intervene in his world and in our lives? The message of Psalm 22 and the message of this night is this—God has not hidden his face from the afflicted. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 22:1-31 LUKE 2:25-35 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Robert Lewis Stevenson (1850 – 1894) O God, our loving Father, help us rightly to remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds and the worship of the wise men. May Christmas morning make us happy to be your children and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts, forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus’s sake. Amen.

For Teilhard, the seeing of Christ in all things was the most powerful source for Christian renewal, for the transformation of humanity, and for the responsible, reverential care of our planet. —Ursula King, Christ in All Things

Theologian Ursula King considers the wisdom of the Jesuit priest, scientist, and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), who considered Christ’s incarnation in the physical world: 

God’s word to humanity is not primarily the word spoken in a book, in sacred literature, but it is a word that is incarnate, not only as a human being, but present as an element in all beings, in all created reality, all of which needs completion, fulfillment and redemption. God is incarnate in matter, in flesh, in all of creation, in the cosmos. The incarnation of Christ becomes extended to the dimensions of the cosmos; it is an event and mystery of cosmic extension. As [Teilhard] writes in “The Mass on the World”: “Through your own incarnation, my God, all matter is henceforth incarnate.” God is “incarnate in the world.” We are all together “carried in the one world-womb; yet each of us is our own little microcosm in which the Incarnation is wrought independently with degrees of intensity, and shades that are incommunicable.” Teilhard firmly believed that everything around him “is the body and blood of the Word.” [1]

Teilhard writes: 

That is why it is impossible for me, Lord—impossible for any [one] who has acquired even the smallest understanding of you—to look on your face without seeing in it the radiance of every reality and every goodness. In the mystery of your mystical body—your cosmic body—you sought to feel the echo of every joy and every fear that moves each single one of all the countless cells that make up [humankind].… Every affection, every desire, every possession, every light, every depth, every harmony, and every ardour glitters with equal brilliance, at one and the same time, in the inexpressible Relationship that is being set up between me and you: Jesus! [2]

King summarizes Teilhard’s contribution to an expansive understanding of Christ’s Incarnation: 

In one sense Teilhard’s vision was a uniquely personal one…. Yet he also knew that the importance and strength of this vision transcended the limits of his own life, that it could fire people’s imagination, inspire their efforts, and give them hope…. His vision of the dignity of human life embedded in the larger web of cosmic life, his emphasis on global responsibility, action and choice in shaping the future of humanity on our planet, and the need for life-affirming spiritual goals can inspire people of all beliefs and none. For Christians Teilhard de Chardin is a remarkable, shining example of creative Christian renewal that believes in life, affirms life as a task to be done, a work to be achieved, and celebrates life as a most precious and wonderful gift to be loved and experienced as a sign of the Spirit who sustains us all.

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Dear friend, (From Kurt Thompson, an author recommended to me by Keith) Beauty reveals itself on its terms, not ours. We humans often live as if beauty is something we assess and determine. But we are not the origin of beauty. We recognize it; we mirror our creator when we fashion it. But we do not own it, nor are we its master, any more than we own God.

Moreover, and speaking of God, as Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us, beauty is not an attribute “of” God, something “about” him. Rather, he is beauty, and any and all that we “discover” that is beautiful is merely one more way in which God is revealing himself. Not that God is ever reducible to that revealed aspect of beauty—but we can never encounter true beauty without encountering the God that is its essence and from whom it emanates. How mysteriously beyond words is it then when in Jesus, God becomes as we are in order to draw us forth as the living, pulsating beauty that he also is?

We, who are his mirrors. His images. His likenesses. In this Advent season, may we look to gaze upon each other as the beauty the Spirit is revealing, one to another, that we may reflect the incarnation of the God who is Immanuel. Warmly, Curt