Met by the Beloved

Inspired by the teachings of John of the Cross, Mirabai Starr encourages us to trust the difficult path of unknowing:

It is time to enter the desert. You may not take anything with you: not your insulated bottle of cool water, not a knife, not a single raisin. You may not take a sleeping bag. No cell phone or map. Leave the sunscreen behind. Burn.

It is time to enter into utter unknowing—and, by unknowing, come to know truly.

The mind is an impediment on this journey. The senses are misleading. Leave them on the porch when you slip away in the middle of the night. Be very quiet as you close the door behind you. The members of your household will not understand your quest. They will try to keep you home. Leave. Go now.

No one claims this will be an easy journey. Your senses will thirst for the familiar juices that remind them of a time when the Holy One fed them from her own breasts. The intellect will grope around in the dark, panicking. Pay no attention. Walk through the night. Sit very still in the daytime and watch the miracle of your breath as it quietly fills your lungs and empties them again.

Spend forty days in the wilderness, and forty nights. Don’t give up. The worst that will happen is that you will die. Die to your fragmented self and be reborn into your divine self. Enter knowing through the needle of unknowing. In silence, finally hear the voice of the Holy One. In surrendering to sheer emptiness, be filled with the Beloved at last.

Starr translates John of the Cross’s poem “Glosa á lo Divino”:  

I would not sacrifice my soul
for all the beauty of this world.

There is only one thing
for which I would risk everything:
an I-don’t-know-what
that lies hidden
in the heart of the Mystery.

The taste of finite pleasure
leads nowhere.
All it does is exhaust the appetite
and ravage the palate.
And so, I would not sacrifice my soul
for all the sweetness of this world.

But I would risk everything
for an I-don’t-know-what
that lies hidden
in the heart of the Mystery.

The generous heart
does not collapse into the easy things,
but rises up in adversity.
It settles for nothing.
Faith lifts it higher and higher.

Such a heart savors
an I-don’t-know-what
found only in the heart of the Mystery.

The soul that God has touched
burns with love-longing.
Her tastes have been transfigured.
Ordinary pleasures sicken her.
She is like a person with a fever;
nothing tastes good anymore.

All she wants
is an I-don’t-know-what
locked in the heart of
the Mystery….

I will never lose myself
for anything the senses can taste,
nor for anything the mind can grasp,
no matter how sublime,
            how delicious.
I will not pause for beauty,
I will not linger over grace.
I am bound for
an I-don’t-know-what
deep within the heart of the Mystery.

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Is Good News Coming? 

Advent and the Art of Preparation

Mark Longhurst

Advent’s stubborn hope is that good news is coming. We need it, desperately. Each day stirs up a maelstrom of dread. But how can we dare to believe in good news? Especially in our fractured moment in which the very category of news, not to mention truth, has become swallowed whole by an abyss of hate-filled chaos? Might this good news of Jesus be fake, or a teflon-like political flip-flop? Might it be ideologically driven? Might it be imperial power masquerading as religion? All of this is possible. 

Yet Gospel writer Mark’s first verse still gleams, like an arrow piercing through all that is false: “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The season of Advent reminds us that good news is coming.

For such good news to arrive, however, requires preparation. We’re so used to bad news that receiving good news takes cultivation, practice, and defiance. This gospel good news starts with the call to prepare, which is a message straight from the prophet of preparation himself, Isaiah: “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord.”

It must be said, though, that Christmas preparations are not the same as Christ preparations. We ready ourselves for the coming of an adult Christ at Christmas rather than a sweet baby Jesus. Babies, like Christ, bring a whole new world to our lives, but it’s too easy for the birthday of baby Jesus to be sentimentalized. Every Advent, I am reminded of Will Ferrell’s satirical prayer as Ricky Bobby in the movie Talladega Nights, who addresses the Baby Jesus while saying grace at table. “Sweet Baby Jesus,” he says. “We thank you for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell.” But the coming of Christ is far more than fast-food product placement tacked onto a Pampers commercial. We are readying ourselves for the realm, or dream, of God to arrive right here, smack dab in reality.

Yet in the conflicted meaning-making of our moment, the good news of one is the terrible news of another. Who’s to judge what is good, and how can we know it, much less prepare for it? And yet this conflict over truth is not new. It’s ancient. Good news—or gospel—in Mark’s day (in Greek, euangelion) is a loaded term. 

Good news is the propaganda slogan of peace and security that the Roman emperor supposedly brings. It is not only Jesus’s birthday toward which we lean, but also Caesar’s birthday. A building inscription circa 6 BCE demonstrates as much: “The birthday of the god (Caesar Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of good news concerning him.” (quoted in Jesus for President, page 70). The Gospel writer Mark enters the fray and directly opposes the fake good news of the Empire, not by arguing but by telling a counter-story of the Son of God’s birthday—the one who brings true and lasting peace and joy.

Mark, for one, refuses to accept Caesar’s new normal. And what’s more is that Mark does not counter Caesar and Rome’s grandiosity with rants or arguments. As though sending a tweet changes hearts and minds. Instead, Mark tells a story—a story of life, of healing, of justice for the poor and excluded; it’s a story of a person, Jesus, who represents and reminds us of a new realm from heaven that has always been aligning with earth. Some even think Mark’s use of “good news” creates a new genre: the genre of Gospel.

How does one prepare for a new world, for a new consciousness? I always appreciate the lectionary’s wisdom each First Sunday of Advent, because it begins the season with an apocalyptic passage, as if to declare that if we are not prepared, the in-breaking of Christ will end our worlds. The newness of love and justice cuts that deep—at least if we’re not ready. And this is the reason John the Baptizer is on the Advent scene as a messenger of preparedness. His whole presence—from locusts buzzing to fingers sticky with honey to camel hair curling in all directions—shakes us out of the new normal. He’s not bringing change simply for change’s sake, jumping on the new Messiah bandwagon as if it were the latest iPhone model. Rather, John seeks to prepare the way for Christ, and his method of preparation is through something called, a bit clunkily, I’ll admit, a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

But can we even use these words anymore, laden as they are with religious baggage? Isn’t repentance the favorite theme of the street-corner preacher’s shout? Isn’t repentance code for the salvation-from-hellfire decision to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior? If I thought I was going to burn eternally, I’d choose Jesus, too. And I did, for many years. Isn’t the phrase “forgiveness of sins” a holdover from blood atonement, imagining a God who forgives sins through shed animal or beloved-son blood? Many think salvation is at its heart vengeful, or at least about saying the right words to initiate a soul-destination escape from punishment. But no simple prayer—other than the complex and utterly holy living of a life—can prepare us for whatever mystery is beyond this bodily reality.

Repentance. Forgiveness of sins. These words have been coopted and smeared by people for whom extremist, authoritarian politics masquerade as gospel. Maybe it makes sense to have a moratorium on their English translations, just so we can forge new neural associations? Repentance, in Greek metanoia, is nothing more and nothing less than radical transformation. Repentance is the decisive day you decide to stop drinking. Repentance is when you realize that your life is not about you; when you start volunteering at the food pantry; when you first stand up for the rights of immigrants; when, as a privileged person, you first witness real poverty and realize your life will never be the same. Repentance is turning around the direction of your life and choices and values to be about a larger story—God’s larger story.

Here’s the thorny part of preparation, though: good news comes to those who are ready for it. Preparing for Christ first means identifying those ways in which we have not prepared for Christ—or for love, or for justice, or for peace. It means aligning our inner and outer desires with God’s desires. And we surely have not made a straight path for the new world, the new selves, that God seeks to birth in, around, and through us.

This Christmas, our world needs us to take preparation seriously. And there’s a way in which even the arrival of Christ itself is contingent on our preparation. We don’t cause Christ to come, because God is free, and we’re not that important. But if we do not prepare for this arrival, then we will surely fail to recognize good news when it comes. So whenever we pray the Advent prayer “Come, Lord Jesus,” we are also pledging to prepare, to repent, to turn our lives—and our country, and our world—around for love.

Trusting the Unknown Path

Father Richard Rohr describes how he came to trust God in times of uncertainty and even apparent darkness:

I came out of the seminary in 1970 thinking that my job was to have an answer for every question. What I’ve learned is that not-knowing and often not even needing to know are—surprise of surprises—deeper ways of knowing and a deeper falling into compassion. This is surely what the mystics mean by “death” and why they talk of it with so many metaphors. It is the essential transition. Maybe that is why Jesus praised faith even more than love; maybe that is why St. John of the Cross called faith “luminous darkness.” Yes, love is the final goal but ever deeper trust inside of darkness is the path for getting there. [1]

My good friend Gerald May shed fresh light on the meaning of John of the Cross’ phrase “the dark night of the soul.” He said that God has to work in the soul in secret and  in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery/God/grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or to stop the whole process. May writes:

The dark night is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely. Sometimes this letting go of old ways is painful, occasionally even devastating. But this is not why the night is called “dark.” The darkness of the night implies nothing sinister, only that the liberation takes place in hidden ways, beneath our knowledge and understanding. It happens mysteriously, in secret, and beyond our conscious control. [2]

No one oversees their own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying. God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace, as “deep calls unto deep” (Psalm 42:8). In other words, the Spirit initiates deep resonance and intimacy with our spirit, as the endless divine yes evokes an ever-deeper yes in us. [3]

As James Finley, one of CAC’s core faculty members, says, “The mystic is not someone who says, ‘Look what I have done!’ The mystic is one who says, ‘Look what love has done to me. There’s nothing left but God’s intimate love giving itself to me as me.’ That’s the blessedness in poverty: when all in us that is not God dissolves, and we finally realize that we are already as beautiful as God is beautiful, because God gave the infinite beauty of God as who we are.

A Dance of Intimacy

Richard Rohr reflects on the dance of divine intimacy:

The divine-human love affair really is a reciprocal dance. Sometimes, in order for us to step forward, our partner must step away a bit. The withdrawal lasts only a moment, and its purpose is to pull us closer—but it doesn’t feel like that in the moment. It feels like our partner is retreating.

God creates the pullback, “hiding his face,” as it was called by many mystics and scriptures. God creates a vacuum that God alone can fill. Then God waits to see if we will trust our God partner to eventually fill that space within us, which now has grown even more spacious and receptive. This is the central theme of darkness, necessary doubt, or what the mystics call “God’s withdrawing of love.” What feels like suffering, depression, uselessness—moments when God has withdrawn—are often deep acts of trust and invitations to intimacy on God’s part. On the soul’s inner journey, we meet a God who interacts with our deepest selves, allowing and forgiving mistakes. It is precisely this give-and-take, and knowing there will be give-and-take, that makes God so real as a Lover. [1]

A translator of Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542­–1591), Mirabai Starr offers this stirring description of the dark night, in which God moves from dynamic presence to loving absence:

Say when you were very young the veil lifted just enough for you to glimpse the underlying Real behind it and then dropped again. Maybe it never recurred, but you could not forget. And this discovery became the prime mover of the rest of your life in ways you may not have even noticed….

Say these [spiritual] practices fill your heart. They make you feel holiness like wind through every fiber of your being and think rivers of holy thoughts…. The passion of your love for God intensifies….

Say prayer starts to dry up on your tongue. Sacred literature becomes fallen leaves, blows away. Meditation brings no serenity anymore. Devotion grows brittle, cracks. The God you bow down to no longer draws you….

Say each of the familiar spiritual rooms you go to seeking refuge are dark now, and empty. You sit down anyway. You take off your clothes at the door and enter naked. All agendas have fallen away…. This quietude deepens in proportion to your surrender.

Say what’s secretly going on is that the Beloved is loving you back. That your first glimpse of the Absolute was God’s first great gift to you. That your years of revelation inside his many vessels was his second gift, wherein, like a mother, he was holding you, like a child, close to his breast, tenderly feeding you. And that this darkness of the soul you have come upon and cannot seem to come out of is his final and greatest gift to you.

Because it is only in this vast emptiness that he can enter, as your Beloved, and fill you. Where the darkness is nothing but unutterable radiance

Saying Yes to Love

Friday, December 5, 2025

Father Richard describes intimacy with God as a loving yes to Divine Presence: 

For Christians who have gone to their own depths, there is the uncovering of an indwelling Presence—a deep, loving “yes” inherent within us. In Christian theology, this inner Presence is described as the Holy Spirit, which is precisely God as immanent, within, and even our deepest, truest self. God is the very ground of our Being. 

Some mystics have described this Presence as “closer to me than I am to myself” or “more me than I am myself.” Many of us would also describe this as the True Self, as Thomas Merton did. Yet it still must be awakened and chosen. The Holy Spirit is totally given and given equally to all, but must be consciously received, too. The Presence needs to be recognized, honored, and drawn upon to become a living Presence within us. 

From this more spacious and grounded place, one naturally connects, empathizes, forgives, and loves just about everything. We were made in love, for love, and unto love, and it is out of this love that we act. This deep inner “yes” that is God in me, is already loving God through me. [1] 

Seeking to experience God’s love more fully, spiritual director Colette Lafia asks a monk with whom she is friends, “How do I let God love me more?”:  

Without missing a beat, Brother Paul answered in his joyful tone, “God cannot love you more. God already loves you infinitely. You just need to become more aware of [God’s] love … by becoming more present to it. It’s like hearing birdcalls. By paying attention and delighting in it.”  

With Brother Paul’s wisdom etched in my mind, I prayed to be more receptive to the landscape of love within my heart and all around me, recognizing that I was already in a love relationship with the Divine, as are you…. 

In our journey towards a deeper and more abiding love relationship with the Divine, we grow by encountering and understanding our barriers. At the same time, stay open to the glimmerings of God’s grace that you can feel, see, or intuit. As you surrender all aspects of your inner knowing, grace, and resistance, you’ll enter into a fuller relationship with God’s boundless love.  

How do we make receptivity a foundation of our relationship with the Divine and of our life of prayer? To give love, we also need to be able to receive it. This invitation to receptivity encourages us to listen to the stirrings of love, release into communion with God, and become more present to Divine love. “God cannot love you more. God already loves you infinitely.” Embracing this love, we can respond to God, others, and all of life from our heart, which is the source of compassion toward all. [2]  

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“We are creatures of sense and of spirit, and we must live an amphibious life.”

– Evelyn Underhill, British Poet and Mystic

The Christian mystics and theologians have always maintained that we are a mixture, synthesis, or hybrid of matter and spirit.

In some sense, the Chalcedonian Creed of 451 resolved this issue for us.  In that creed, the idea is that the two natures of Jesus (human and divine) exist “without confusion, division, separation, or change.”  Meaning, matter and spirit are not antagonistic or in enmity with one another.

We, though, who are with both a material and spiritual nature in our own way, must learn to navigate both worlds.  Some of us fail to live life well because we neglect the spiritual, and some of us fail to live the spiritual life well because we neglect the physical…

Which is why this insight from Evelyn Underhill intrigues me: we must learn to be “amphibious.”

2.

“I believe God is too delighted in you to have a plan for you.”

– Father Greg Boyle, Founder of Homeboy Industries

This past week, I have had two or three conversations about “God’s will.”

It can be discussed in a manner that is quite oppressive.

You and I must carefully navigate figuring out God’s will for our lives, and if we do not find it or follow it, we can somehow thwart God Almighty’s plan for our lives, as well as negatively impact the lives of those around us in concentric circles.

At one point, I even said to someone, “You know, none of us would force our agenda for our kids’ lives on them in such a way that would produce their suffering, and yet, we think that God would do that… But God doesn’t.  That kind of god, who imposes a foreign will on us, would be abusive.”

If anything, God is so enamored with us that God plans that we learn to follow our own desires and to discover who we are, our whole lives long, constantly, and to invite God along in that journey… simply because we know it would be a joyous adventure for God to join us in us following our healthiest and holiest of desires.

You know, I may write more on this topic in a blog or a book.  That sounds like a good idea.

3.

“Fanaticism is always a function of repressed doubt.”

– Frank Herbert in Dune

In my current context of North America, I am acutely aware of the fanaticism that I see in our religious and political spheres.

What worries me is how little we can admit and announce our doubts about anything.  Admitting or announcing doubts is seen as a weakness rather than a humble pursuit of firmer ground.

If we do not learn to appreciate and carry our doubts in a healthy and holy way, I unfortunately believe fanaticism will only continue to rise.

4.

“True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.”

– William Penn, Quaker Founder of the State of Pennsylvania

Either I did not know, or I forgot, that William Penn was a Quaker.

Regardless, I agree with his sentiment here.

Healthy religion leads us to be better in the world and to look for ways to improve it.  The problem is that for those who have succumbed to unhealthy religion, they may THINK they are better in the world and looking for ways to better the world, but…

The proof is in the pudding.

Or, as Jesus would say it,

“You will know a tree by its fruit.” (Matthew 7:15-20, Paraphrased.)

Suppose an interpretation of a faith system produces the “fruit” of angry, resentful individuals who are violent, scapegoating, and constantly threatening to the world around them.  In that case, that is a tree with “bad fruit,” and it absolutely deserves to be cut down and thrown into the fire. 

5.

“Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return.”

– Thomas Kelly, Quaker Mystic

Wow.

This is poetic.

It is VERY Quaker.

And yet, it also resonates with my understanding of the wisdom of Theresa of Avila’s Interior Castle.  That same insight also sounds similar to Thomas Merton’s insight about the Pointe Vierge in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. 

May it be a part of a universal and perennial wisdom?

Every generation must come to its own formulation or description of the mystery that God is deeply within each of us.  Every generation likely doubts this reality, but that is why every generation needs its prophet or mystic who can reach them and tell them that the Spirit of God is already present within and speaking from within.

Courageous Vulnerability

Thursday, December 4, 2025

I am a Christian because of women who said yes.   
—Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith  

Public theologian Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) reflects on how Mary’s yes was pivotal to the Incarnation.    

I am more aware than ever of the startling and profound reality that I am a Christian not because of anything I’ve done but because a teenage girl living in occupied Palestine at one of the most dangerous moments in history said yes—yes to God, yes to a wholehearted call she could not possibly understand, yes to vulnerability in the face of societal judgment, yes to the considerable risk of pregnancy and childbirth… yes to a vision for herself and her little boy of a mission that would bring down rulers and lift up the humble, that would turn away the rich and fill the hungry with good things, that would scatter the proud and gather the lowly [see Luke 1:51–53], yes to a life that came with no guarantee of her safety or her son’s.  

By becoming human, God encourages us to honor the vulnerability of our own lives: 

It is nearly impossible to believe: God shrinking down to the size of a zygote, implanted in the soft lining of a woman’s womb…. God inching down the birth canal and entering this world covered in blood, perhaps into the steady, waiting arms of a midwife. God crying out in hunger. God reaching for his mother’s breasts. God totally relaxed, eyes closed, his chubby little arms raised over his head in a posture of complete trust. God resting in his mother’s lap…. 

I cannot entirely make sense of the storyline: God trusted God’s very self, totally and completely and in full bodily form, to the care of a woman. God needed women for survival. Before Jesus fed us with the bread and the wine, the body and the blood, Jesus himself needed to be fed, by a woman. He needed a woman to say: “This is my body, given for you.”…  

To understand Mary’s humanity and her central role in Jesus’s story is to remind ourselves of the true miracle of the Incarnation—and that is the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crises and in our endurance of Empire, in smelly barns and unimpressive backwater towns, in the labor pains of a new mother and in the cries of a tiny infant. In all these things, God is with us—and God is for us. And through Mary’s example, God invites us to take the risk of love—even though it undoubtedly opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt, being scared, and feeling disappointed.   

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Emmanuel in the Ordinary: Our Yes to God’s Nearness

A Companion Devotional to “Mary and the Power of Yes”

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Reflection

If Mary’s yes opened the door to the Incarnation, our own small yeses keep that door from closing. The miracle of Emmanuel—God with us—didn’t end in Bethlehem. It continues in every moment we choose vulnerability over safety, presence over distance, trust over control.

Consider this: God chose not merely to visit humanity but to need us. Before Christ offered himself as bread and wine, he needed Mary’s milk. Before he could save the world, he required a woman’s courage to say yes to a call she couldn’t fully understand. This is the scandalous beauty of the Incarnation—God made himself dependent on human cooperation.

The God who meets us is not distant or abstract but draws intimately near, honoring us by seeking to understand our stories. Just as God asked Hagar “What’s your story?” in the desert, God comes to satisfy our deepest need, embracing us with a love that will never let go.

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God in the Unlikely Places

God reveals himself in unexpected locations—not just in sacred spaces but in wilderness places, in desperation and wandering. Mary encountered the angel in her ordinary bedroom. The shepherds received the announcement in their fields. God pitches his tent next to ours, moves into our neighborhood, enters our waiting rooms and traffic jams and dirty dishes.

Whether we face sin and failure, grief and despair, or simply seek meaning and purpose, God embraces us with forgiving, comforting, and encouraging love. No place is godforsaken when God chooses to show up there.

This Advent, ask yourself: Where do I least expect to find God? Your commute? Your difficult conversation? Your fear? Perhaps that’s exactly where Emmanuel waits.

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Our Turn to Say Yes

Mary’s yes wasn’t a single moment but a lifestyle—a continuing wholehearted consent to God’s will unfolding in unexpected ways. She said yes at the Annunciation. She said yes at the manger. She said yes at the cross, becoming mother to all of Jesus’s disciples.

Your yes matters too. Not because you can save everyone or change everything, but because God invites you into co-creation. You cannot say yes for all humanity as Mary did, but you can say yes in your small corner of the world. You can:

• Say yes to noticing the overlooked person
• Say yes to honest vulnerability in a relationship
• Say yes to the risky work of love
• Say yes to showing up even when it’s inconvenient
• Say yes to God’s call even when you can’t see the outcome

Each time we die to self and consent to the challenges of love, we rise to new life in the same surrender, completing our own baptismal journey.

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Prayer for Today

God of the ordinary and extraordinary,

Thank you for drawing near—for choosing not to stay distant but to dwell with us in our most vulnerable moments. Thank you that you trusted yourself completely to human care, that you needed us then and invite our participation still.

Give me Mary’s courage to say yes to your mysterious callings. Help me believe that my small yeses matter, that my willingness to risk love opens space for your kingdom to break through.

Teach me to find you in unexpected places—in my wilderness, in my waiting, in my weakness. Let me pitch my tent next to yours, knowing you have already moved into my neighborhood.

May I trust that vulnerability is not weakness but the posture of incarnation. May I remember that you, the Almighty, chose the low way—power in humility, strength perfected in weakness.

This Advent, make me attentive to where you show up and brave enough to say yes.

Amen.

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Questions for Reflection

1. Where in your life right now is God inviting you to say yes to something that feels risky or vulnerable?
2. What “unlikely places” in your daily routine might God be trying to meet you that you’ve been overlooking?
3. How does knowing that God chose to be vulnerable and dependent change the way you view your own weakness or need?
4. If Mary’s yes opened the door to salvation, what doors might your small yeses open for others?

Echoing Mary’s Yes

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Spiritual seeker and writer Katie Gordon reflects on the Magnificat, Mary’s prophetic song.  

In the Gospel of Luke, the Magnificat are the words that Mary sings when she is with her cousin Elizabeth, and they are celebrating the surprise of new life in their wombs. Apart from the expected course either of their lives would take, still they said “yes” to that movement of the Holy Spirit within each of them. 

This song that then flowed out of Mary’s faithful heart flipped the script of power in society. She, a lowly young girl, pregnant and unmarried, easily dismissed or decried by most of society, becomes the most blessed. Like the work of the Holy Spirit, her very being disrupted the status quo, and to this day, her words call us into the renewing spirit of mercy and justice…. 

Mary is telling us that when Christ comes into this world, when compassion becomes enfleshed, we gain a new paradigm. We are offered a new way of life, a new set of values to live by. And who brings this good news? It isn’t the kings or priests; it is two ordinary women, who through their encounter in friendship sing the vision into our tradition. These two pregnant women show us how to bring and embrace new life, and it is not revealed to us from a church or temple, but rather from the sanctuary of a home, in the intimacy of their relationship, and in their very bodies. 

Gordon visits a chapel located deep in the woods that features a statue of the pregnant Madonna accompanied by the words of the Magnificat:  

Here, outside of and far away from the seat of power in any traditional church, is where I find hope. In the voice of an outsider who gave birth to this radical vision of a changing and evolving world. In the counter-cultural, revolutionary message at the heart of the faith. In a song of praise that invites us to flip the paradigms of power, not just in church, but in society, too…. 

When we sing that the hungry will be fed, I think of all the mutual aid efforts, soup kitchens, and neighbors who feed one another, not out of obligation but out of love and care. 

When we sing that the humble will be upheld, I think of the dignity of immigrants and refugees, who amid the unjust and illegal deportations, are finding strength in their communities as people are protecting and fighting for one another day after day after day. 

And finally, when we sing of the promise made to our ancestors, to Sarah and to Abraham, I try to remember far enough back to feel the covenantal belonging, this lineage of love that stretches before I was here and far beyond my own time. I’m reminded of my small part in this larger and longer story, of saying “yes” like Mary whenever I can, to bringing new and renewing life into our world, here and now. 

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Sarah Young

Jesus Calling: December 3

Do not be surprised by the fiery attacks on your mind. When you struggle to find Me and to live in My Peace, don’t let discouragement set in. You are engaged in massive warfare, spiritually speaking. The evil one abhors your closeness to Me, and his demonic underlings are determined to destroy our intimacy. When you find yourself in the thick of battle, call upon My Name: “Jesus, help me!” At that instant, the battle becomes Mine; your role is simply to trust Me as I fight for you.
     My Name, properly used, has unlimited Power to bless and protect. At the end of time, every knee will bow (in heaven, on earth, and under the earth), when My Name is proclaimed. People who have used “Jesus” as a shoddy swear word will fall down in terror on that awesome day. But all those who have drawn near Me through trustingly uttering My Name will be filled with inexpressible and glorious Joy. This is your great hope, as you await My return.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Ephesians 6:12 (NLT)
12 For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Additional insight regarding Ephesians 6:12: These who are not “flesh-and-blood enemies” are demons over whom the devil has control. They are not mere fantasies – they are very real. We face a powerful army whose goal is to defeat Christ’s church. When we believe in Christ, these beings become our enemies, and they try every device to turn us away from him and back to sin. Although we are assured of victory, we must engage in the struggle until Christ returns, because Satan is constantly battling against all who are on the Lord’s side. We need supernatural power to defeat Satan, and God has provided this by giving us his Holy Spirit within us and his armor surrounding us. If you feel discouraged, remember Jesus’ words to Peter: “Upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it” (Matthew 16:18).

1st Samuel 17:47 (NLT)
47 And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with sword and spear. This is the Lord’s battle, and he will give you to us!”

Philippians 2:9-10 (NLT)
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
    and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

Additional insight regarding Philippians 2:9-11: At the Last Judgement, even those who are condemned will recognize Jesus’ authority and right to rule. People can choose now to commit their lives to Jesus as Lord or be forced to acknowledge him as Lord when he returns. Christ may return at any moment. Are you prepared to meet him?

1st Peter 1:8-9 (NLT)
8 You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. 9 The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 1:8: Jesus had said to his disciple Thomas, who came to believe after touching the resurrected Christ: “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me” (John 20:29). Peter, having heard those words, repeats them here: “You love him even though you have never seen him.” That faith brings both salvation and the promise of a day when pain will end and perfect justice will begin. This is mentioned in 1st Peter 1:9: “The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.” Faith will be rewarded and evil will be punished. But what should we do until then? The Bible’s answer is simple but not easy: Because we know the future, we must faithfully serve God here and now. If today that means resolving a conflict, mending a hurt, working a dull job, confronting a belligerent child, rebuilding a marriage, or just waiting for guidance – do it all with the joy of God, who will return with his reward!

Responding to God’s Yes

Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Richard Rohr envisions our yeses as a response to God’s first yes to us.

We have in Mary’s story what some call the second creation story in the Bible. It’s a creation seemingly “out of nothing.” Mary is the one quite willing to be “nothing.” God doesn’t need worthiness ahead of time; God creates worthiness by the choice itself. As I’ve often said, God doesn’t love us because we are good; we are good because God loves us. It seems God will not come into the world unreceived or uninvited. God does not come into the world unless we want God. God offers the Divine Presence, “the banquet,” but presence itself is a reciprocal concept. God is the eternal “I” waiting for those willing to be a “Thou.”

It’s no surprise that Mary became the icon of prayer for so many in Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, and in many religious orders, even though the Bible never once mentions her “praying.” The closest is that lovely line in Luke: “She treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 51). Why? Because every time we pray, it’s God in us telling us to pray. We wouldn’t even desire to pray except for God in us. It’s God in us that loves God, that desires God, that seeks God (see Romans 8:14–27). Every time we choose God on some level, God has in the previous nanosecond just chosen us, and we have somehow allowed ourselves to be chosen—and responded back (John 15:16). 194-195

We don’t know how to say yes by ourselves. We just “second the motion”! There is a part of us, the Holy Spirit within, that has always said yes to God. God first says “yes” inside of us, and we say, “Oh yeah,” thinking it comes from us. In other words, God rewards us for letting God reward us. That is worth noticing, maybe even for the rest of our lives.

Are we ever completely ready to echo God’s “yes”? Probably not, but I am convinced that the struggle is good and even necessary. Struggle carves out the space within us for deep desire. God both creates the desire and fulfills it. Our job is to be the desiring. For God to work in our lives, our fiat, like Mary’s “Let it be done unto me, according to your word” (Luke 1:38), is still essential.

We all find ourselves with this surprising ability to love God and to desire love from God, often for no reason in particular. That doesn’t happen every day, truly, but hopefully arises more often as we learn to trust and rest in life. Moments of unconditional love sort of slip out of us and no one is more surprised when they happen. But when they do, we always know we are living inside of a Larger Life than our own. We know, henceforth, that our life is not about us, but we are about God.

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Jesus Calling: December 2

I AM the Prince of Peace. As I said to My disciples, I say also to you: Peace be with you. Since I am your constant Companion. My Peace is steadfastly with you. When you keep your focus on Me, you experience both My Presence and My Peace. Worship Me as King of kings, Lord of lords, and Prince of Peace.
     You need My Peace each moment to accomplish My purposes in your life. Sometimes you are tempted to take shortcuts, in order to reach your goal as quickly as possible. But if the shortcut requires turning your back on My peaceful Presence, you must choose the longer route. Walk with Me along paths of Peace, enjoy the journey in My Presence.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Isaiah 9:6 (NLT)
6 For a child is born to us,
    a son is given to us.
The government will rest on his shoulders.
    And he will be called:
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Additional insight regarding Isaiah 9:2-6: In a time of great darkness, God promised to send a light who would shine on everyone living in the shadow of death. He is both “Wonderful Counselor” and “Mighty God.” This message of hope was fulfilled in the birth of Christ and the establishment of his eternal kingdom. He came to deliver all people from their slavery to sin.

John 20:19-21 (NLT)
Jesus Appears to His Disciples
19 That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. 20 As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! 21 Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

Psalm 25:4 (NLT)
4 Show me the right path, O Lord;
    point out the road for me to follow.

Expanding Beyond Ourselves

Monday, December 1, 2025

Author Stephanie Duncan Smith writes of Mary’s yes to God as a choice for expansion over contraction, mirroring God’s own yes in creation: 

Genesis tells the story of God’s radical choice for expansion over happiness, and the world is born. Advent echoes and reprises this divine choice, and the world is reborn. First, life from the womb of God, now, life from a woman who made a radical choice for expansion, not just over happiness, but over personal comfort, safety, and reputation. Expansion was the call, and against its many risks, the mother of God said yes—stretching her body as well as her imagination for just what kind of hope this might be, growing now within her.  

Had she said no, she would not have faced public scrutiny or physical endangerment as an unmarried pregnant woman in her day would have faced. She would have been spared the empire’s hunt for her blacklisted family, driving them to live the life of refugees on the run. And she would have never known the unthinkable loss of watching her firstborn take his last breath.  

Her path would have been so much safer, perhaps easier and even happier, if Mary had just not. And yet she chose the growing edge, where our truest self and life will always be found. And this choice made way for the life of the world. [1]  

Duncan Smith invites us to consider how we are being asked to expand our hearts in this season: 

There are many ways for a life to expand. Some will do so through this particular muscle of women, though pregnancy is far from the exclusive icon of expansion, neither is it the primary metaphor. The stretching of a belly is not sure equivalence to the stretching of the heart, and the heart that stretches may never manifest itself in the body….  

We stretch by reaching toward each other—by reaching out from the solo act into the plural “we,” the pronoun God loves most. Life is long, the feast is wide, and we are meant for keeping it together. Our hearts are a muscle made in the image of God, made for connection. And there are so many ways of being kindred.  

We enact our own advents every time we brave reaching beyond the borders of the self toward each other. Expansion is the anthem of anyone who is “brave enough to break your own heart.” [2] Every time we reach toward each other—considering the risk, compelled by love—we sing its anthem anew….[3]  

Advent is nothing if not the story of beginnings, revealing a God who dares to expand, who chooses enlargement over happiness, no matter the chaos. This season shows us the astonishing view of a God gone radial, one who will never stop reaching toward his beloved, no matter the risks. And so, in the true spirit of Advent, we find our courage to chance. [4]  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Bask in the luxury of being fully understood and unconditionally loved. Dare to see yourself as I see you: radiant in My righteousness, cleansed by My blood. I view you as the one I created you to be, the one you will be in actuality when heaven becomes your home. It is My Life within you that is changing you from glory to glory. Rejoice in this mysterious miracle! Thank Me continually for the amazing gift of My Spirit within you.
     Try to depend on the help of the Spirit as you go through this day of life. Pause briefly from time to time so you can consult with this Holy One inside you. He will not force you to do His bidding, but He will guide you as you give Him space in your life. Walk along this wondrous way of collaboration with My Spirit.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 34:5 (NIV)
5 Those who look to him are radiant;
    their faces are never covered with shame.

2nd Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2nd Corinthians 3:18 (NIV)
18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Galatians 5:25 (NIV)
25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.