In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.
—John 1:1, 3 

Drawing on the wisdom of Franciscan theology, Father Richard Rohr writes that the Incarnation begins first with the birth of the cosmos, long before the birth of Jesus: 

What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began? Is there even such a thing as “before”? Why did God create at all? What was God’s purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal, or is the universe a creation in time as we know it—like Jesus himself? 

Let’s admit that we will probably never know the “how” or even the “when” of creation. But the question that religion tries to answer is mostly the “why.” Is there any evidence for why God created the heavens and the earth? What was God up to? Was there any divine intention or goal, or do we even need a creator “God” to explain the universe? 

Most of the perennial wisdom traditions have offered explanations, and they usually go something like this: Everything that exists in material form is the offspring of some Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit. This Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and humans. This self-disclosure of whomever we call God into physical creation was the first Incarnation (the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus. 

When Christians hear the word “incarnation,” most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God’s radical unity with humanity. But I want to suggest that the first Incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. This, I believe, is why light is the subject of the first day of creation. 

The Incarnation, then, is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). John is speaking of the ubiquitous Christ we continue to encounter in other human beings, a mountain, a blade of grass, or a starling. 

“Christ” is a word for the Primordial Template (Logos or Word) through whom “all things came into being, and not one thing had its being except through him” (John 1:3). Seeing in this way has reframed, reenergized, and broadened my own religious belief, and I believe it could be Christianity’s unique contribution among the world religions.

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Christ in Every Thing

Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
— Colossians 1:15–17  

Father Richard describes how early Christians understood Christ to be a transcendent Presence dwelling in and with them, transforming all things. 

The Christ Mystery is the indwelling of the Divine Presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time.

As the twentieth-century English mystic Caryll Houselander said, “Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life.” [1]   

If this seems to us today somehow exotic, it certainly wouldn’t have to early Christians. The revelation of the Risen Christ as ubiquitous and eternal was clearly affirmed in the Scriptures (Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1) and in the early church, when the euphoria of the Christian faith was still creative and expanding. In our time, however, this deep mode of seeing must be approached as something of a reclamation project. After the Western and Eastern Churches separated in the Great Schism of 1054, we in the West gradually lost this profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is. Instead, we gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus, when perhaps it is as ubiquitous as light itself—and uncircumscribable by human boundaries.   

If my own experience is any indication, discovering Christ as the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe can transform the way we perceive and the way we live in our everyday world. It can offer us the deep and universal meaning that Western civilization seems to lack and long for today. It has the potential to reground Christianity as a natural religion and not one based on a special revelation, available only to a few lucky enlightened people.   

As G. K. Chesterton expressed, our religion is not the church we belong to, but the cosmos we live inside of. [2] Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.”   

Religion’s essential function is to radically connect us with everything (re-ligio= to re-ligament or reconnect). A cosmic notion of the Christ competes with and excludes no one, but includes everyone and everything (Acts 10:15, 34) and allows Jesus Christ to finally be a God figure worthy of the entire universe. In this understanding of the Christian message, the Creator’s love and presence are grounded in the created world, and the mental distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” falls apart. 

Rightful and Radical Amazement

Friday, December 19, 2025

Richard Rohr insists we thrive when we understand our rightful place in the cosmic order:

Our ordinary lives are given extraordinary significance when we accept that our lives are about something much larger. Our pain is a participation in God’s redemptive suffering, and our creativity is God’s passion for the world. I don’t need to be the whole play or even understand the full script. It’s enough to know that I have been chosen to be one actor on the stage, playing my part as well as I can.

The word disaster comes from a Latin word meaning “to be disconnected from the stars.” The stars represented the great and universal story. Our lives are usually a disaster unless we live under these stars. When we sense that our little story is part of the great story, we are basically content. No amount of psychology and therapy can offer us such a cosmology; I believe only good religion can. [1]

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), known for his prophetic work for justice, also modeled a commitment to “radical amazement”:

The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime….

We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.

All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it….

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. 

Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery. 

Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. 

Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God. [2]

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“Your accumulated offenses do not surpass the multitude of God’s mercies; your wounds do not surpass the great physician’s skill.”

– Cyril of Jerusalem, 4th Century Early Church Father

The second sentence here is what gets me.

There is hope.

There is always hope.

No matter how bad or terrible, how broken or wounded we feel, there is always the opportunity for things to heal.

My lovely wife once said, “You know, some people’s understanding of God can’t live up to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.”

She’s right.  (She is often right.)

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

2.

“Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion really means.”

– Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Activist

The intersection of religion and politics is a tricky one today. 

Even I admit that I do not like the way that I see politics and religion mixing in the public discourse of America.  However, I think this is born out of a simplistic and impoverished understanding of religion.

For many, religion is a means of identifying what “tribe” or “group” you are a part of.

However…

Healthy and mature religion does not draw tribal lines of Us vs Them.  Healthy and mature religion says to “love thy neighbor as yourself.”  This means that a healthy and mature understanding of religion will want to call out and challenge abusive or oppressive laws that trample on the “least of these” and remind those at the top of political hierarchies to live with wisdom, patience, integrity, and humility.

Religion is not supposed to be an endorser of whatever the government does, religion is supposed to remind us that we are all connected and need one another.

3.

“To be born again is not to become someone else, but to become ourselves.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

In the modern world, we are often being told who to be.  We are told what is lovable and desirable.  We are told how to be, what to do, how to dress, how to talk, and how to walk.

No wonder that when people convert to a new value system (preferably one built on unconditional love), there is a massive sense of freedom and becoming.

In the New Testament, the phrase “born again” can also be translated as “born from above.”

Imagine that…

Being born into another value system, another framework, another mode of living than that of our modern culture?  What does it look like for us to be born of the virtues of God rather than the vices of a culture? 

4.

“The people who know God well, the mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God always meet a lover, not a dictator.”

– Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Friar

No one comes back from an authentic experience of God and reports that we are all in trouble. 

5.

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

– Maya Angelou, American Poet and Activist

Now that’s just funny.

I have also heard it said that you can know a person rather well by how they respond to whether the Wi-Fi is working.

That said, the tangled knot that is Christmas lights is a good gauge of whether they are patient, methodical problem-solvers, or have latent anger issues. 

 

Reverence for Reality

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
—Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

Barbara Brown Taylor writes of the humility necessary to experience reverence for the world around us:

According to the classical philosopher Paul Woodruff, reverence is the virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods. “To forget that you are only human,” he says, “to think you can act like a god—this is the opposite of reverence.” [1] While most of us live in a culture that reveres money, reveres power, reveres education and religion, Woodruff argues that true reverence cannot be for anything that human beings can make or manage by ourselves.

By definition, he says, reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self—something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding. God certainly meets those criteria, but so do birth, death, sex, nature, truth, justice, and wisdom….

Reverence stands in awe of something—something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits—so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well. An irreverent soul who is unable to feel awe in the presence of things higher than the self is also unable to feel respect in the presence of things it sees as lower than the self. [2]

Author Victoria Loorz describes how a slower pace allows us to experience reverence for the natural world and others:

Reverence is slow and intentional. It allows awe to fill your lungs and bring tears to your eyes, and it floods your bloodstream with extra oxygen and energy. Wandering with reverence means you’re looking at the world with softened eyes that no longer see others as objects of beauty or utility. Reverence allows you to behold the trees and waters and tiny ants as separate beings…. You acknowledge them as individuals who are as concerned about their own survival and enjoyment of life as you are about yours. They are as important to their relations as you are to yours. John O’Donohue, a Celtic poet, philosopher, and priest, wrote the book (in both senses of that phrase) on Anam Cara, or “soul friends.”… He says, “Reverence bestows dignity and it is only in the light of dignity that the beauty and mystery of a person will become visible.” [3] The same applies to seeing the dignity of a tree or a place or even yourself….

Even if you can’t initially conjure this deferential respect for beings who are not human, just intending the posture of reverence makes room for relationship. This, in turn, makes room for the presence of the holy. According to O’Donohue, “What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach…. When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us.” [4]

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Jesus Calling – December 18th, 2025

Jesus Calling: December 18

When you are plagued by a persistent problem–one that goes on and on–view it as a rich opportunity. An ongoing problem is like a tutor who is always by your side. The learning possibilities are limited only by your willingness to be teachable. In faith, thank Me for your problem. Ask Me to open your eyes and your heart to all that I am accomplishing through this difficulty. Once you have become grateful for a problem, it loses its power to drag you down. On the contrary, your thankful attitude will lift you up into heavenly places with Me. From this perspective, your difficulty can be seen as a slight, temporary distress that is producing for you a transcendent Glory never to cease!

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Isaiah 30:20-21 (NLT)
20 Though the Lord gave you adversity for food
    and suffering for drink,
he will still be with you to teach you.
    You will see your teacher with your own eyes.
21 Your own ears will hear him.
    Right behind you a voice will say,
“This is the way you should go,”
    whether to the right or to the left.

Additional insight regarding Isaiah 30:21: When the people of Jerusalem left God’s path, he would correct them. He will do the same for us. But when we hear his voice of correction, we must be willing to follow it!

2nd Corinthians 4:17 (NLT)
17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!

Additional insight regarding 2nd Corinthians 4:17: Our troubles should not diminish our faith or disillusion us. We should realize that there is a purpose in our suffering. Problems and human limitations have several benefits: 1) they remind us of Christ’s suffering for us; 2) they keep us from pride; 3) they cause us to look beyond this brief life; 4) they give us opportunities to prove our faith to others; and 5) they allow God to demonstrate his power. See your troubles as opportunities!

God is the wisdom of every lifetime, a deep plunge into a clear pool, the sinew and muscle of ethical responsibility, a community of goodness, but always more. Descriptions reach out as far as they can toward the God of the universe, and then, like a rubber band stretched too far, they snap back and we are left with the silence of mystery and awe.
—Barbara Holmes, Liberation and the Cosmos

Father Richard considers how contemplative practice deepens our capacity to experience awe and wonder: 

Moments of awe and wonder are the only solid foundation for the entire religious instinct and journey. Look, for example, at the Exodus narrative: It all begins with a murderer (Moses) on the run from the law, encountering a paradoxical bush that “burns without being consumed.” Struck by awe, Moses takes off his shoes and the very earth beneath his feet becomes “holy ground” (see Exodus 3:2–6) because he has met “Being Itself” (Exodus 3:14). This narrative reveals the classic pattern, repeated in different forms in the varied lives and vocabulary of all the world’s mystics. 

We’re usually blocked against being awestruck, just as we are blocked against great love and great suffering. Early-stage contemplation is largely about identifying and releasing ourselves from these blockages by recognizing the unconscious reservoir of expectations, assumptions, and beliefs in which we are already immersed.  If we don’t see what’s in our reservoir, we will process all new encounters and experiences in the same old-patterned way—and nothing new will ever happen. A new idea held by the old self is never really a new idea, whereas even an old idea held by a new self will soon become fresh and refreshing. Contemplation fills our reservoir with clear, clean water that allows us to encounter experience free of our old patterns. 

Here’s the mistake we all make in our encounters with reality—both good and bad. We don’t realize that it wasn’t the person or event right in front of us that made us angry or fearful—or excited and energized. At best, that is only partly true. If we allowed a beautiful hot air balloon in the sky to make us happy, it was because we were already predisposed to happiness. The hot air balloon just occasioned it. How we see will largely determine what we see and whether it gives us joy or makes us pull back with an emotionally stingy and resistant response. Without denying an objective outer reality, what we are able to see and are predisposed to see in the outer world is a mirror reflection of our own inner world and state of consciousness at that time. Most of the time, we just do not see at all but rather operate on cruise control.

It seems that we humans are two-way mirrors, reflecting both inner and outer worlds. We project ourselves onto outer things and these very things also reflect back to us our own unfolding identity. Mirroring is the way that contemplatives see, subject to subject rather than subject to object.

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DEC 17, 2025. Skye Jethani How Big is God’s Mission?

“I want what breaks God’s heart to break my heart.” You’ve probably heard this well-intentioned cliche in your religious community. It’s a sincere way of expressing a desire to be more like Christ, and that should be affirmed. But have you ever asked, “What doesn’t break God’s heart?” Is there a degree of pain, suffering, or injustice that doesn’t rise to our Lord’s attention? Are there broken things in this world over which the Creator does not grieve? The impulse to label certain things as “breaking God’s heart” implies a category of things beyond his concern. That doesn’t sound like the one Jesus said counts every hair on our head and notices every sparrow that falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29-30). Still, the instinct to prioritize is a part of every religion. It’s a way of ordering the world into what matters and what does not, and then validating those who focus on the “right” things. It’s why so many churches, whether explicitly or implicitly, function with a bifurcated and disintegrated vision of the world. They instinctually label certain things and activities as “sacred” and therefore within the scope of God’s concern, and a far larger group of things and activities as “secular” which exist beyond God’s care if not his sight. Sadly, this tendency has severely reduced our understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and the scope of his redemption.The New Testament repeatedly emphasizes the cosmic scale of Jesus’ sacrifice. Paul said through the cross, God has “reconciled to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Colossians 1:20). And in his most extensive articulation of the gospel (found in 1 Corinthians 15), the Apostle reiterates Jesus’ intent to rule over “all things” no less than eight times! The cosmic scope of Paul’s gospel fits with the Jewish vision of God he inherited from the Hebrew scriptures, which declare, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The next verse does not say God then retired into full-time ministry.And yet, that is how many of us function. We assume that God cares about redeeming souls but not bodies. We think he wants a thriving church but cares nothing about a flourishing school. We believe God wants the gospel preached, but is indifferent to whether a hospital is built. When the church narrowly defines “what breaks God’s heart,” it ends up producing narrow disciples who do not recognize the reign of Christ over every part of their lives and every atom of creation.This error, according to Ed Stetzer, was on display on January 6, 2021, when thousands of rioters—many displaying Christian symbols—violently attacked the U.S. Capitol. Writing about American evangelicalism’s complicity in what unfolded, Stetzer, an evangelical pastor himself, said: “Committed to reaching the world, the evangelical movement has emphasized the evangelistic and pietistic elements of the mission. However, it has failed to connect this mission to justice and politics. The result of this discipleship failure has led us to a place where not only our people, but many of our leaders, were easily fooled and co-opted by a movement that ended with the storming of the Capitol building.” In other words, the problem is not that the church failed to accomplish its mission, but that it defined it too narrowly. When huge parts of our lives and world are seen as beyond Christ’s concern, we shouldn’t be surprised to discover false gods defiling those domains. DAILY SCRIPTURE 1 CORINTHIANS 15:20-28 COLOSSIANS 1:15-20 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Mother Teresa (1910 – 1998) Dear Jesus, Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go. Flood our souls with your Spirit and life. Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through us and be so in us that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us but only Jesus. Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be light to others. Amen.

 

Allow Your Wonder to Wander

Elder and retired pastor Wes Granberg-Michaelson views awe and wonder as resources to inspire us when we come to the end of our own knowing:

When your rational certainty breaks down—as of course it will—give attention to where your soul, the integrated center of your being, wanders. Where are you drawn? What do you long for? What gives you joy? What captures your curiosity? My guess is that you will be drawn to beckoning experiences of connection…. These will likely include connections not only to people, but to the created world where experiences of awe and transcendence intersect with you in worship, music, art, and practices that unlock a fresh spiritual encounter opening your inner self to God’s presence.

Those who are called mystics nearly always display an intimate sense of connection to the created world. Often this comes with striking particularity, like a reflection on a stone, or Julian of Norwich’s vision of a hazelnut. Because mystics grasp the interconnection of all things, they perceive God’s presence as comingled with all creation. Contemplation radicalizes the sense of God’s presence in the world….

But you don’t have to be Julian of Norwich or Thomas Merton to participate in this understanding of interconnectedness. The doorways that open the pathway of this experience will vary according to your life’s setting and history. But in the shroud of intellectual uncertainty and doubt, you are likely to be drawn to experiences with nature that inspire transcendent awe…. You discover instances of inspiration and wonder that move beyond and beneath mere cognition.

Maybe your wandering time leads you on a wilderness hike when you cross a ridge and are awestruck by a shimmering alpine lake reflecting a snow-covered mountain peak like a mirror. Or maybe you happen upon a firefly at nightfall in your backyard, where that tiny, sudden light blinks up, rises, and settles on your arm. In simple and unexpected moments of epiphany, you will sense that you are connected to creation in ways that bypass your self-protective, preoccupied, rational mind. Your task? Be attentive. Allow your wonder to wander.

Granberg-Michaelson shares in a journal entry from his twenties how he was moved by the beauty of creation:

Whenever one is moved to awe by the beauty of creation, one is moved by God. God, the Creator of both the beauty, and of the inner feelings that excite the soul.

The inspiration we feel in the presence of beauty causes us to transcend ourselves, and in so doing, this is the testimony to the presence of God in the world. Regardless of one’s intellectual view of God, when one is moved beyond him or herself, beyond a preoccupation with one’s own being to the recognition of the greatness that is other than him or her, then the inward urge to worship and adore such beauty means one is being moved by God toward God.

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Wrestling Before God. from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest Take up the whole armor of God…praying always… Ephesians 6:13,18 You must learn to wrestle against the things that hinder your communication with God, and wrestle in prayer for other people; but to wrestle with God in prayer is unscriptural. If you ever do wrestle with God, you will be crippled for the rest of your life. If you grab hold of God and wrestle with Him, as Jacob did, simply because He is working in a way that doesn’t meet with your approval, you force Him to put you out of joint (see Genesis 32:24–25). Don’t become a cripple by wrestling with the ways of God, but be someone who wrestles before God with the things of this world, because “we are more than conquerors through Him…” (Romans 8:37 ). Wrestling before God makes an impact in His kingdom. If you ask me to pray for you, and I am not complete in Christ, my prayer accomplishes nothing. But if I am complete in Christ, my prayer brings victory all the time. Prayer is effective only when there is completeness— “take up the whole armor of God….” Always make a distinction between God’s perfect will and His permissive will, which He uses to accomplish His divine purpose for our lives. God’s perfect will is unchangeable. It is with His permissive will, or the various things that He allows into our lives, that we must wrestle before Him. It is our reaction to these things allowed by His permissive will that enables us to come to the point of seeing His perfect will for us. “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God…” (Romans 8:28 )— to those who remain true to God’s perfect will— His calling in Christ Jesus. God’s permissive will is the testing He uses to reveal His true sons and daughters. We should not be spineless and automatically say, “Yes, it is the Lord’s will.” We don’t have to fight or wrestle with God, but we must wrestle before God with things. Beware of lazily giving up. Instead, put up a glorious fight and you will find yourself empowered with His strength.

The roots of ultimate insights are found … on the level of wonder and radical amazement, in the depth of awe, in our sensitivity to the mystery. 
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man 

Richard Rohr teaches that awe is a foundational spiritual experience that keeps us open to the mystery of God: 

I believe the basic, primal, foundational spiritual intuition is a moment of awe and wonder. We say, “God, that’s beautiful!” Why do we so often say “God!” when we have such moments? I think it’s a recognition that this is a godly moment. We are somehow aware that something is just too good, too right, too much, too timely. When awe and wonder are absent from our life, we build our religion on laws and rituals, trying to manufacture some moment of awe. It works occasionally, I guess. 

I think people who live their lives open to awe and wonder have a much greater chance of meeting the Holy than someone who goes to church but doesn’t live in an open way. We almost domesticate the Holy by making it so commonplace. That’s what I fear happens with the way we ritualize worship. I see people come to church day after day unprepared for anything new or different. Even if something new or different happens, they fit it into their old boxes. Their stance seems to be, “I will not be awestruck.” I don’t think we get very far with such resistance to the new, the Real, and the amazing. That’s probably why God allows most of our great relationships to begin with a kind of infatuation with another person—and I don’t just mean sexual infatuation, but any deep admiration or appreciation. It allows us to take our place as a student and learner. If we never do that, nothing new will happen.

I think Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood this when he wrote, “The Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive.” [2] It’s a telling judgment. The Western mind almost refuses to be in awe anymore. It’s only aware of what is wrong, and seemingly incapable of rejoicing in what is still good and true and beautiful. The surest way out of that trap is through a new imagination and new cosmology, often created by positive God-experience. Education, problem-solving, and rigid ideology are ultimately inadequate by themselves to create cosmic hope and meaning. Only great religion can do that, which is probably why Jesus spent so much of his ministry trying to reform religion. 

Healthy religion, which always makes space for Mystery, gives us a foundational sense of awe. It re-enchants an otherwise empty universe. It gives people a universal reverence toward all things. Only with such reverence do we find confidence and coherence. Only then does the world become a safe home. Then we can see the reflection of the divine image in the human, in the animal, in the entire natural world—which has now become inherently “supernatural.”

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Joyful Worship

Grant me the curiosity and awe so that I may honor the bottomless, limitless wonder, beauty, and mystery of this world.
—Brian McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?

Poet and essayist Kathleen Norris considers how our language can dampen our expectation of experiencing awe in God’s presence:

Modern believers tend to trust in therapy more than in mystery, a fact that tends to manifest itself in worship that employs the bland speech of pop psychology and self-help rather than language resonant with poetic meaning—for example, a call to worship that begins: “Use this hour, Lord, to get our perspectives straight again.” Rather than express awe, let alone those negative feelings, fear and trembling, as we come into the presence of God, crying “Holy, Holy, Holy,” we focus totally on ourselves, and arrogantly issue an imperative to God. Use this hour, because we’re busy later, just send us a bill … and we’ll zip off a check in the mail. But the mystery of worship, which is God’s presence and our response to it, does not work that way.

The profound skepticism of our age, the mistrust of all that has been handed to us by our grandfathers and grandmothers as tradition, has led to a curious failure of the imagination, manifested in language that is thoroughly comfortable, and satisfyingly unchallenging.

Brian McLaren reflects on the spontaneous joy and awe of true worship:

Why are the most blessed often the most restrained in their worship, and why are those who have the least in terms of health, wealth, and safety the most ready to “make a joyful noise” and “sing for joy to the Lord”? Is it because they relate to God primarily from their heart rather than their head?… Could it be that our accumulation of possessions and protections coat our souls like rubber gloves, so that we touch, but do not feel?… Could it be that the conceptualized and formalized worship of the “developed world” is actually designed to inhibit and control rather than foment joy?…

The scandalous truth, known by mystics throughout history and affirmed in the pages of our sacred texts, is that when we connect with God, it is as if we are plugging our souls into a pure current of high-voltage joy. The joy that surprised me under the stars [in my mystical experience] in my teens was exactly what the ancient psalmist knew (Psalm 16:11), that God is a joyful being and to enter or awaken to God’s presence is to enjoy a bracing jolt of invigorating delight…. Yes, there is indeed a place for quiet reverence, the dignity of robes, and the noble tranquility of marble columns and pipe organs. But … God is joyful, and God’s joy is contagious. When we tap into the joy of the Lord, when we step into the pure joy that burns like a billion galaxies in the heart of God, we’ll soon find ourselves shouting, dancing, singing, leaping, clapping, swaying, laughing, and otherwise jubilating and celebrating.

Advent Heals the Hurt

Friday, December 12, 2025

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe  

Author Stephanie Duncan Smith writes about her experience of suffering a miscarriage during the Advent season. She recounts how averse she felt to the holiday celebrations in her time of grief:

For the first time in my life, I did not go to the Christmas Eve service. I couldn’t stomach that kind of joy…. I couldn’t participate straight-faced in this remembrance of the ultimate pregnancy narrative, this birth story to end all birth stories, in which God made it from embryo to first howling breath—but my daughter did not.

Cole Arthur Riley writes, “There is no greater exhaustion than a charade of spirituality.” [1] I simply had no energy to keep up the charade.

Duncan Smith describes how Advent honors the darkness present in our lives and world:

When you’re hurting, the only thing worse than the hurt itself is the intimate injury of being told your hurt isn’t that bad, that your pain is somehow unjustified. There is no greater trauma than this invalidation when what you most need is empathetic witness. That’s what Advent felt like to me.

But it wasn’t Advent itself I was bucking against. It was the saccharine, the spin, the half story with the full gloss that rendered this complex coming of God into one-dimensional joy that excludes all other experiences.

The Incarnation always brings good news, but it never minimizes the realness of our pain. Advent declares the hope that a light is coming, but first it declares the truth that the world right now is so very dark. In all the festivities of this season, the threads of Advent and Christmas are commonly confused. The celebration of Christmas only means so much if it bypasses the great waiting, the great groaning, of Advent itself. But this is where the story—and the sacred year itself—begins.

The first language of this expectant season is not bell carols but groaning—the audial ache of a hurting world.

The God of Advent is not a God of indifference, but the God who imagined mirror neurons into existence—the cell network responsible for so much of what makes us human, which is the basic ability to read and respond to the emotional needs of others. Every human encounter of empathy begins with mirror neurons firing in witness to pain.

It is fitting, then, that the sacred year begins with Advent. Human pain is the call—every nerve ending crying out. The Incarnation is the response—every mirror neuron of God firing, volcanic in awakening. God hears the crash and cries of our great fall and, like a mother, comes running. Emmanuel rushes through time and space to be not just near our hurt, but human with us in it.

What I had missed was the very essence of Advent: This is an entire season dedicated to hearing the hurt and naming the night. We are not just allowed to do so, we are openly called to do so.

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John Chaffee 5 on Friday

1.

“Glory to God in the Highest, peace on earth, and goodwill toward mankind.”

– Luke 2:14

Sometimes, I think that we forget how radical the Bible actually is.

God is not some cosmic pharaoh, some divine Genghis Khan, or some holy tyrant.  The beginning of the Nativity story in Luke tells of a completely different story, one that completely discredits every previous conception of God.

Yahweh is wholly invested in “peace on earth” and has nothing but “goodwill toward mankind.”

2.

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

– Earnest Hemingway, American Author

On the heels of the quote above, and in keeping with the insistence that the God revealed in the infant Jesus is peaceful, I would like to offer this one from Hemingway.

Over the past 5 weeks, I have been working with a Mennonite congregation, and have been presented with the topic of nonviolence and being a “conscientious objector” to war.  It has honestly been refreshing and quite stirring to have so many conversations about this topic.

Church history contains many attempts by people far more intelligent than I am to offer nuanced takes on whether there is such a thing as a “just war.”  In fact, in seminary I had to write a paper on the topic (and I wish I could find it again)!

War often takes vices that would be damnable for a person to commit and then scales them across whole nations, making those vices “acceptable.”

For instance…

Stealing bread is seen as wrong, but starving your enemy’s army to death is not.

Stabbing an innocent person you never met before in the street is absolutely evil, but dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is “necessary.”

Do you see what I mean?

And believe me, I completely understand that this is a complex topic.  I have no easy solution or response to the possibility of a just war.  All I am saying is that in the past month, I have met some fascinating people who were conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War and instead worked in hospitals…

And that is an excellent witness to their faith to do such a thing.

3.

“You will see the success of my theories when you recognize yourself as the persecutor.”

– Rene Girard, Social Philosopher and Theologian

Learning about Rene Girard’s conceptualization of the Scapegoat Mechanism was an utter paradigm shift for me.

Girard helped to show me that the Christian story revolves around the Crucifixion, and how it exposes the destructive ways that we allow “sacrificing/scapegoating” other people on the altar of our own desires.

For me, Girard’s work forced me to confront my own worldview and confess that I may have had the Christian story in front of me for literal decades, but still did not understand this one Gospel truth: Christ became the sacrificed scapegoat to reveal humanity’s shameful addiction to victimizing others.

Essentially, by becoming the victim, God revealed that we are far too comfortable being the victimizers of one another.

I fear I am not making any sense.  Or, I am not articulating myself well.

Just go read Rene Girard’s work.  It will change your life.

4.

“The false self is deeply entrenched. You can change your name and address, religion, country, and clothes. But as long as you don’t ask it to change, the false self simply adjusts to the new environment. For example, instead of drinking your friends under the table as a significant sign of self worth and esteem, if you enter a monastery, as I did fasting the other monks under the table could become your new path to glory. In that case, what would have changed? Nothing.”

– Father Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk

Last week, we had another Zoom meetup of the Philly chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society.  We chatted through ch. 5 of New Seeds of Contemplation, which delves into the topic of sainthood and Merton’s teaching on the true self/false self.

In some ways, Keating’s understanding of the true self/false self teaching overlaps with Merton’s, but at a certain point, they diverge and take on different nuances.

During our Zoom call, we agreed on one point: The best spiritual teachers do not teach you a truth or fact, but rather place before you a question that will haunt you the rest of your life.

For Thomas Keating and Thomas Merton, the question they present us is, “Are you living from your false self today?  How can you be more honest and truthful today?”

5.

“Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly? Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran Pastor

The Christmas story tells us something quite profound…

If God were to become a king, he would not come to be born in a palace to royalty, but to two poor and homeless young adults.

Not only that, but this God has no interest in grasping after power, honor, reputation, vanity, arrogance, and individualism.

It is a strange, sad thing, then, that some followers of Jesus do chase after those things.  It instead tells us that the values of the Christian God have not exactly trickled down to his followers.

Fortunately, every Christmas is a fresh opportunity to say that Jesus reveals to us a God that we could not imagine… and therefore it must be true.

Becoming Light for Others

Thursday, December 11, 2025

The dark night of the soul is a deeply personal experience that also has far-reaching implications for how we interact with others. James Finley considers how a dark night can transform our humanity:

[The dark night] has a quality of heightened empathy, heightened compassion, heightened presence…. John of the Cross was really known for a sensitivity to the poor and the sick. He was also known for his compassion. One of the friars writes in their journal, “When we go off in our little Sunday groups and small groups for our walk, we always hope John of the Cross will join us because he always makes us laugh…”. It’s beyond the darkness of this world in a way that paradoxically radicalizes our presence in it to the holiness of life on life’s terms….

Sometimes I say to myself a little prayer in my advancing years, “God, help me to be the kind of old person young people want old people to be. Help me not just to talk like this but help me to walk around like this and answer the phone like this and talk to my grandchildren like this.” We’re all trying to do our best here to walk the walk. [1]

Spiritual director Therese DesCamp has witnessed within herself an ongoing desire to serve others, even in the midst of a dark night:

I think it’s safe to say that dark nights do involve a loss of meaning, loss of joy, and loss of certainty. Doubt and self-doubt are regular visitors, as is deep sorrow.

But if I’m experiencing a dark night, I will still be able to see the humorous side of life. I will be capable of laughter. I may feel deeply the sadness, confusion, and horror of these times—and I may not expect things to get much better. But I can laugh, and most often at myself. I take myself lightly.

Even more clearly, I will be capable of compassion. The dark night does not reduce our capacity to care for others. Rather, it increases that capacity. In fact, some days, caring for others may be the only thing that relieves the suffering of having lost my bearings.

Dark nights don’t involve a diminution of self, but rather a shift in focus away from the ego and onto others. I may no longer have the consolation of feeling like I’m a good person or experiencing the closeness to the “God” that I used to know so intimately. But daily life will be filled with the awareness of the preciousness of all life…. The dark night heightens our connections to all living beings. In a dark night, I feel deeply the sorrow—as well as the joy—of the other. It may be dark in here, but it’s full of love. [2]

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Sarah Young: Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: December 11th

I am working on your behalf. Bring Me all your concerns, including your dreams. Talk with Me about everything, letting the Light of My Presence shine on your hopes and plans. Spend time allowing My Light to infuse your dreams with life, gradually transforming them into reality. This is a very practical way of collaborating with Me. I, the Creator of the universe, have designed to co-create with you. Do not try to hurry this process. If you want to work with Me, you have to accept My time frame. Hurry is not in My nature. Abraham and Sarah had to wait many years for the fulfillment of My promise, a son. How their long wait intensified their enjoyment of this child! Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 36:9 (NLT)
9 For you are the fountain of life,
    the light by which we see.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 36:9: “Fountain of Life” is a vivid image of fresh, cleansing water that gives life to the spiritually thirsty. This same picture is used in Jeremiah 2:13, where God is called the “fountain of living water.” Jesus spoke of himself as living water that could quench thirst forever and give eternal life (John 4:14: “But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”).

Genesis 21:1-7 (NLT)
The Birth of Isaac
21 The Lord kept his word and did for Sarah exactly what he had promised. 2 She became pregnant, and she gave birth to a son for Abraham in his old age. This happened at just the time God had said it would. 3 And Abraham named their son Isaac. 4 Eight days after Isaac was born, Abraham circumcised him as God had commanded. 5 Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born.
6 And Sarah declared, “God has brought me laughter. All who hear about this will laugh with me. 7 Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse a baby? Yet I have given Abraham a son in his old age!”

Hebrews 11:1 (NLT)

Great Examples of Faith

11 Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.

Additional insight regarding Hebrews 11:1: Do you remember how you felt when you were very young and your birthday approached? You were excited and anxious. You knew you would certainly receive gifts and other special treats. But some things would be a surprise. Birthdays combine assurance and anticipation, and so does faith! Faith is the confidence based on past experience that God’s new and fresh surprises will surely be ours. 

Surviving Doubt

John of the Cross describes the doubt that disrupts a soul in the dark night, when all sense of knowing God is absent. Mirabai Starr translates from John’s classic work Dark Night of the Soul:

The deep suffering of the soul … comes not so much from the aridity she must endure but from this growing suspicion that she has lost her way. She thinks that all spiritual blessing is over and that God has abandoned her. She finds neither support nor delight in holy things. Growing weary, she struggles in vain to practice the [prayer methods] that used to yield results.

John of the Cross encourages those experiencing this dark night to trust the silence that comes when we surrender our need to speak to God using words:

This is no time for discursive meditation. Instead, the soul must surrender into peace and quietude, even if she is convinced she is doing nothing and wasting time. She might assume that this lack of desire to think about anything is a sure sign of her laziness. But simple patience and perseverance in a state of formless prayerfulness, while doing nothing, accomplishes great things.

All that is required here is to set her soul free, unencumbered, to let her take a break from ideas and knowledge, to quit troubling herself about thinking and meditating. The soul must content herself with a loving attentiveness toward God, without agitation, without effort, without the desire to taste or feel [God]. These urges only disquiet and distract the soul from the peaceful quietude and sweet ease inherent in the gift of contemplation being offered.

The soul might continue to have qualms about wasting time. She may wonder if it would not be better to be doing something else, since she cannot think or activate anything in prayer. Let her bear these doubts calmly. There is no other way to go to prayer now than to surrender to this sweet ease and breadth of spirit. If the soul tries to engage her interior faculties to accomplish something, she will squander the goodness God is instilling in her through the peace in which she is simply resting….

The best thing for the soul to do is to pay no attention to the fact that the actions of her faculties are slipping away…. She needs to get out of the way. In peaceful plentitude, let her now say “yes” to the infused contemplation God is bestowing upon her…. Contemplation is nothing other than a secret, peaceful, loving inflow of God. If given room, it will fire the soul in the spirit of love.

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What Happens in Prayer is None of My Business

On releasing control, trusting divine mystery, and letting go of results

Mark Longhurst

“What happens in prayer is none of my business. It’s God’s business.” 
—Thomas Keating

Often in my contemplative prayer practice, I expect something to happen. On the lofty spectrum of possibilities, I hope to experience oneness with God, if only for a fleeting moment. Or maybe I will feel myself radically embraced by divine love—again, if only for a moment. On the more practical side of things, at the very least, I hope to emerge from 20-30 minutes of silence refreshed, less reactive, and more centered.

Inevitably, though, something smaller and simpler happens. It could be that I sit there in prayer, snagged by an obsessive thought for nearly the whole time. Each time I attempt to let it go, or say a verse of a Psalm to refocus my attention on God, it pops up again, like a game of whack-a-mole. It could be something I’m supposed to do that day at work or a household task like confirming kids’ doctor appointments. I attempt to let it go and recommit to the silent stillness at hand—or, on less-centered days, I even send myself a quick email reminder.

There are days when I feel incredibly buoyed by prayer, when a snippet of Scripture from lectio divina resonates through my heart for the day, and when I know experientially that I am loved and supported by God. But mostly, my contemplative prayer consists of showing up to God as I am, hurried, relaxed, anxious, happy, frustrated, or whatever, intending but not fully succeeding in practicing receptivity to God’s still presence—and then moving on to the next part of my day. What’s more is that at the end of my meditation sit, I am rarely changed in an overt way. Even if I do feel an encouraging peace or an awareness of deep love, it isn’t some magical alchemy that protects me from, say, reacting defensively to my wife or kids ten minutes later.

This lack of observable outcome—at least in the short term—is why I trust the mystery of Thomas Keating’s quote. Maybe it is not mine to know what is going on in the first place?

Prayer is rarely dramatic. It is showing up to God as I am.

I experience two temptations in prayer. The first is to treat prayer like a technique. If I perform such and such steps, I will succeed in making God’s love more available to me—as if it could be more available than it already is in every moment. If I chant the right number of Psalms, sit in silence in the right way, witness and detach from my thoughts with the right consciousness, inner peace and divine love will be mine. But that treats prayer as a commodity, as a formula that can be applied and with results that are measurable. And prayer doesn’t work that way, because God doesn’t work that way. I can do all the “right” things in prayer and still not experience equanimity after a prayer session. I can do prayer in all the “wrong” ways and still taste peace. Sometimes when I don’t pray in a formal way at all, such as when I’m at the movies, doing dishes, making food, jogging with my wife, or walking my dog, the expansiveness of divine love and peace opens up before me, and often when I least expect it.

The second temptation in prayer is to expect results, like those I shared above. But to reduce prayer to a technique or to expect certain results is to make prayer about me, and not about God—about self-realization instead of self-transcendence (a distinction made by Benedictine Michael Casey in his book Strangers to the City). It’s to think I can track the movements of the soul, as if I can log it in an app, when the wild mercy of God often leaves no trace. Prayer is not about achieving anything, but about allowing God’s action within us, even when it seems like nothing is happening—and even when I’m not allowing God’s action, but instead want to allow it, but unsuccessfully. As Merton said, “Even the desire to please you does in fact please you.” Even the desire to allow God’s action invites God’s mysterious work in my inner life.

There’s another danger inherent here, too, which is to make contemplative prayer, at least as I practice it in the Christian tradition, into therapeutic self-care. I’m all about therapy, self-care, and self-help. I’ll take all the care and help I can get! But to turn contemplative prayer into a technique or result is also to privatize it, whereas Jesus’ message is all about solidarity, especially with those who are suffering the most. This is why I believe that Christian contemplative prayer also has to end with mystical, political solidarity and not simply my individual happiness. Because otherwise it doesn’t really have much to do with Jesus. (See this post and this post for more on that topic).

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.