Mystics and sages of all traditions speak of the inner fire, the divine spark hidden in our very cells and in all that lives. This flame of love is the pure presence of God.
—Paula D’Arcy, “A Surrender to Love,” Oneing, Spring 2017

Richard Rohr points to the inner authority and universal wisdom that characterize the writings of the mystics:

What characterizes the mystics is an amazing, calm clarity because their own agenda, fear, smallness, pettiness, and false self are out of the way. They are able to exist calmly inside of a larger connectivity, and from that place they speak with a kind of authority. That’s part of the reason they’ve always been kept at arm’s length by organized religion. Often, they’re only canonized centuries after they die—if they’re canonized at all. They weren’t quoting our familiar sources, the Scriptures, or systematic theology that make our coherent religious system fit together. Their vocabulary is often very creative, and even idiosyncratic. It’s their own experience, but their experience has become so grounded in an inner certitude that they don’t feel the need to justify it by using the language that the rest of us use. Yet, if we sit with their words and allow them to work upon us, we often find a kind of supreme orthodoxy. [1]

Father Richard praises the inherent humility of the mystics and others who have encountered God:

All the truly great persons I have ever met are characterized by what I would call “radical humility.” They are deeply convinced that they are drawing from another source; they are instruments. Their genius is not their own; it is borrowed. They understand that we are moons, not suns, except in our ability to pass on the light. Our life is not our own, yet, at some level, enlightened people know their life has been given to them as a sacred trust. They live in gratitude and confidence, and they try to let the flow continue through them. They know that love is repaid by love alone, as both St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thérèse of Lisieux taught.

God’s desire and our destinies are already written in our genes, our upbringing, and our natural gifts. To accept that each of us is just ourself is probably the most courageous thing we will ever do. Only the original manufacturer can declare what the product—each one of us—should be; nobody else. “Even every hair of your head has been counted,” as Jesus states (Matthew 10:30). God chooses us into existence, and continues that choice of us every successive moment, or we would fall into non-being. We are interrelated with Essential Being, participating in the very life of God, while living out one little part of that life in our own exquisite form.

Paradoxically, we can say our life is precisely about us, but once we know who we really are, we can hold this exquisite fire without burning up and burning out. [2]

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Five for Friday John Chaffee

“Hope for the best.  Expect the worst.  Life is a play.  We are unrehearsed.”

• Mel Brooks, Comedian and Director
   
  You almost wonder if Mel Brooks recently had in mind Shakespeare’s, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Either way, the comment about all of us being “unrehearsed” grabs my attention most.

2.
“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”

• Allen Ginsberg, Poet
   
  One thing that I have learned in self-publishing 3 books (so far) is that a writer/creator must be detached from any expectation of how it is received.  The instant that we begin to care about the outcome is the very instant that a creative endeavor begins to lose its vitality/edge/honesty.

It is almost as if to say that we speak from our own unique voice when we believe no one is listening.  You know, “dance as if no one is watching”?  Say something truthfully, even if you doubt anyone will pay it any attention.

I can’t help but also think about this within the context of preaching.  How many times have I given a sermon that was not fully from my own voice but rather from a false one that was expecting or hoping for how it would be heard?

How often do we avoid speaking from our own voice because we know who might be listening?  Just a thought.

3.
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”

• Frederick Douglass, African-American Abolitionist
   
  Christianity has a complicated history in America, to say the least.

In the same vein as Frederick Douglass, theologian David Bentley Hart jokingly asks, “When will Christianity finally make it to America?”  Can we even say that what presents itself as Christianity is authentic Christianity?

In all my years of ministry, I found myself becoming fascinated by the early Church and its rich theology, ethics, and sense of community.  And, surprisingly, I was sometimes reprimanded for talking about how the early Church took stances against racism, classism, sexism.

For me, and I believe for the early Church, the faith does not affirm or celebrate the status quo, it critiques it and challenges it to be better.

Frederick Douglass was correct to denounce a corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical “Christianity” and his prophetic critique is something that we should emulate.

4.
“The Gospel is a very dangerous idea. We have to see how much of that idea we can perform in our own lives. There is nothing innocuous or safe about the Gospel. Jesus did not get crucified because he was a nice man.”

• Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Scholar
   
  I have nothing to add to this.  Brueggemann has been on my mind since finishing his biography this week.  You can check it out here.

5.
“He must increase; I must decrease.”

• John 3:30
   
  John the Baptist has been capturing my imagination for a few months now.  A while back I read a paragraph or two about him from Richard Rohr in From Wild Man to Wise Man that struck me.

In the Gospels, John the Baptist is Jesus’ cousin and is called the Forerunner and the Friend of the Bridegroom.  He was a wild prophetic voice on the edge of society and likely a member of the Essenes (a mystical Jewish sect that critiqued the Temple of its day).

But what stands out about John the Baptist is how he is a summation or the embodiment of the Prophets from the Hebrew Scriptures.  In his person, he is something of a bridge between the Old and the New.  He is so deeply grounded in his tradition that he can look forward to the future without any ego.

I will have to explore this further in my journals, but something about John the Baptist calls to me, archetypically.  He is, in some manner or another, a mold to follow or an example to learn from.

There is some magic to the fact that John the Baptist existed outside the Temple, stood deeply within his tradition, and yet was not accepted by the formal institutions of his day…

I guess that is some of how I feel.  Unwanted by the formal institutions and yet continuing to exist outside of them, a little bit like a free spirit saying, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”  Maybe that’s why John the Baptist resonates with me.

Over the past two years, some of you have taken the time to send an email reply of encouragement, to which I try to always express appreciation.

So, to all of you who took the time to read this…  Thank you.

I hope that through these newsletters I connect you to the best of the tradition, perhaps that you did not know existed, and that it helps to level the way for you to have some kind of Divine encounter.

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