A few years ago, some members of our CAC community and I were blessed to be able to spend a week at Ghost Ranch with Joanna Macy. Joanna is a brilliant Buddhist teacher, a systems thinker, deep ecologist, and activist for peace, justice, and a healthy environment, and she led us in what she calls the Work That Reconnects. Joanna (now in her 90s) is a true elder, a woman who has dedicated her life to what she and others call The Great Turning from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society. She sees us in the middle of The Great Unraveling, what I might call an “unveiling,” which “draws attention to the disasters that Business As Usual has caused and continues to create.” [1] Ecologist Stephan Harding writes:

The Work That Reconnects is conceptualized as a spiral that maps the journey to Gaian consciousness [or deep connection with the living Earth] in four stages. The first is gratitude, in which we experience our love for life. Next is honoring our pain, in which we learn how to suffer the pain of the world with others and with the world itself. Then, in seeing with new eyes, we experience our connection with life in all its forms through all the ages. Finally, in the last stage we go forth into action in the world as open human beings, aware of our mutual belonging in the web of life, learning through feedback in our social and ecological domains. [2]

Richard here: In their book Coming Back to Life, Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown describe powerful experiential practices that take groups through each stage. I can vouch for their effectiveness! By the end of the week at Ghost Ranch many of us had made discoveries similar to those described here:

What then can we expect to take with us, as we go forth into the world and our individual lives?

• A heightened awareness of the suffering and dangers besetting our world with a greater respect for our capacity to face them without dodging, denying or numbing out
   
• An upsurge of energy as we unblock feedback loops by accepting our pain for the world, reframing it as compassion
   
• A wider sense of identity as a unique and integral part of the living body of Earth
   
• A growing appreciation for community—with each other, with our brother-sister species, with our ancestors and future generations. We feel supported by them as well as accountable to them
   
• A stronger motivation to join with others in service to life; confidence in the power of our solidarity
   
• A fresh sense of the diversity of our gifts and of the many interdependent roles to be played in the Great Turning
   
• Hence, gratitude for who we are as individuals, with all our personal strengths and limitations—even our wounds—and for our desire to be of use
   
• Commitment to goals extending beyond our individual lifetime; liberation from dependence on immediate, measurable results
   
• Gladness in being alive now, in this epochal moment on Earth; a sense of the privilege of taking part in the Great Turning [3]  
• __________________________________________
• Sarah Young……………………….

KEEP YOUR EYES ON ME, not only for direction but also for empowerment. I never lead you to do something without equipping you for the task. That is why it’s so important to seek My will in everything you do. There are many burned-out Christians who think more is always better, who deem it unspiritual to say no. In order to know My will, you must spend time with Me—enjoying My Presence. This is not an onerous task but a delightful privilege. I will show you the path of Life; in My Presence is fullness of Joy; at My right hand there are pleasures forevermore. PSALM 141:8; ISAIAH 48:17;
PSALM 16:11 NKJV

Psalm 141:8⁸But my eyes are fixed on you, Sovereign LORD; in you I take refuge-do not give me over to death.

Isaiah 48:17 “Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.” King James Version (KJV)

Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Read verse in New King James Version

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 234). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

On this Earth Day, Sherri Mitchell, a Native American attorney and sacred activist for environmental protection and human rights shares two particular terms which offer us some much-needed Indigenous wisdom and compassion.

N’dilnabamuk—“all my relations.” Many people have heard Native people say “all my relations” after speaking or offering prayers. But what does it really mean? All societies organize around some sort of core principle. The core principle for Wabanaki societies is relationship. Our story begins with an understanding that we are related to all beings within creation. The two legged, the four legged, the winged, the beings that crawl and slide along the ground, the plants, the trees, and the living Earth are all our relatives. Everything is interconnected and interdependent; the well-being of the whole determines the well-being of any individual part. We recognize that connection in our prayers, and the understanding that the whole is shifted by every action of each individual. There is one life, one breath that we all breathe. Therefore, when we take any action out in the world, even when we pray for ourselves, we impact all life. This belief forms the foundational understanding [that] weaves through all of our other values. It’s the thread that ties them all together. . . .

Kciye—“Harmony with the natural world”—this teaches us that it is not enough to know that we are part of one living system. We must also take active steps to live in harmony with the rest of creation. This means that we cannot adopt attitudes or beliefs that place us above the natural world. We cannot see ourselves as having dominion over the land, the water, or the animals. We can’t even see ourselves as being stewards of the Earth. We are only keepers of a way of life that is in harmony with the Earth. Every day, we must act in ways that acknowledge that we are part of one living system, a unified whole.

This understanding is very different than the belief that human beings are chosen above all others. That view creates countless distortions that not only elevate [humanity] inappropriately, but also diminish the rest of creation. The world is one unified system. It cannot be separated into fragmented, saleable parts. The Eurocentric view of property ownership requires us to see the land as being disconnected from us. This view separates us from the source of life. The Indigenous view recognizes the land as kin [as did my spiritual father, St. Francis], as part of the lineage of life that we are all connected to. Thus, we have an obligation to care for the land in the same way that we would care for our human relatives. . . .

The only way for us to regain our balance within creation is to once again find our balance with the natural world. Kciye is just a word, but it’s a word that reminds us of our deeper connections and our deeper obligations to life.

Love and grief go hand in hand. Sometimes it is the deep grief we feel during loss that awakens us to the depth and sincerity of our love. As we witness the many ways the earth has been exploited and damaged beyond repair (particularly in our lifetimes), we must grieve and commit to show our love through conscious action. The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas expresses her grief through prayer:

In times like these, our prayer may need to be expressive and embodied, visceral and vocal. How else can we pray with our immense anger and grief? How else can we pray about ecocide, about the death that humanity is unleashing upon Mother Earth and upon ourselves? How else can we break through our inertia and despair, so that we don’t shut down and go numb? . . . .

I’ve taken to praying outdoors. I go outside, feel the good earth beneath my feet and the wind on my face, and I sing to the trees—to oak and beech, hemlock and pines. Making up the words and music as I go along, I sing my grief to the trees that are going down, and my grief for so much more—for what we have lost and are losing, and for what we are likely to lose. I sing my outrage about these beautiful old trees being cut to the roots, their bodies chipped to bits and hauled away to sell. I sing my fury about the predicament we’re in as a species. I sing my protest of the political and corporate powers-that-be that drive forward relentlessly with business as usual, razing forests, drilling for more oil and fracked gas, digging for more coal, expanding pipeline construction, and opening up public lands and waters to endless exploitation, as if Earth were their private business and they were conducting a liquidation sale. I sing out my shame to the trees, my repentance and apology for the part I have played in Earth’s destruction and for the part my ancestors played when they stole land and chopped down the original forests of the Native peoples who lived here. I sing my praise for the beauty of trees and my resolve not to let a day go by that I don’t celebrate the precious living world of which we are so blessedly a part. I’m not finished until I sing my determination to renew action for trees and for all of God’s Creation. . . .

So our prayer may be noisy and expressive, or it may be very quiet. It may be the kind of prayer that depends on listening in stillness and silence with complete attention: listening to the crickets as they pulse at night, listening to the rain as it falls, listening to our breath as we breathe God in and breathe God out, listening to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our heart. A discipline of contemplative prayer or meditation can set us free from the frantic churn of thoughts and feelings and enable our spirit to rest and roam in a vaster, wilder space.

As I was preparing for The Shape of God conference on the Trinity in 2004, I discovered the teachings of Richard of St. Victor (1110–1173), a medieval philosopher and theologian. For years, people had been telling me, “Richard, read Richard!” So I finally did, and he gave me the powerful insight that the Trinity can be summed up as mutual friendship between three. Absolute Friendship! I really believe this is something we might be able to hold on to in our spiritual lives.

In essence, he said, for God to be good, God can be one (but we always have doubts about a lone monarch). For God to be loving, God has to be two, because love is always a relationship of giving and receiving. The real breakthrough comes when Richard of St. Victor says that for God to be joy-filled and happy, God has to be three. [1] Delight comes, he says, from two together enjoying and rejoicing in the same thing at the same time. It is like new parents loving their new child that they cannot stop admiring. The love then flows in an eternal circle instead of back and forth between two. Each of the three takes their part in revving the engine of desire and delight.

His theology places friendship right at the heart of God! Denis Edwards, another theologian I appreciate, describes the theology of Richard of St. Victor in this way:

Richard [of St. Victor] sees the self-transcending love of friendship as the high point of human life and argues that such friendship must be found in God. . . . Real friendship is love which goes from the self to the other. . . . Richard’s insight into friendship leads him to suggest that real love does not remain with the two but wants to share love with another. For full love we look for one who can share our love for the beloved. Richard sees the friendship in the Trinity as ecstatically breaking out beyond the two to include a third. . . . There is no sense in which this common [third] friend is loved any less than the other two. In the love of the divine Persons, Richard sees supreme love flowing equally in all directions. [2]

When I read Richard of St. Victor, it reminded me of a dilemma I faced when I first started becoming rather well-known. (Forgive me if that sounds arrogant!) There were a lot of people who wanted to get close to me and be my friend. I asked myself, how do I allow all these would-be friends? I realized that the people I really loved with great abandon and freedom were not just people who loved me, but people who also loved what I loved.

Optimally, both parents fall in love with the challenge and joy that is their baby. The child that they’re in love with holds the couple together in a kind of ecstatic and willing-to-serve excitement. Love is no effort then; it flows in each new moment between the One who agrees to start the Flow, the Second who receives and reciprocates the Flow, and the Third who becomes the beneficiary and the Flow Itself. And they are constantly changing places! Think about that for a few hours. You will not want to live anywhere else.

I’ve known CAC faculty member Brian McLaren for many years; and I deeply admire his gift for making friends through his genuine curiosity, compassion, and unconditional presence to others. In this passage, he encourages us to build relationships outside our comfortable social and religious groups. 

Christian mission begins with friendship—not utilitarian friendship, the religious version of network marketing—but genuine friendship, friendship that translates love for neighbors in general into knowing, appreciating, liking, and enjoying this or that neighbor in particular. . . .

Many new friends have come into my life . . . Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, New Agers, and others—including lots of atheists and agnostics, too. One of the most dramatic of those friendships began in the aftermath of 9/11/2001. Like a lot of churches, our little congregation held a prayer service. While praying, I felt a voice speaking, as it were, in my chest: Your Muslim neighbors are in danger of reprisals. You must try to protect them. The next morning, I wrote and made copies of a letter extending, belatedly, friendship toward Muslim communities in my area, and offering solidarity and help if simmering anti-Muslim sentiments should be translated into action. I drove to the three mosques nearby—I had never visited them before—and tried to deliver my letter in person. . . .

[At the third mosque,] I clumsily introduced myself [to the imam] as the pastor from down the street . . . I then handed him my letter, which he opened and read as I stood there awkwardly. I remember the imam, a man short in stature, slowly looking down at the letter in the bright September sun, then up into my face, then down, then up, and each time he looked up, his eyes were more moist. Suddenly, he threw his arms around me—a perfect stranger. . . . I still remember the feeling of his head pressed against my chest, squeezing me as if I were his long-lost brother. . . .

My host welcomed me not with hostility or even suspicion, but with the open heart of a friend. And so that day a friendship began between an Evangelical pastor named Brian and a Muslim imam we’ll call Ahmad. . . .

It’s one thing to say you love humanity in general, whatever their religion; it’s quite another to learn to love this or that specific neighbor with his or her specific religion. So, do you have a Sikh neighbor, a Hindu coworker, a Muslim business associate, a Buddhist member of your PTA, a New Age second cousin? Invite them into companionship over a cup of tea or coffee. Ask them questions. Display unexpected interest in them, their traditions, their beliefs, and their stories. Learn why they left what they left, why they stay where they stay, why they love what they love. Enter their world, and welcome them into your world, without judgment. If they reciprocate, welcome their reciprocation; if not, welcome their nonreciprocation. Experience conviviality. Join the conspiracy of plotting for the common good together.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:13–14)

When we treat Jesus as a friend, it’s easy to focus on how the relationship benefits us and relieves our burdens, but Professor Dana L. Robert reminds us that there is more to friendship with Jesus than the blessings we receive. Knowing Jesus as a friend is a source of strength that impacts all our relationships in community and society. She writes:

Knowing Jesus is a relationship so intimate that he carries his followers’ burdens. He brings them joy. He walks beside them. In short, Jesus befriends those who follow him. And friendship with Jesus builds Christian community across cultural, social, and ethnic divisions. . . .

In 1993, the Reverend Dr. Margaret Moshoeshoe Montjane was an Anglican chaplain at the huge Baragwanath Hospital in the South African township of Soweto. She was a former student of mine, and I was scheduled to go visit her. Then on April 10, a right-wing nationalist murdered the head of the South African Communist Party, Chris Hani, in his driveway. Immediately riots broke out throughout the country, especially in Soweto. South Africa was a powder keg, and Nelson Mandela could barely keep the lid on. Angry young men surged into Baragwanath Hospital with their injured comrades. Margaret used all her authority to avert rioting in the hospital, ordering the rioters to sit down and treat the hospital with respect. When we spoke on the phone before my scheduled visit, I asked her how she was managing. She answered, “Without Jesus, I couldn’t get through the day.”. . . [Her friendship with Jesus helped her support the community through crisis.]

In most cultures, the idea of friendship is a powerful statement of relational identity. In Batak culture in Indonesia, for example, it is said that the loss of a friend is worse than the loss of one’s mother. Traditional Russian culture assumes it is better to have many friends than much money. In Confucian tradition, friendship is one of the basic relationships that undergirds society. For American Christians, being friends with Jesus tends to be personal. . . . Jesus is my friend. He carries my burdens.

But a cross-cultural perspective on Jesus as friend says a lot about the meaning of community. For friendship always goes both ways. It requires mutuality. It involves give and take. . . . Since Jesus is holding hands with the world, so to speak, then intimacy with Jesus extends far beyond personal needs. To befriend Jesus means carrying in fellowship the responsibilities of friendship that he carried. . . .

In the context of worldwide community, being friends with Jesus is hard work. For when followers of Jesus walk beside him, he leads them in directions they would rather not go, into neighborhoods they would rather avoid, and to meet other friends of his they might not normally know. As the Scriptures and history show, to be a friend of Jesus means loving others just as he does.

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HEAVEN IS both present and future. As you walk along your life-path holding My hand, you are already in touch with the essence of heaven: nearness to Me. You can also find many hints of heaven along your pathway because the earth is radiantly alive with My Presence. Shimmering sunshine awakens your heart, gently reminding you of My brilliant Light. Birds and flowers, trees and skies evoke praises to My holy Name. Keep your eyes and ears fully open as you journey with Me. At the end of your life-path is an entrance to heaven. Only I know when you will reach that destination, but I am preparing you for it each step of the way. The absolute certainty of your heavenly home gives you Peace and Joy to help you along your journey. You know that you will reach your home in My perfect timing: not one moment too soon or too late. Let the hope of heaven encourage you as you walk along the path of Life with Me.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:20–23;
For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came also through a human being. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order: Christ the first fruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ.

HEBREWS 6:19

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain. 

Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 216). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

As a Franciscan, I have always been curious about the fruitful friendship between Francis of Assisi and his female companion Clare. They were not lovers, yet they were deeply devoted to one another, built their orders together, and turned to one another for support and wisdom. My friend Mirabai Starr offers a vignette based on tales about Francis and Clare, and shows a mutual friendship built on their shared dedication to Christ: 

Clare gave up everything to be with Francis, to live as he lived, to see the face of the Divine in the faces of the poor and the oppressed and to love them as he loved them. “Her goal in life,” says Robert Ellsberg about Saint Clare, “was not to be a reflection of Francis but to be, like him, a reflection of Christ.” [1]

While Francis guided his growing order of Little Brothers, he assigned Clare as the leader of the Poor Ladies.

When Francis felt most alone in the world, most persecuted and misunderstood, it was Clare he would turn to for clarity, wisdom, and a love stripped of sentimentality. “All I want is to live as a hermit and love my Lord in secret,” he confessed to her. “And yet I am moved to preach the gospel of holy poverty in the world. What should I do?”

Clare did not equivocate: “God did not call you for yourself alone, but also for the salvation of others.” [2]

Toward the end of his life, when the brotherhood had burgeoned so quickly that it threatened to implode, Francis’s physical health mirrored the disease spreading through his community. Wracked by unrelenting pain in his joints and flesh, and nearly blind, the forty-four-year-old ascetic took refuge in a hermitage adjoining the convent of the Poor Clares at San Damiano [where Clare lived and died].

There, near to the woman who knew his soul and loved him with a perfect love, and enfolded in the sacred sounds and smells of the creation, Francis composed his ecstatic hymn, “The Canticle of The Sun.”

When Francis could no longer hide the gravity of his condition, the brothers took him home to die. Clare immediately became seriously ill, sharing the suffering of her beloved in her own body. When Francis heard that Clare was sick with grief, he sent her a message.

“I promise,” he wrote, “you will see me again before you die.” [He accepted and enjoyed how much she loved him! —Richard Rohr]

A few days later, the brothers carried Francis’s lifeless body to the cloistered convent of San Damiano and stopped beneath Clare’s window. They lifted him high so that Clare could almost reach out and touch his hair. The friars stood there for as long as Clare wished, while she filled her eyes with him and wailed.

Clare lived for another twenty-seven years without her “pillar of strength and consolation,” yet content in the arms of their common mother, “Our Lady, Most Holy Poverty.” She became a great and beloved spiritual leader, whose primary teaching was her life of radical simplicity and quiet joy.

I believe it is a loss to our Christian heritage that Julian’s mystical teachings have not received more widespread hearing. Matthew Fox points out that she was in many ways ahead of her time. Her voice and writings were sidelined by a patriarchal church and culture unable to hear her nondual message of “oneing” and her celebration of embodiment as an extension of the Incarnation itself. Perhaps we are finally ready to hear Julian’s wisdom today. Matthew Fox writes:

We learn about ourselves, our history and society by asking questions that expose the shadows in which we still live. To me it is obvious why [Julian’s] work was ignored, and in naming the obvious we name the shadows we have inherited from our ancestors.

First, she was ignored because she was a woman. . . . Julian found her voice—and wrote the first book in English by a woman. She speaks out about womanhood and about mothering and about the Divine Mother. She insists on the feminine side of God as imbuing not only God the Creator, but God the Liberator, and God the Spirit. . . .

She bakes into her entire book the constant theme of nondualism and of “oneing.” Sensuality and substance are one thing. . . . She talks of the “glorious mingling” of body and soul, matter and spirit. She insists on the marriage of nature and God, on panentheism [God in all things and all things in God] as the very meaning of faith, and on the marriage of God and the human (for we, too, are part of nature): “between God and the human there is no between.”. . .

We were not ready for her. We were too engrossed with the masculine projects of empire building and “discovery” doctrines of raiding and destroying indigenous cultures of “mother love”; we were too busy chasing knowledge, at the expense of wisdom, for the power it brings to buttress our empires through science and technology, too preoccupied with creating capitalist behemoths that demanded we extract whatever goods we could from Mother Earth without asking any questions about paying Mother Earth—or future generations—back. . . . Julian’s feminism did not fit the patriarchal agenda at hand . . . and she stands up to patriarchy (including the institutional church) in many instances. But subtly so—as a lover, not as a prosecutor.

The second principal reason Julian has been ignored for so many centuries, and why we were not ready for her, is that she is so thoroughly creation-centered in her theology that people did not understand her insistence that “God is in nature,” that nature and grace are one, and that goodness is everywhere but “first of all in nature.” When the agenda is to exploit nature for all the profits it can deliver, who wants to hear about the sacredness of nature?

–> Today, treat yourself to reading directly from Julian. I am using Mirabai Starr’s wonderful translation of Julian’s Showings, which is also aptly called Revelations of Divine Love. This is from her Long Text, chapter 52. God rejoices that he is our Father. God rejoices that he is our Mother. God rejoices that he is our Beloved and we are his true lover. Christ rejoices that he is our Brother. Jesus rejoices that he is our Savior. These are five supreme joys and he wants us to rejoice in them, too, and praise him, thanking and loving and endlessly blessing him. During our lives here on earth, we experience a wondrous mixture of well and woe. We hold inside us both the glory of the Risen Christ and the misery of the Fallen Adam. Christ protects us in our dying and, through his gracious touch, uplifts us and reassures us that all will be well. . . . We are so fragmented, afflicted in our feelings in so many ways, that we hardly know where to turn for comfort. The various pains and transgressions of this life fill our hearts with sorrow and cloud the eyes of our souls. But we cultivate our intention and wait for God. We have faith in his mercy and grace, and trust that he is working within us. In his goodness, he opens the eyes of our understanding and gives us insight. Sometimes we glimpse more, sometimes we see less, depending on what God gives us the ability to receive. Now he elevates us; now he allows us to come tumbling down. The mixture of sorrow and joy is so powerful that we cannot figure out how to handle it all, let alone assess how our fellow spiritual seekers are doing. The diversity of feelings can be overwhelming. And yet, in those moments when we sense the presence of God, we surrender to him, truly willing to be with him, with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength. This holy assent is all that matters. It eclipses all the wicked inclinations inside us—physical and spiritual—that might lead us to miss the mark. Sometimes, however, that sacred sweetness lies deeply buried, and we fall again into blindness, which leads to all kinds of sorrow and tribulation. So we must take comfort in the essential article of our faith that teaches us not to give into our negative impulses, but to draw strength from Christ, who is our defender against all harm. We need to stand up against evil, even if to do so causes discomfort—even pain—and pray for the time when God will once again reveal himself and fill our hearts with the sweetness of his presence. And so we remain in this muddle all the days of our lives. But our Beloved wants us to trust that he is always with us. With such deep and tender wisdom, is it any wonder that Julian is one of my favorite mystics—and human beings?