Healing in the Desert

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Ash Wednesday

CAC guest faculty member Belden Lane recalls a recent experience of finding healing in the desert: 

My latest, most difficult path of descent, or journey into fierce landscapes, in these closing years of my life has had to do with the death of my son. Three years ago, John died of acute myeloid leukemia, one of the deadliest forms of cancer. He was 41, leaving behind his wife and a four-year-old daughter. After months and months of chemo, we had been assured that he was cancer-free. He’d rung the bell at the hospital, returned home, gone back to work, but two months later, the cancer returned and he was dead within a week.

Lane went to the desert, hoping to connect with John and in some way relieve the suffering he imagined John was experiencing at having his life cut short. 

A year and a half into my grieving, I worried a lot about John. Putting myself in his place, I knew that I’d be angry as hell….

I undertook a six-day vision quest in the red rock canyons near Ghost Ranch with a few brothers from Illuman, hoping I could finally set John free from his anguish. But on the first night there, I fell apart sobbing against a canyon wall. I realized it wasn’t John who was arguing and cursing his way through some kind of purgatory; it was me. I hadn’t come to release John. John would have to come to release me….

By the time I got to the fourth and last night of fasting, I was expecting or at least hoping for some big encounter. That’s what you expect to get at the end of a vision quest. But as I waited for the long night, nothing came. I gave up hope of anything dramatic, which is perfect, of course. As I sat there, my mind wandered back to the hospital room on the night of John’s death. The end had come at three o’clock in the morning when he finally stopped breathing. I’d wanted to stay with him for the rest of the night. I hated the thought of strangers putting my son on a tray and wheeling him away into the morgue alone. I knew I should have stayed there until dawn, but … we were all exhausted. We went home.

And then it struck me.… On the ridge I could still do this. I might be over a year late, but I could still be faithful, waiting alongside John’s body, not turning away from his death. So that’s what I did, staying awake through the rest of the night, keeping vigil with John. Within an hour or so, I noticed … a full moon was rising over the ridge behind me, casting a soft slate gray light on the mesa’s rim, going down the mesa as the moon rose behind me. It was cold and death-like but beautiful, like the paleness of my son’s body drained of life as I was able to sit with him. It was also for me, at the time, the body of Christ, as it were. John, Jesus had come to assure me with [the mystic] Julian of Norwich, was fine. He was more than fine….

I was blown away that night. The desert had come for me again, been there for me, the place where God has come so often in my life. I struggle with John’s loss to this day, but in the deepest place of my soul, I’m at peace knowing that this most recent path of descent in the desert has only carried me deeper once again into love. Amen.

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INSPIRATION

It is my Lent to break my Lent,
To eat when I would fast,
To know when slender strength is spent,
Take shelter from the blast
When I would run with wind and rain,
To sleep when I would watch.
It is my Lent to smile at pain
But not ignore its touch.

It is my Lent to listen well
When I would be alone,
To talk when I would rather dwell
In silence, turn from none
Who call on me, to try to see
That what is truly meant
Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be
It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.
— Madeleine L’Engle, “For Lent, 1966”

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Individual Contemplation Question:

Where in your own grief or struggle have you been more focused on releasing someone else — or fixing someone else’s pain — only to discover that you were the one who needed to be released? What does that reversal feel like?

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Group Contemplation Question:

L’Engle says “It is my Lent to break my Lent” — to surrender the spiritual practice you would choose for the one that love actually requires. Where is your community, your relationships, or this season asking you to stay present in a way that costs you something? What would it mean to call that your Lent?

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Writer Stephen Copeland recounts how the stories of the desert fathers and mothers have inspired modern Christians to take contemplative practice more seriously: 

The ancient path of the desert mystics invites us to disrupt the patterns of ego and empire through the courageous pursuit of inner liberation. Throughout Christian history, mystics and spiritual seekers have led radical movements of departure, leaving behind the ways of the world for the desert in search of union with God…. 

One thread woven through such movements is the search for inner liberation and the cultivation of this freedom through contemplative spiritual practices. The search itself (and the practices that help to heighten one’s awareness of their oneness with God) interrupts patterns of the heart and mind formed in the ways of the world, like the tantalizing forces of greed and power. Desert contemplation helps us to see things as they are, unclouded by what Thomas Merton called “unreality.” [1]

Twentieth-century authors like Merton and Henri Nouwen helped to reclaim the importance of this desert form of Christianity, forging a path for laypeople to experience the transforming way of contemplation, which had long been reserved for monastics and religious. Richard Rohr writes about why this ancient tradition still matters: “It is a unique window into how Jesus was first understood, before the church became an imperial, highly organized, competitive religion.” [2]

Practicing “letting go” in contemplation allowed the desert mystics—and allows us—to access our spiritual selves: 

A core principle of the desert—and something worth considering while cultivating our own inner freedom—was the notion of apatheia. Author Laura Swan explains: “Apatheia is purity of heart. The ammas [desert mothers] teach us to intentionally let go of all that keeps us from the single-minded pursuit of God: feelings and thoughts that bind us, cravings and addictions that diminish our sense of worth, and attachments to self-imposed perfectionism. Apatheia is nourished by simplicity grounded in abundance of the soul.” [3]

Such letting go can feel like emptiness. It can feel disorienting, crazy, nonlinear—terrifying even—as if we are like the desert fathers and mothers, leaving behind the comforts of the city for the vast emptiness of the desert. This powerful metaphor invites the disruption of our own unhealthy patterns, as we interrupt the ways that we are being controlled (sometimes unconsciously) by the ways of the world and our false selves to make room for something deeper to be born within us: For aspects of the true self to be discovered. For our awareness of the divine within us to grow. For love to expand. For the same spiritual truths that arose in the desert centuries before to dwell and deepen within our souls.

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Leonard Sweet Jan 26

There is a difference between “Jesus, I want you to become part of my story” and “Jesus, I want to become part of your story.”

Jesus doesn’t come to improve your storyline. 

Jesus comes to make you a line in His eternal Story.

When Jesus becomes part of your story, He’s a character. 

When you become part of His story, He’s Lord.

“My story + Jesus” is self-help.

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For individual contemplation:

Where in your life are you holding on to your own story — trying to get Jesus to improve your chapter — rather than releasing it into His?

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For group discussion:

The desert mystics left literal cities for literal deserts. What would it look like for you to practice that kind of departure right now — not as escape, but as the kind of letting go that makes room for something deeper? What are you being invited to lay down?

Desert and Transformation

Sunday, February 15, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

CAC Dean of Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher takes inspiration from the desert Christians of the fourth century. These men and women fled to the deserts of Northern Africa and elsewhere to practice their faith apart from the Christianity of empire.  

Around 313 CE and the Edict of Milan, Christianity became yoked with empire. [1] A lot of people who wanted to have a genuine experience of living out the promises of Christ left the empire, so to speak. They went out into the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Arabia. There were women and men, rich and poor. Some of them had been working in royal courts, and some had been murderers. Some were people of high esteem in society while others were viewed by society as scoundrels.

The Christians who went to the desert sought an interior martyrdom. That’s how they thought about it, at least. They wanted to learn how to die to aspects of themselves that were preventing them from experiencing an intimate relationship with Jesus in a mystical dimension. The seekers would go out into the desert, and they would say, “Abba, father or Amma, mother—give me a word,” because they really wanted their souls to be awakened.

The desert elders have meant so much to me, and the really great thing is that even before I quite understood them, I loved their stories. My favorite story is about Abba Moses of Egypt. Somebody sent a message to him and said, “We need you to come to the elders’ gathering because there’s someone who has committed a sin, and we need you to help us make a judgment about his behavior.” He just said, “I don’t want to go.” Then, a priest sent word to him and said, “Moses, we need you here. They’re asking for you. You’ve got to come.” So reluctantly, Moses got up. He went over to the old basket he had. It was full of holes, and he filled it with sand. Then, he put it on his back and walked to this meeting where someone was accused of a sin and was awaiting the judgment of the group. People came out to him and said, “Moses, what are you up to? What are you doing?” He said, “Well, here I am going to judge someone for a sin they say he has committed, and yet here my sins are running out behind me, and I don’t even see them.” [2]

The accusers just fell away. They went back to the gathering and told the man, “We don’t have anything to say to you.” It disbanded because of Moses’s humility. It’s very much like the woman accused of adultery by the men in John’s Gospel, where Jesus comes up and says, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).

For me, the main message of the desert elders is one of love, and that is what keeps me coming back to them.

Desert Magic 

Monday, February 16, 2026

Professor Rachel Wheeler describes how the desert offers a sacred invitation to people of all faiths and times: 

The desert occupies a powerful place at the heart of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic spiritual traditions. Simultaneously, the desert is a place of resistance, refuge, and revelation. In the early centuries of Christianity, the desert was home for those seeking countercultural withdrawal. Many men and women, who came to be known as desert fathers and mothers, experienced the wilderness as a refuge from an empire increasingly inhospitable to them…. Its association with the powerful and wealthy was inconsistent with how many desert mothers and fathers believed they ought to live out their Christian calling.

The ways these desert Christians navigated the difficulties of their own time and place may seem irredeemably remote to most of us, but I find their stories strangely compelling, like stones yielding different veins of mineral and precious metals whichever way you turn them. Their stories and teachings are brief, sometimes cryptic, sometimes profound, as these gruff desert patriots rubbed shoulders with each other and uncovered uncomfortable knowledge of themselves and their habits of thought, fallibilities, and limitations.

Early desert Christians can serve as a model for how to wrestle with paradox: 

The desert offered a particular kind of formation. It could be harsh, offering unwelcome discipline as a parent might. It required the desert dwellers to grow up and fend for themselves, to play well with others, and to share—all guidance we may have received from our own parents at one time! The desert would have offered a strange kind of consolation, as well, when loneliness or the particular boredom called acedia kicked in. Wild animals might have offered companionship, as they did for Abba Theon, who made his solitary home in the desert, sharing food and water with the wild animals who visited his dwelling. [1]

The prototypical desert father, Antony of Egypt (251–356), is said to have fallen in love with the place he lived, deep in the desert, where a few palm trees, water, and arable soil made an oasis. [2] This was the desert’s magic: that within what appeared scarce, there might emerge surprising abundance. What could be harsh might offer a warm welcome. The landscape’s paradox offered space for theological paradox: The incarnation! The virgin birth! The Trinity! The Apostle Paul’s simultaneous willing and not-willing to do good! Even: the subtle interplay of the body’s, mind’s, and spirit’s needs! The desert helped these Christians lean more deeply into undermining their assumptions and cravings for what is and what should be….

For me, these stories shimmer with the heat of desert light and sun.

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Three discussion questions:

1. Butcher says the desert elders sought “interior martyrdom” — dying to the parts of themselves blocking an intimate experience of God. What’s one thing in you right now that you sense might need to die, even if you’re not eager for it?
2. The Abba Moses story is striking because his humility didn’t just change the mood — it dissolved the whole accusation. When have you witnessed (or experienced) humility doing something that argument or judgment simply couldn’t?
3. Wheeler says the desert’s paradox — harshness offering warmth, scarcity yielding abundance — created space for theological paradox too. Where in your own life are you being asked to hold two things in tension that don’t seem to belong together?

A Return to the Garden

Friday, February 13, 2026

Father Richard Rohr identifies in Revelation, the last book in the Bible, a “return to the garden” for all of creation:

The whole Bible is trying to return us to the garden. By the end, in the book of Revelation (21–22), the garden becomes the New Jerusalem, where there is no temple, but only the river of life and the trees of life, where even “the leaves are for the cure of the pagans” (22:2) and where “God lives among humans” (21:3).

The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 37:27) has been fulfilled: Humanity has become God’s people, and God has become their God. There is no need for a religious building because the garden itself is the temple. Life is now one sacred reality.

Eden is a symbol of unitive consciousness. We cannot objectively be separate from God. We all walk in the garden whether we know it or not. We came from God and we will return to God. Everything in between is a school of conscious loving.

Authentic spiritual cognition always has the character of re-cognition! We return to where we started and, as T.S. Eliot stated, “know the place for the first time.” [1] As Jacob put it when he awoke from his sleep: “Truly, Yahweh was in this place all the time, and I never knew it” (Genesis 28:16). That is, without doubt, the common knowing of mystics, saints, and all recovered sinners.

Many of the journeys before that point are journeys away from the center, where we literally become “ec-centric.” These are the recurring biblical texts of fall and recovery, hiddenness and discovery, loss and renewal, failure and forgiveness, exile and return.

Fortunately, we are always being led back to the real Center to find who we really are: to find ourselves in God. God seems both very patient and very productive with the journeys back and forth. Such is the pattern of the soul, of history, and of the Bible, a progress of sorts: two steps backward and three forward.

That humble productivity and slow efficiency on God’s part is called “the economy of grace” or the good news. Here, God fills in all the gaps, everything is used, and nothing is wasted, not even sin. It leads to a worldview of abundance and enoughness. Buying and selling is a cheap substitute and always leads to a worldview of scarcity, judgmentalism, fear, and stinginess. Why would anyone want to live there? And yet many, if not most, of us do.

The full biblical revelation has given us the history within the history, the coherence inside of the seeming incoherence. If we don’t get this inner pattern, then religion becomes simply aimless anecdotes—just little stories here and there, with no pattern or direction. They come from no place and there is no place they are going. We have to know where the text is heading or we do not know how to look through the appropriate lenses.

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1.

“Let us make them in our image.”

– Genesis 1:26

This passage is the main text from which we derive the doctrine that human beings are made in the “imago Dei,” or “in the image of God.”

This passage grounds the way many of us view human beings as inherently dignified, valuable, and purposeful.

That said, many people focus on the “us” and see that as a nod toward the Christian conception of God as a Trinity (Three-in-One and One-in-Three).  However, I have been focusing on the “our” part of the passage.

We are not in the image of God alone; we are in the image of God when we are in loving community… because God is a loving community.  In Western culture, we are so individualistic that we do not value the community as we ought.  If God, in God’s own self, is a co-suffering, infinitely outpouring, self-sacrificial community, then we should probably let the Trinity inform more of how we think about ourselves and what it means to be part of the “Beloved Community.”

2.

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

– Carl Jung, Swiss Psychotherapist

In full honesty and transparency, many years ago, I was in burnout/fallout from working in an incredibly unhealthy church culture.

I distinctly remember one day when I had not showered for 2-3 days and walked into the church office with a black hoodie on and with the hoodie up over my head.  Walking straight into the interim pastor’s office, I collapsed into a chair and asked, “What does it look like when someone is in crisis?”

His reply?

“I think I am looking at it right now.  You have an immediate two weeks off.  Get out of town for a bit and go stay with your parents.”

It was during that time that I came to the experience of, “Oh, I get it.  I understand why people would drink or do drugs or what have you.  I would do anything to get away from this feeling.”

Fortunately, I did not fully bottom out on any of those things (but not due to my own strength), and instead regrouped and chose to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2015.

Hitting that type of rock bottom broke me of whatever judgmentalism, condescension, or elitism that I felt toward addiction.  I still maintain that since then, I have been a better pastor.  I can better connect with people and have greater compassion for others’ internal experiences.

Jung is absolutely right.  Know your own darkness, and you will be better able to deal with the darkness in others.

3.

“Modern man is not in agreement with himself. He has no one voice to listen to but a thousand voices, a thousand ideologies, all competing for his attention in a Babel of tongues.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

We are all walking contradictions.

Sometimes, we do not even consciously know or admit our own contradictions, and it shows in how cranky, disappointed, or frustrated we can be with our own lives.

I am starting to understand that the process of holy-making (sanctification) is in some sense a process of integration, of “whole-making.”  Every one of us must learn to integrate the fragmented parts of our lives, the parts that are tugged and yanked in competing and opposite directions by the “thousand voices, thousand ideologies, the Babel of tongues” that confuse and disorient.

It is likely a lifelong process, but I can attest that my life has been improved by limiting the voices I allow to speak into my life and by making certain that those same voices are of the best quality I can find.

4.

“Everyone has to pick a path through the stickers and briars and come out the other side in his own way.”

– Paul Quenon, Monk and Photographer

Paul Quenon is a Trappist Monk who had Thomas Merton as his spiritual director in the monastery.   He has become a well-known poet, photographer, and author in his own right.    His book, In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk’s Memoir, is a delightful read.

5.

“Life is to be lived as play.”

– Plato, Greek Philosopher

Seeing life as “playful” does not come easily to me.  It is not my automatic response or reflex to think that every day is a new day to “play.”

I am often too serious.  I am also distracted by my own frustrations, resentments, to-do lists, projects, commute, and so on.  It is probably similar for you.  Life piles up with new responsibilities, and often it feels as though every minute of the day is claimed for… and often not for the purpose of play.

Which leads me to wonder: Is life a matter of running away from things in order to play, or of finding a way to play in the midst of all those things?

It is probably the latter, although I admit that I do not know how to do it very well.

There is a line in Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation when he talks about throwing our “awful solemnity” to the wind.  We are just so dang serious all the time, perhaps thinking that it glorifies God for us to be so serious, but what if God most wants us to be playful?  You know, to trust that things can be good even if they are frivolous or prodigal?  In the economy of God’s grace, there is no such thing as “wasted time” because in some sense everything is unnecessary.  Everything is a frivolous overture of the infinite grace of God being poured out on all of us.

Contemplation and Paradise

Thursday, February 12, 2026

In the writings of contemplative writer and monk Thomas Merton, psychotherapist Fiona Gardner discovers how we might once again experience paradise:

The nostalgia for what has been lost remains long after childhood can impel seekers to search both within themselves and out in the world for this lost place, time and state of mind. For Thomas Merton it is the nostalgia for, or intuition of, paradise, and is a longing for a return or restoration to an original state of being which is Eden. For him it is about a reversal of the fall and the separation from God. It is the journey forward to the beginning, “the restoration of that primordial unity and harmony of all creation in God,” and it is part of what it means to be authentic.

For him the journey begins within the self as the false self … that leads to division and alienation from reality, and so the paradise life becomes impossible. It is only through surrendering the false self … that paradise can be regained. To be in paradise, Merton writes, is to recover one’s true self….

For Merton, wishing for paradise involved a devotion to the recovery of innocence. He writes:

The innocence and purity of heart which belong to paradise are a complete emptiness of self in which all is the work of God, the free and unpredictable expression of [God’s] love, the work of grace. In the purity of original innocence, all is done in us but without us. [1]

… The recovery of paradise takes place for the adult in humility and in spiritual nakedness. In other words not self-consciously but as the small child who just is present and just is vulnerable. Merton realized that the recovery of paradise is always hidden in us as a possibility, and is a difficult struggle involving repeated cycles of deaths and resurrections within the psyche, so that the Christian on their journey is both in the wilderness of the desert and in the garden at the same time. [2]

Contemplative practice creates opportunities to return to the ‘enchantment’ of the garden:

Present-moment awareness is about creating a gap in the constant busyness of the mind…. It is through such a clear space that new and creative possibilities are born…. There may be an inner prompting in the midst of a busy life to take stock, perhaps to stop and consider…. The focus is then on the inner desire for that thirst-quenching water of life. In other words to move to a place of renewal and rebirth, where there may be glimpses in adulthood of life beyond the shadow and disguise, and experiences, even if fleeting, of the spirit of the child. One way to start to shift out of the obscured false self way of living is to begin to develop awareness, to awaken the senses, to look, listen, feel, and touch as the small child does—to return to one’s senses. [3]

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: February 12

    I am ever so near you, hovering over your shoulder, reading every thought. People think that thoughts are fleeting and worthless, but yours are precious to Me. I smile when you think lovingly of Me. My Spirit, who lives within you, helps you to think My Thoughts. As your thinking goes, so goes your entire being. 
    Let Me be your positive Focus. When you look to Me, knowing Me as God with you, you experience Joy. This is according to My ancient design, when I first crafted man. Modern man seeks his positive focus elsewhere: in sports, sensations, acquiring new possessions. Advertising capitalizes on the longing of people for a positive focus in their lives. I planted that longing in human souls, knowing that only I could fully satisfy it. Delight yourself in Me; let Me become the Desire of your heart. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Matthew 1:23

23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child!

    She will give birth to a son,

and they will call him Immanuel,

    which means ‘God is with us.’”

Psalm 37:4 NLT

4 Take delight in the Lord,

    and he will give you your heart’s desires.

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 

READ ON CAC.ORG

Rev. Dr. Ruth Patterson has worked for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. In CAC’s journal ONEING, she characterizes our life’s journey as a return to a knowledge of God’s love and acceptance: 

The mythical wisdom of the ancients reminds us of the sense of wonder at the beginning of time when all was innocence, nothing yet wounded. The garden was tended by the woman and the man. They lived in harmony with each other and with creation. And every day they walked with God in the cool of evening, the time of intimacy and communion. Adam and Eve had no idea what they would lose when they decided to do it their own way.

It’s the journey of each of us, isn’t it? I do believe that we come from God and are returning to God, but we need a softening of the heart in order to see again and find our way home. I know of no way for hearts to be softened other than by a combination of love and suffering. Somewhere along the way, because of life experience, we get cracked or broken. We often lose our way, but in the mystery of the grace and mercy of God, it is that very cracking that becomes our salvation, our way to discover again what we once “knew” but have “forgotten.” We become aware of an aching for Eden, a homesickness that knows that the only way back is through, by the way of dispossession, of no ecstasy, of ignorance. A bit like the treasure hidden in the field or the priceless pearl.…

This longing inevitably leads to an expulsion from the false Eden and a pilgrimage that goes by the way of dispossession. Such a journey is not for the faint-hearted but for those who, in the words of Leonard Cohen, are willing to forget their perfect offering. They begin to see that the cracks are gift. The wounds of the journey allow the light to shine through. The softening of the heart welcomes the diversity that its Creator proclaims is good. Out of uncertainty, not knowing, vulnerability, and openness, they become the mercy-givers, the peacemakers, the light-bearers. With them, there is always more….

The way back to Eden, the space between “paradise lost” and “paradise regained,” the place where we live our lives, can be one of great love and great suffering, of newfound humility and awe. It can also be a return to wonder … to the movement or the dance of belonging and becoming. It is the place where we laugh and cry and sing. It is the place where we risk taking off our shoes. It is the place of ever-increasing awareness. This is the way in which we “are not” and along which we, and even I, may dance with joy. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Amen.

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From Courtney Ellis, author of  Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions 

Change is so hard. Yet it’s also inevitable.

There’s no avoiding it, ignoring it, or getting around it. Change comes for us all.

And strangely, although change is difficult and often painful, we sometimes find ourselves longing for it, even seeking it. It is one of the fascinating truths about being human. As Margaret Renkl writes in her beautiful book The Comfort of Crows, “I am learning that it is possible to want two contrary things at once. I want nothing to change. I want everything to change.”

When my husband Daryl and I drove away from our wedding reception 19 years ago, we both had tears in our eyes. Then I glanced at him and he glanced at me and we both erupted into laughter. We both realized in that moment that if only one of us was crying, the other may have viewed the tears as signs of regret.

Neither one of us had any doubt about our marriage. We’d been through the holy rigors of premarital counseling. We trusted that God had drawn and called us together. Our personalities and values meshed well and there were no cold feet.

Yet driving away from the people we loved most in the world (besides one another, of course) felt so final. In an instant, our primary relationships changed from daughter and son, sister and brother, longtime friends, to wife and husband.

As the January snow swirled and we drove away from the frosted forests of Wisconsin, we both sensed this seismic shift. There are few decisions as path-altering as getting married. Becoming yoked to Daryl would affect everysubsequent angle of my life.

Rare is the change that comes to us wrapped purely in joy or solely in heartbreak. Each one will bring us joy and sorrow.

And we live among people for whom this is also true. Our friends, our colleagues, our neighbors. The strangers we encounter are facing change. How might we love them well in the changes they face, even as we work to weather our own? It is so very hard to be a human.

One of the trickier aspects of change is that even good change arrives with a level of grief: the new job is amazing, but we miss our old coworkers; the new baby brings delight, but we would also love to sleep through the night; moving across the country provides better opportunities, but now we are far from the family we love.

Heck, I get grumpy when my iPhone updates because now I can’t find that thing that I used to be able to find.

In Weathering Change I write of four patterns we see over and over in the natural world when it comes to how creation copes with change. They are preparation, curiosity, adaptation, and resilience. Take just one migratory bird, for example:

The Arctic Tern travels farther than any species on earth, regularly doing figure-8s from the north of the globe to the south, following food and weather patterns. But before the bird takes off on these astonishingly lengthy flights, it prepares. The Terns feed on fish and krill and insects, fueling themselves for the journey ahead. They approach the weather currents and wind patterns with curiosity, for these will determine the trajectory of their flight. They adapt as conditions change. They are resilient in the face of storms or long stretches without food.

For a migrating bird, change is everywhere. They cope through preparation, curiosity, adaptation, and resilience, but they also cope by having their direction set. If it’s winter, they’re headed south. In summer, they go north. This is one of the chief ways we can weather change well.

And when we are able to walk faithfully through change—not perfectly or cheerfully or even with full acceptance, but faithfully, trusting that God is with us in the swirling wind—we are better equipped and freed to rejoice and mourn with others, too.

When we know which direction we’re going—the kind of people we want to be, for example, and the type of society we wish to inhabit—we can face all types of change with greater courage.

Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage, says the Presbyterian Confession of 1967. The same may be said of change.

In the Gospels, Jesus encounters near-constant obstacles: angry crowds, divisive religious leaders, confused disciples, hunger and thirst and tiredness. Yet he keeps banging the same drum, telling his followers, “I am going to Jerusalem.”

Christ’s earthly purpose is to take our sins upon him, to conquer death and rise again to new life. All the rest—teaching, preaching, healing—is not unimportant, but it is done in service of his singular goal.

We cannot solve the pain of change for anyone, but we can be present to them within it. I think of what Anne Lamott wrote back in Traveling Mercies, that the world is basically one big hospital waiting room where we who are “more or less okay for the moment” tend to the injured and the ill while waiting for the Healer to come. “We give them crackers and juice,” she writes.

I long for the day when all the loose ends of my life are neatly tied up. When the changes stop coming and I can finally rest. And yet I know it is in these frayed edges that the Holy Spirit loves to work. We worship the God of the margins, of the in-between times, of the journey.

Change is hard.

It will bring us to our knees.

And perhaps that is part of its goodness, too

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Discussion Questions

1. Patterson describes a moment when the heart cracks open — not as disaster, but as the very thing that begins the journey home. Where in your own story have you recognized, looking back, that a wound or loss was actually an opening rather than just an ending?
2. Ellis says we worship the God of the margins, of the in-between times, of the journey — and Patterson calls that space between paradise lost and paradise regained the place where we laugh, cry, sing, and risk taking off our shoes. What would it look like for you to be more fully present in your current in-between, rather than waiting to arrive somewhere?

A Knowledge of Difference

Tuesday, February 10, 2026 

READ ON CAC.ORG

Dr. Brian Bantum reflects on the story of Adam and Eve as one that initiates us into the freedom of individuality and difference, for good and for ill: 

When I come back to the story of humanity’s fall I still see some of the pride and hubris I was taught to see when I was a young Christian. Adam and Eve desire to be like God and seek something that is not meant for them. They violate God’s law, God’s justice. But even more than that in the story of the Fall I see our propensity to mistake freedom for individuality. I see us estranged from our bodies, hiding the very aspects of ourselves that make us different than one another….

When God created us, God created us to be like God. God wanted us to love and to be loved. But when you love someone you have to choose them. You have to choose them in the big things and in the small things. To love someone you have to see how they are like you and how they are not like you, and you have to see how their differences are gifts, ways of helping you to see yourself and God and the world in new ways….

In the garden … God did not hide the tree [of the knowledge of good and evil] away or place it behind impenetrable walls. It grew among the many other trees. It bore fruit and grew like any other and in this way it stood before Adam and Eve, before us as a mark of their freedom. We could choose not to eat and in not eating we would confess God as our creator, the one whom we cannot be without.

In our freedom and knowledge, we enact a terrible cost:

But in our freedom we, Eve and Adam, did not rest in this relationship. We did not enjoy the trees given to us. We take, cut, tear, beat, consume, enslave what we believe is ours to know. Our eating was the slightest tilt of that beautiful freedom, away from God, and away from one another.

In our disobedience a new world opened up. We could see. The serpent was not lying in some respects; we human beings continued to breathe and think and love. But something had changed…. With this new knowledge we could no longer see the blessed significance of our bodies, of our lives together. The knowledge we gained drove us into hiding, hiding our bodies from one another and hiding ourselves from God.…

Yet, Adam and Eve remained God’s children, unique creatures with whom God desired to dwell, to love and be loved by. In this moment we did not lose the image of God. God did not withhold God’s animating Spirit and love toward us, but something changed nonetheless.

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Praying with the Seguaros Mark Longhurst

If you drive about twenty minutes southwest at sunrise from the Redemptorist Renewal Center monastery in Tucson, Arizona, you’ll find yourself in the barren, beautiful heart of Saguaro National Park. On a June morning like the one I experienced, the dry desert heat will not have yet begun its ascendant day-reign. A coolness mixes with the warm expanse. The group I traveled with broke off from each other, pursuing intentional solitude. Our morning practice: an hour of prayerful walking in the desert, accompanied only by the sturdy presence of saguaro cacti.

We learned the night before our early saguaro trek that the Tohono O’odham tribe views the saguaros as friends and even persons. Hia-Ced O’odham member Larraine Eiler writes about her place-based beliefs in a community of beings that “includes the Saguaro, and the mud turtles, the onion and the spinach, numerous species of migrating birds.” One of our retreat guides, a longtime desert hermit-mystic named Tessa Bielecki, spoke to us about how she encounters Christ in the saguaros. She evocatively described contemplating Christ and saguaros during Lent, and even experiencing the cacti embodying scenes from the Stations of the Cross. (Read her invitation to gospel, cacti-inspired reflection here). After all, in a well-known hymn in the letter to the Colossians, Christ is before all things, the firstborn of creation, and holding all things together (Colossians 1:15–19). That means that we know Christ through creation itself and not only through the biblical text. Nature also is a sacred “book” through which God speaks, as Augustine and many other theologians affirmed.

The first thought I had upon entering the national park was that it is so populated. There are no people, at least at the hour we chose, but there are saguaros in every direction. A city filled with two million of them, according to the National Park Service. And if the saguaros are friends, I thought, then I am not alone at all. I’m surrounded by other bodies in Christ. So, this being my first time ever to Arizona, and first time ever meeting saguaros, my prayer time included me pouring my heart out to God—and introducing myself to them. I slid a finger in between the sharp spines to touch the cool, cucumber-like body. I tried to listen to what each new friend might have to tell me, what stories and histories they held. After all, since a saguaro’s life span ranges from 150-175 years, most of them had been there long before me and, God willing, will still be there after I die. They have much to teach us. View this photo gallery to experience the saguaro’s sparse dignity.

The O’odham affirmation of a saguaro’s personhood has even galvanized activists to save imperiled cacti. If nature has being or “personhood,” then maybe nature has legal rights, some are suggesting. If we treat nature as our friend, we are much less likely to destroy it.

My desert companions and I are all part of a “new monastic” community hosted by the Long-Island-based Center for Spiritual Imagination. We are like-spirited seekers who have banded together to commit to a life of contemplative rhythm amidst our busy lives of work and family. We meet online once a week, go on retreats every year, and share a so-called “rule of life” that involves daily meditation, morning and evening prayer, days of solitude, and more. We converged on the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson to experience the prophet Hosea’s words: “The desert will lead you to your heart where I will speak” (2:14, paraphrase). During a year dedicated to learning Carmelite spirituality and reading the famous Spanish mystics Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, we also sought to discover the roots of the Carmelite order—that of Elijah and the desert.

I wrote in this book about some things the Bible has to say about spirituality and the desert (146): The desert is the archetypal and literal place where we meet God, the place of what writer and speaker Jacqui Lewis calls “fierce love.” Deserts of loss, grief, pain, and literal sand strip down our pretensions, as if to say that preparing for God’s way requires abandonment of all our prior ways. The ways that we are in the world are all too often directed by addiction and a desire for more. The desert demands us to be emptied rather than filled, to show up and be tested, for divine fire to refine our desire, to face inner barrenness head-on, just as Jesus faces down the devil in the wilderness/desert.

We are confronted with our naked selves in the desert. There’s no place for our pride, lust, anger, resentment, or need for approval to hide. No amount of posturing will shield us from the desert sun’s unremitting glare. Its clarity may even stir us to long once again, as the Israelites did, for the seemingly safe oppression of Egypt. Or the truth that the desert peels away may cause us to plunge headlong in love with God, to say with the poet of the Song of Songs, “Who is that coming up from the wilderness/desert, leaning upon her beloved?” (Song of Songs 8:5).

After the Fall

A Story for All Time

Sunday, February 8, 2026 

Father Richard Rohr identifies how the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 is a metaphor for the loss of innocence that we all experience: 

The Bible presents us with stories in “little theater” to prepare us for the Big Theater, teaching us, in effect, that whatever is happening in the Bible is not just there, it’s everywhere; it’s not just this person, it’s every person. For too long, it has been common for Christians to read the Bible complacently, often observing, “That was the problem with Jewish religion back then.” Thus, we cleverly avoid acknowledging that the exact same problem applies today, in our own lives and communities. If the text is truly inspired, it reveals the patterns that are always true—even and most especially here and now, in me and you, not just back there in them.  

When we read Genesis 3 and look at “the Fall” itself, the Fall is not simply something that happened to Adam and Eve in one historical moment. It’s something that happens in all moments and all lives. It must happen and will happen to all of us. In fact, as the English mystic Julian of Norwich said, “First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God.” [1] It’s in falling down that we learn almost everything that matters spiritually. 

In Genesis, the Evil One, imaged as a snake, makes Eve suspicious. That starts the disconnection, an unraveling between Eve, Adam, and God. Suspicion does that in all relationships. Someone tells us one critical thing about another person, and that gets our minds going, fitting all sorts of pieces into a nicely constructed pattern. Suspicion almost always finds evidence for what it suspects. It inevitably moves toward states of resentment and an inability to trust outside myself. That’s the psychology of what’s happening in this simple story line.  

The text states, “the eyes of both of them were opened” (3:7). What they were opened to was a split universe. Teachers of prayer call it the “subject-object split.” This happens whenever we stand over and against things, apart and analytical, and can no longer know things by affinity, likeness, or natural connection. Instead, we merely know them as objects out there, subject to our suspicion and doubt.  

This move of “leaving the garden” begins in all human beings somewhere around seven years of age. Before that time, like Adam and Eve in the garden, we exist in unitive consciousness. It’s where we all begin, when “the father and I are one” (John 10:30), or my mother and I are one—as many of us enjoy in the first years of life.  

Eventually the split happens. It has to happen. We will eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and suffer the “wound of knowledge.” We will get suspicious of ourselves and of everything else. We will doubt. That’s called the state of alienation, and many live their whole lives there.  

God Tends to Our Wounds

Monday, February 9, 2026 

Father Richard reflects on God’s tenderness towards us, even when we make decisions that harm ourselves or others:

Alienated people stop trusting that reality is good, that we are good too, and that we belong — to God and to one another. By eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam’s and Eve’s eyes were opened to a split universe of suspicion and doubt.  

Adam and Eve offer the perfect metaphor for this new split universe, this intense awareness of themselves as separate and cut off. Today, we might call it their encounter with primal shame. Every human being seems to have it in some form: that deep sense of being inadequate, insecure, separate, judged, and apart. It’s almost the human condition, yet it takes a thousand disguises, showing up uniquely in each of us. It’s this sense of disconnection, however, that creates the yearning for divine re-connection and re-communion.  

While Adam and Eve “sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths” (3:7) in response to their newly discovered “nakedness,” there really is no medicine for this existential shame, apart from Someone who possibly knows all of us and loves us anyway. That can only be God! Perhaps that’s what’s meant when we say, “God alone can ‘save’ you.” God says to them, “But who told you that you were naked?” (3:11), undoing their doubt. God creates a doubt in the opposite direction and in their favor.  

When the Significant Other says we are good, then we are good indeed. That’s what it means, psychologically speaking, to be liberated and loved by God. Other people can say it, but we will always doubt it, even though it feels good and may temporarily work. It is often the necessary “bottle opener.”

This safe and protective God, the one who does not reject humanity, is illustrated in a most tender way: God is presented as a divine seamstress: “God sewed together clothes for them out of the skins of animals and they put them on” (3:21).  

Surely this is a promise from a protective and nurturing God who takes away their shame and self-loathing. That will become the momentum-building story of the whole Bible, which gradually undoes the common history of fearsome and threatening deities.  

God takes away the shame we have by giving us back to ourselves—by giving us God! It doesn’t get any better than that.  

Human love does the same thing. When someone else loves us, they give us not just themselves, but for some reason, they give us back our own self—now a truer and better self. This dance between the Lover and the beloved is the psychology of the whole Bible.  

Once humans are outside of union—symbolized by the garden—the whole pattern of fear, hatred, violence, and envy begins. Much of the rest of the Bible will reveal the conflicts of living outside the garden—in other words, in the dualistic mind of disunion—and yet with the constant invitation back into union.

Jubilee Action on Wall Street

Friday, February 6, 2026

What does love require of us, and how can we provoke that spirit of Jubilee that God was up to?
—Shane Claiborne, The Francis Factor

At CAC’s 2015 conference The Francis Factor, activist Shane Claiborne told a story about how his community’s study of Jubilee and their unexpected receipt of $10,000 in a legal settlement led to a creative action on Wall Street:

We thought, “Wow, this money isn’t just for our nonprofit. This should go to folks on the street, because we were literally fighting anti-homeless legislation.” We said, “Let’s use that money…. Let’s have a Jubilee party and let’s do it on Wall Street.” We invited a bunch of homeless folks from all over New York, many of them friends, and we said, “Hey, we’re going to go to Wall Street and we’re going to give away the money that we won in a lawsuit. We need to be peaceful, but it’s going to be beautiful.” We didn’t want it to be too crazy, so we broke it up in small change…. We had hundreds of us that had it divvied up everywhere. We had people on bikes and people with backpacks, people with coffee mugs that were filled with money.

When we got to Wall Street, you could see folks from the street trickling in wondering, “Is this really happening?” The police are all already there … and they’re insisting, “This is not happening. If anyone’s here for this money distribution, it’s not happening.” What they didn’t know is we were already there…. As soon as the bell was about to drop on Wall Street, … we announced, “We believe another world is possible, another world where everybody has what they need and there’s not this deep inequity.”

We preached it that morning and then Sister Margaret [a Catholic sister] announced the Jubilee, blew the ram’s horn, and money started pouring out everywhere. I mean, we had people on the balconies with paper money. They start pouring it out…. It was beautiful. They’re singing. This one … street sweeper, he’s got his dustpan filled with money. He’s like, “It is a good day at work. Hallelujah!” Another guy grabs some money off the street and he said, “Now I can get the prescription I needed. Thank you.” We even had folks from inside Wall Street that heard about what was happening. They said, “We heard that there’s more fun happening out here, so we’re here.” One guy just said, “I want to start getting bagels and giving them out,” and he did. It was contagious….

I think that in the end, our goal is not to create enemies but is actually to courageously proclaim the vision of God that is so big that everyone is welcome. But it also means, as Desmond Tutu says, that those who have been oppressed are free from oppression, and those who have done the oppressing are free from being the oppressor, that everyone is set free. [1] That’s the invitation for us.

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5 On Friday John Chaffee

1.

“Love itself is a kind of knowing.”

– Gregory the Great, 6th Century Bishop

The whole of Christian tradition highlights Love as the main virtue and as a description of what God is.  That said, it is fascinating how the tradition also holds that Love is a form of epistemology, it is a way of learning and therefore of knowing.

It is one thing for me to read a book about being married; it is another thing entirely to be taught by the school of love what marriage is supposed to be.

I can read 400 biographies about a person, but I could learn so much more about a person if I were to love them and be loved by them.

For all these reasons and more, as Gregory the Great teaches us, Love is a kind of knowing.

2.

“God leads into the dark night those whom He desires to purify from all these imperfections so that He may bring them farther onward.”

– John of the Cross, Spanish Monk & Reformer

When I first read the Dark Night of the Soul, it did not make sense to me.  Then, after enormous heartbreak and disillusionment with the institutional church, the Dark Night of the Soul made the most sense of all the approaches of Christian spirituality.

Over the years, I have met people at various stages of the Dark Night of the Soul.  Many of them felt a sense of relief to know that their path had been walked before by others, and that rather than being lost, they are on the same old journey of being found.

I think that one of the reasons the Dark Night of the Soul can feel so painful is that it is almost never a chosen path.  It is a path forced upon us, or one that chooses us.

In the wisdom of John of the Cross, the Dark Night of the Soul is God stripping away every single crutch, support, or idol that gets in the way of the Beloved Soul and God…

And that even includes the experience of faith itself.

Think about that.

God allows us to experience a type of “atheism” or “lack of faith” in order to teach us that our experience of faith is not the thing we should be after.  That is very much like being in love with the feeling of being in love without loving the Beloved right in front of us!

3.

“This is the final human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know God.”

– Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Monk

Aquinas wrote the most impressive systematic theology in Church history.  It has towered rather supremely over other works of theology.  It is known as the Summa Theologiae.

Even still…

Despite writing such an impressive tome.

Aquinas still maintained the mystery that God is something beyond our comprehension.

I find that absolutely lovely.

4.

“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.”

– Pete Rollins, Irish Philosopher

We have a problem, a predicament, a difficulty that we must overcome.

God is utterly beyond human language, symbols, ceremonies, and concepts.  Every potential thought we might have about God is immediately infinitely less than the reality of what God actually is.

And yet…

We can’t not say something.

God is such a profound mystery that encompasses and penetrates everything we say or do to such a degree that we still have to say something.

This paradox could make some people despair, while others might bend the knee before the mystery.

5.

“I pray God rid me of God.”

– Meister Eckhart, 14th Century German Preacher

Years ago, I preached a Good Friday service where the main point of the sermon was this quote from Eckhart.

At some level, we need the help of God to rid us of every smaller, limited, misguided, idolatrous view of God.

It is probably true for each of us that at the end of our ropes, there is an understanding of God that we would rather die than give up.  The strange reality is that that view of God is far less than what God actually is, and therefore, we need God’s help to “cleanse our palate” or “clean the slate” and to help us come to God with as few hindrances as possible.

On the surface, this quote sounds like a preacher requesting to become an atheist.  On a deeper level, it is a prayer of profound insight and devotion to this mystery we all call “God.”

Funny enough, I did not preach a Good Friday service at that church again.  Oh well.  I still think it was a sermon that Meister Eckhart would have approved of.

There Is More Than Enough

Thursday, February 5, 2026

In a homily on the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Father Richard Rohr encourages us to pray for a worldview of abundance instead of scarcity:

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey observed that one of the most universal patterns of highly effective people was that they had a worldview of abundance, while much of the world has a worldview of scarcity.

We tend to get these worldviews very young, and they underlie almost everything. I, myself, tend to have a worldview of scarcity, growing up as I did as a child of parents who were born in the Depression and the Kansas dust storms. A worldview of scarcity tells us to protect what we have, because there’s never enough to go around. It’s a competitive, win/lose worldview. It moves us toward anxiety, toward consumerism, and toward possessiveness, because we don’t want to lose what “little” we have—even if what we have is really more than enough.

But there’s another worldview, the worldview of abundance. Sooner or later, we have to choose it, because it doesn’t come naturally. I’m convinced that it’s the worldview of the gospel. It’s a big world out there. There are a lot of options and opportunities. There’s always another creative way to look at things. Let’s be honest. Do we remember to look at life that way?

Most people are afraid that they don’t have enough. Of course, if we’re dependent upon a finite source—one limited amount of money, one limited intellect, one limited life—it’s easy to look at life in terms of scarcity, convincing ourselves that there isn’t enough. There isn’t enough of goodness. There isn’t even enough of God.

The worldview of abundance depends upon us recognizing that we are in touch with an Infinite Source. If we’ve never made contact with our Infinite Source, we will be stingy, even selfish. We will guard and hoard the portion we have. This affects much of our politics and policies in this country. We’re always afraid that someone else is taking what we have earned, as if we had earned it entirely by ourselves. Most of it has been given to us, yes, by our work, but also by grace and freedom, and the choices of many other people, almost despite ourselves.

Jesus represents the worldview of abundance in every one of his multiplication miracles and stories. There’s always the making of much out of little and there are always baskets left over. That’s the only possible message: There’s plenty! If we learn to be creative, if we learn to be imaginative, if we learn to be a little less selfish, there’s always another way to look at it and another way to make sure all are fed.

Maybe a worldview of abundance is something we’ll only fully experience when we learn to draw upon an Infinite Source. If the Source is Infinite, we are infinite. If our source is finite, of course we are finite too.

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Daily Bread Is Enough
(Adapted from Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

“Give us this day our daily bread.”
— Matthew 6:11

We often want bread for the next year, the next decade, the rest of our lives. We want guarantees. We want reserves. We want control.

But Jesus teaches us to ask only for today.

Daily bread is the spiritual discipline of trust. It invites us to believe that what we are given is sufficient — not because it is large, but because it is enough.

Scarcity is not always about lacking resources. Often it is the fear that tomorrow will not come with grace. We hoard because we are afraid. We compete because we are anxious. We grasp because we do not trust the Source.

The prayer for daily bread is a refusal to live in fear of tomorrow.

It is a quiet rebellion against the myth that survival depends solely on accumulation. It reminds us that life flows from gift, not possession.

Those who trust daily bread become generous people. When we believe there is enough for today, we are freed to share today. When we believe tomorrow will come with mercy, we no longer need to clutch what we have.

Abundance is not measured by how much we store, but by how freely we can give.

The miracle is not that we have everything.
The miracle is that what we are given is enough.