CONTEMPLATION, LIBERATION, AND ACTION

Taking a Stand in Government

Thursday, April 16, 2026

At the Fall 2025 ReVision Conference, Brian McLaren highlighted the contemplative witness of the philosopher Boethius (d. 524), a contemporary of Benedict of Nursia: 

Boethius was orphaned at a young age and was raised by a very wealthy aristocrat, which brought him enormous benefits. Because of his privilege he was given an education in the Greek and Roman classics. By the age of twenty-five, he was brought into the government of the violent and unstable King Theodoric, becoming a counselor and advisor to the king at thirty-three. This young Christian man had a great position of privilege. So what did he do with it?

Boethius uses his brilliance to do what he believes needs to be done, seeking to integrate Christian theology and Greek philosophy. He also does some important political work in Theodoric’s kingdom. In the year 520 he takes a dangerous stand, borne of his own integrity and faith, for Christian unity between the East and the West, and he pays for it. In 524, he is imprisoned by King Theodoric for defending one of the king’s critics.

In prison, Boethius is removed from public life, like Benedict in his cave. And like Benedict, people come to see him. He uses his remaining months in prison to teach, and eventually to write a text, The Consolation of Philosophy, that is still studied today as the last great work of the Roman classical period and the first great work of medieval literature.

In The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius describes how he is met in his suffering by a female figure who offers him wisdom:

While I was quietly thinking these thoughts over to myself and giving vent to my sorrow with the help of my pen, I became aware of a woman standing over me. She was of awe-inspiring appearance, her eyes burning and keen beyond the usual power of men. She was so full of years that I could hardly think of her as of my own generation, and yet she possessed a vivid color and undiminished vigor. It was difficult to be sure of her height, for sometimes she was of average human size, while at other times she seemed to touch the very sky with the top of her head, and when she lifted herself even higher, she pierced it and was lost to human sight. [1]

Sophia, the feminine figure of wisdom, offers him calm, helps him recenter, and guides him into contemplation you might say. The writing of this book becomes a contemplative practice for him that influences generations of people across the following centuries, through and beyond the decay and complete collapse of the Roman Empire.

Shortly after finishing The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius is brutally tortured and executed. The government in which Boethius worked and strived to do good turns on him and executes him.

These two men, Benedict and Boethius, were called to two completely different paths to live out their Christian faith. [Read about Benedict here.] One stayed in the center of power and tried to influence it, holding fast to his faith. The other left the centers of power and went to the margins to build an alternative community where they could keep the way of Christ alive and maintain some sort of wisdom in a world that was obsessed not with truth, but with power and wealth, violence and weapons.

Jesus Calling – Sarah Young

This is a time in your life when you must learn to let go: of loved ones, of possessions, of control. In order to let go of something that is precious to you, you need to rest in My Presence, where you are complete. Take time to bask in the Light of My Love. As you relax more and more, your grasping hand gradually opens up, releasing your prized possession into My care.
    You can feel secure, even in the midst of cataclysmic changes, through awareness of My continual Presence. The One who never leaves you is the same One who never changes: I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. As you release more and more things into My care, remember that I never let go of your hand. Herein lies your security, which no one and no circumstance can take from you.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 89:15 (NLT)
15 Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship,
    for they will walk in the light of your presence, Lord.

Hebrews 13:8 (NLT)
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Isaiah 41:13 (NLT)
13 For I hold you by your right hand—
    I, the Lord your God.
And I say to you,
    ‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.

This is a time in your life when you must learn to let go: of loved ones, of possessions, of control. In order to let go of something that is precious to you, you need to rest in My Presence, where you are complete. Take time to bask in the Light of My Love. As you relax more and more, your grasping hand gradually opens up, releasing your prized possession into My care.
    You can feel secure, even in the midst of cataclysmic changes, through awareness of My continual Presence. The One who never leaves you is the same One who never changes: I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. As you release more and more things into My care, remember that I never let go of your hand. Herein lies your security, which no one and no circumstance can take from you.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 89:15 (NLT)
15 Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship,
    for they will walk in the light of your presence, Lord.

Hebrews 13:8 (NLT)
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Isaiah 41:13 (NLT)
13 For I hold you by your right hand—
    I, the Lord your God.
And I say to you,
    ‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.

Today’s Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

In this season of our lives, You call us to let go – of loved ones, possessions, responsibilities, and the illusion of control. Yet, in the midst of these transitions, You invite us to find completeness in Your perfect and loving presence with peace that surpasses all of our understanding.

Help us, Lord, to rest in the light of Your love, knowing that in Your arms, we lack nothing. As we surrender our grip on what we hold dear, teach us to trust in Your care.

We find security in Your unchanging nature. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Your continual presence is our anchor amidst the storms of life that can bring sudden and unrelenting change.

Just as You hold us by our right hand, assuring us not to fear, help us to release our burdens into Your loving embrace. Grant us the grace to trust that You never let go of us, no matter the circumstance.

May we find the overflowing joy in worshipping You as we walk through life in the light of Your presence. Knowing that You are always with us, guiding us, and sustaining us. You are good, Father.

In the perfect name of Jesus, our constant and faithful companion, we pray. Amen.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KPeT0jTcWGU%3Flist%3DRDKPeT0jTcWGU

Stay, Learn, and Love

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Rev. Cameron Trimble connects the monastic wisdom of Saint Benedict with the desert ammas and abbas who were his spiritual ancestors:

St. Benedict told his communities to stay: to root themselves in place, in relationship, in shared life. Stability, he taught, is how love survives collapse. You do not run every time the world shakes. You commit. You tend. You remain.

But long before Benedict organized communities that stayed, another stream of elders stepped away for a time—the Desert Mothers and Fathers—because they wanted to learn how to live in the world without becoming shaped by its distortions.

At first glance, these look like opposite instructions: Go versus stay. Leave versus root. Desert versus monastery.

But underneath, they answer the same spiritual problem: How do you remain faithful when the surrounding culture is losing its moral center?

The desert elders left noise to recover clarity. Benedictine communities built structure to protect clarity. Both traditions understood that without intentional spiritual formation and maturity, power, fear, and spectacle will train the soul faster than truth will.

The desert was never the final destination. It was a training ground for perception.

One elder taught that the first task of spiritual life is learning to see your own reactions clearly: how quickly anger justifies itself, how easily fear pretends to be wisdom, how often ego disguises itself as courage. Silence exposed all of that, not to shame people, but to free them.

Benedict took the next step. He asked: Once you learn to see clearly, how do you live faithfully in community over the long haul? His answer was not intensity but rhythm—prayer, work, shared meals, mutual care, accountability, humility, repair.

So the question for us is not whether to leave or stay. Most of us are not called to geographic withdrawal. We are called to interior non-cooperation with corruption while remaining deeply committed to one another.

You can stay without surrendering your soul. But it takes practice.

It takes boundaries around attention. It takes rhythms that interrupt outrage. It takes communities that tell the truth to one another gently and directly. It takes prayer, or silence, or honest reflection that clears emotional distortion before it hardens into identity.

Right now many people feel spiritually flooded, saturated with alarm, analysis, reaction, and dread. The nervous system never powers down. The moral imagination never gets quiet enough to hear wisdom instead of impulse.

The elders would recognize this immediately.

They would not tell you to disappear. They would tell you to build inner ground. They would tell you to create small deserts of clarity inside daily life—spaces where truth can speak without competition—so that when you act, you act from depth instead of reactivity.

Benedict would agree. Stay. But stay awake. Stay rooted. Stay practiced in humility and courage. Stay shaped by love more than by fear.

The goal is never escape.

The goal is freedom—the kind that lets you remain fully human when systems forget how.

Sarah Young – Jesus Calling

    Rest in My Presence, allowing Me to take charge of this day. Do not bolt into the day like a racehorse suddenly released. Instead, walk purposefully with Me, letting Me direct your course one step at a time. Thank Me for each blessing along the way; this brings Joy to both you and Me. A grateful heart protects you from negative thinking. Thankfulness enables you to see the abundance I shower upon you daily. Your prayers and petitions are winged into heaven’s throne room when they are permeated with thanksgiving. In everything give thanks, for this is My will for you. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Colossians 4:2 NLT

An Encouragement for Prayer

2 Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.

1st Thessalonians 5:18 NLT

18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

Lyrics for today’s song. If you don’t see the song, please hover over “Lyrics” and click to launch YouTube video:

God’s resplendent glory full
On display for all to see
God creator, God of hope
Beautiful redeeming grace

Healer of the broken down
Of the orphans and oppressed
Find Him dining with the poor
Find Him here surrounding

Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near

From oceans depth to cedar trees
Fields of wheat along the plains
Praise to God from all the earth
Praise Him from the mountaintops

Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near
Hallelujah, God is near

His radiance is greater than
Anything on earth and sky
Stars and moon will guard the night
Shining to the God on high

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

CAC faculty members Carmen Acevedo Butcher and Brian McLaren opened the CAC’s Fall 2025 ReVision conference by asking: “What do you do with Christianity when it has become enmeshed with authoritarian politics and corrupted by violence?” While the question may sound contemporary, they turned to earlier models of contemplative response in times of political crisis, reflecting on the lives of Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–547) and the philosopher Boethius (ca. 480–524). Today, we share some of their reflections on Benedict. McLaren begins:

It’s not hard to imagine a world that seems to be falling apart with political division and corruption, economic instability, and different ethnic groups clashing for power and resenting one another. It’s not hard to imagine a world where religious leaders make deals with political leaders and vice versa, for mutual benefit. It’s not just our world; it was the world Benedict of Nursia lived in.

Benedict saw what the Christian religion was becoming, and he recalled Jesus’s life of simplicity, love, and nonviolence. And something deep within him called him to do something new. Benedict believed that it was possible to live by the path of Jesus, rather than by the standards and norms of the crazy system that was operating around him. I can imagine him thinking:

I’m going to leave the city and my privilege. I’m going to go out and establish an alternative community, a little island of sanity in a world that seems to be going nuts. I’m going to try to create a place where we seek to live by the law of love in the kingdom, kin-dom, or sacred ecosystem, of God. We will care for the sick and the dying. We will welcome the stranger and create an order of life that has dignity. We will preserve learning, writing down ancient wisdom. Every day, all day, we will enter into deep listening with God and with one another to keep Jesus’s wisdom alive. 

Carmen Acevedo Butcher describes the fruit of Benedict’s contemplative withdrawal as an active renewal of community:

Benedict’s world was on fire. There was a war, invaders, cruelty, a volcanic winter, people were homeless and starving. In the midst of that, Benedict felt a sole desiring to please God alone, so he gave up his privileged way of life and headed out to a cave for three years, where his food was lowered to him on rope. People heard about this holy hermit and would go to him for spiritual advice, seeking a “word” in the tradition of the desert mystics.

If I had been Benedict, I might have waited a few years to set out, just until things calmed down a little bit. But instead of staying in his cave, Benedict decides he needs to house the people who have been coming to him. He builds thirteen monasteries near Subiaco, becoming the superior of the last one to stay close to the brothers who need extra attention.

Those monasteries, as Dr. Mike Petrow says, were the bomb shelters, time capsules, laboratories, and protected cultivators of the contemplative tradition in a world falling apart.

Sarah Young – Jesus Calling

“Beloved, there are indeed many measures of success in the world, and most of them are meaningless. To avoid confusion, you need a rule of thumb: Seek to please Me.” – Matthew 22:37-38

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.'”

Contemplation, Liberation, and Action

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the whole earth with a lever.
—Archimedes

Father Richard Rohr uses the images of a lever and a place to stand to explain why social transformation needs both action and contemplation:

Archimedes, a third-century BCE Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that a lever balanced in the correct place, on the correct fulcrum, could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. He calculated that if the lever stretched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other.

The fixed point is our place to stand. It is a contemplative stance: steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our “private room” (Matthew 6:6). However, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy. Otherwise, our distance can become a form of escapism.

True contemplation, the great teachers say, is really quite down to earth and practical, and doesn’t require life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to “move the world,” we need some distancing and detachment from the diversionary nature and delusions of mass culture and the false self. Contemplation builds on the hard bottom of reality as it is without ideology, denial, or fantasy.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t have a fixed place to stand, a fulcrum of critical distance, and thus we cannot find our levers, or true “delivery systems,” as Bill Plotkin calls them [1], by which to move our world. We do not have the steadiness of spiritual practice to keep our sight keen and alive. (COFew?) Those who have plenty of opportunities for spiritual practice—for example, those in monasteries—often don’t have an access point beyond religion itself from which to speak or to serve much of our world. We need a delivery system in the world to provide the capacity for building bridges and connecting the dots of life.

Some degree of inner experience is necessary for true spiritual authority, but we need some form of outer validation, too. We need to be taken seriously as competent and committed individuals and not just “inner” people. Could this perhaps be what Jesus means by being both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)? God offers us quiet, contemplative eyes; God also calls us to prophetic and critical involvement in the pain and sufferings of our world—both at the same time. This is so obvious in the life and ministry of Jesus that I wonder why it has not been taught as an essential part of Christianity.

• Previous Entry: A Place to stand

Liberation from the Ego’s Agenda

Monday, April 13, 2026

Father Richard considers how Jesus calls us to be liberated from the agendas of our inflated egos:  

What was Jesus liberating us from? This probably won’t seem too different from what we would now call the ego or the false self. As Jesus put it, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). Buddhists tend to describe this process with much greater clarity, but Jesus didn’t have access to psychological language. He just spoke in a straightforward way that his contemporaries could understand.  

Scholarship today is discovering a much more radical and demanding Jesus than either Catholicism or Protestantism was ever ready for. We distorted the message so it wasn’t primarily about a transformation of the ego but freedom from the body self. We largely transferred everybody’s guilt concerns toward the body. We concentrated on repressing and punishing the body, not giving the body too much pleasure, freedom, or delight. It’s not that there aren’t issues there, but the ego, in my opinion, has gotten away scot-free in the Western church. We allowed egos to get out of control while being quite anxious to appear chaste, self-disciplined, and not too greedy.

Christianity has largely paid little attention to the real things Jesus talked about. Instead, we tend to be preoccupied with things that Jesus never talked about. But who can reform Christianity except Jesus?

Understanding Jesus’s teachings on power is the key to reforming Christianity and other power structures: 

Jesus tells his followers that they should never have what we would call dominative power. He calls it “lording it over others”: “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them … but not so with you” (Matthew 20:25–26). How did so many Christians come to believe that exercising power over others is what religion is all about? There’s no indication that Jesus ever intended there to be a head church office somewhere, with upper, middle, and lower management. As a priest, I’m lower management—and even we expected the laity, the people in the pews, to be passive followers. This is so contrary to what Jesus taught and expected. He clearly gives power to people by giving them an inner authority.  

Liberation from the ego self is liberation from the world of forms and images. Jesus’s word for that was mammon: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). If we’re playing the game of appearance and power, prestige, and possessions, Jesus says we cannot know God. That’s pretty absolute! There’s a correlation between our preoccupation with image and how much—or how little—we’ve experienced the inner life.  

Jesus also liberates us from the ego self by his constant warnings against negativity and oppositional thinking. In general, his word for that liberation is forgiveness. Two thirds of Jesus’s teaching is directly or indirectly about forgiveness. To live oppositionally is to be holding some degree of resentment or unhealed negative energy that we have not brought to the divine presence for transformation.   

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the whole earth with a lever.
—Archimedes

Father Richard Rohr uses the images of a lever and a place to stand to explain why social transformation needs both action and contemplation:

Archimedes, a third-century BCE Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that a lever balanced in the correct place, on the correct fulcrum, could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. He calculated that if the lever stretched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other.

The fixed point is our place to stand. It is a contemplative stance: steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our “private room” (Matthew 6:6). However, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy. Otherwise, our distance can become a form of escapism.

True contemplation, the great teachers say, is really quite down to earth and practical, and doesn’t require life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to “move the world,” we need some distancing and detachment from the diversionary nature and delusions of mass culture and the false self. Contemplation builds on the hard bottom of reality as it is without ideology, denial, or fantasy.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t have a fixed place to stand, a fulcrum of critical distance, and thus we cannot find our levers, or true “delivery systems,” as Bill Plotkin calls them [1], by which to move our world. We do not have the steadiness of spiritual practice to keep our sight keen and alive. Those who have plenty of opportunities for spiritual practice—for example, those in monasteries—often don’t have an access point beyond religion itself from which to speak or to serve much of our world. We need a delivery system in the world to provide the capacity for building bridges and connecting the dots of life.

Some degree of inner experience is necessary for true spiritual authority, but we need some form of outer validation, too. We need to be taken seriously as competent and committed individuals and not just “inner” people. Could this perhaps be what Jesus means by being both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)? God offers us quiet, contemplative eyes; God also calls us to prophetic and critical involvement in the pain and sufferings of our world—both at the same time. This is so obvious in the life and ministry of Jesus that I wonder why it has not been taught as an essential part of Christianity.

Jesus Calling by Sarah Young  

Instead of trying to figure everything out, I want to focus my energy on trusting and thanking You. I’m learning that nothing is wasted when I walk close to You.

“My blessing is on those people who trust in me, who put their confidence in me.” —Jeremiah 17:7

Finding a Place to Stand

Sunday, April 12, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the whole earth with a lever.
—Archimedes

Father Richard Rohr uses the images of a lever and a place to stand to explain why social transformation needs both action and contemplation:

Archimedes, a third-century BCE Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that a lever balanced in the correct place, on the correct fulcrum, could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. He calculated that if the lever stretched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other.

The fixed point is our place to stand. It is a contemplative stance: steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our “private room” (Matthew 6:6). However, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy. Otherwise, our distance can become a form of escapism.

True contemplation, the great teachers say, is really quite down to earth and practical, and doesn’t require life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to “move the world,” we need some distancing and detachment from the diversionary nature and delusions of mass culture and the false self. Contemplation builds on the hard bottom of reality as it is without ideology, denial, or fantasy.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t have a fixed place to stand, a fulcrum of critical distance, and thus we cannot find our levers, or true “delivery systems,” as Bill Plotkin calls them [1], by which to move our world. We do not have the steadiness of spiritual practice to keep our sight keen and alive. Those who have plenty of opportunities for spiritual practice—for example, those in monasteries—often don’t have an access point beyond religion itself from which to speak or to serve much of our world. We need a delivery system in the world to provide the capacity for building bridges and connecting the dots of life.

Some degree of inner experience is necessary for true spiritual authority, but we need some form of outer validation, too. We need to be taken seriously as competent and committed individuals and not just “inner” people. Could this perhaps be what Jesus means by being both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)? God offers us quiet, contemplative eyes; God also calls us to prophetic and critical involvement in the pain and sufferings of our world—both at the same time. This is so obvious in the life and ministry of Jesus that I wonder why it has not been taught as an essential part of Christianity.

Saturday, April 11, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

Sunday
Resurrection reveals that love is stronger than death. 
—Richard Rohr

Monday
God’s resurrecting movement has begun, and it sweeps everyone and everything up within it.
—Mark Longhurst

Tuesday
Easter joy is the grace of being able to say: This is hard. I am still waiting. And God is still good.
—Kate Bowler

Wednesday
How do we understand God-in-flesh, broken and vulnerable, and yet also resurrected and triumphant? How do we, like doubting Thomas, make meaning of Jesus with his still visible wounds?
—Yolanda Pierce

Thursday
Believing in the resurrection can and should transform not only how we view the world, but how we live in it. We should become people in whom others can see new life.
—Paula Gooder

Friday
Love is all that remains. Love and life are finally the same thing, and we know that for ourselves once we have walked through death. 
—Richard Rohr

Week Fourteen Practice

Resurrection: A Nonviolent Commission

Peace activist Father John Dear finds encouragement for living a nonviolent life in Jesus’s words to his disciples after his resurrection: 

When he rose from the dead and appeared to his awe-struck disciples on that Easter Sunday night, [Jesus] told them repeatedly, “Peace be with you.” He showed them his wounds, and repeated his greeting, “Peace be with you.” In that resurrection moment, he offered a peace that is not of this world. It is the peace that comes about through total surrender, nonviolence, non-retaliation, and unconditional, universal love. If, like the nonviolent Jesus, we choose not to respond to violence with further violence, if we dare respond with love, surrender ourselves to God, and practice creative nonviolence, then, come what may, we will know a new kind of peace.

Life is short. We have only so many years left. Even if we eat right, lose weight, exercise daily, and take care of ourselves, our time on earth is limited. What do we want to do with the time that is given us? How can we get beyond ourselves and help relieve suffering and disarm the world? If we surrender our hearts, wills, and lives to the living God of Peace, I believe we will be given the resurrection gift of peace, and become instruments of God’s peace and universal love. Resurrection means having nothing to do with death, having not a trace of violence within us. When we live in the peaceful spirit of resurrection, we find ourselves practicing the boundless love and gentleness modeled for us in the nonviolent Jesus, who came to reconcile humanity to God, which is the ultimate act of peacemaking. This resurrection peace is ours for the asking if we dare choose it and surrender.

If we dare surrender to the God of Universal Love and Peace right now, then we can go forth into the world of violence and war, without fear, worry, anxiety, or anger, and be transforming agents of loving nonviolence like Gandhi and Dr. King, and know, with the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich, that “all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.”

Jesus Calling – Sarah Young

Do not worry about tomorrow or get stuck in the past. There is abundant Life in My Presence today.

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” —Philippians 3:13-14

Resurrection Is Possible Now

Friday, April 10, 2026

Father Richard describes how it’s possible to experience resurrection through experiencing God’s love: 

We don’t need to wait for death to experience resurrection. We can begin resurrection today by living connected to God. Resurrection happens every time we love someone even though they were not very loving to us. At that moment we have been brought to new life. Every time we decide to trust and begin again, even after repeated failures, we are resurrected. Every time we refuse to become negative, cynical, or hopeless, we are experiencing the Risen Christ. We don’t have to wait for it later. Resurrection is always possible now.  

The resurrection is not Jesus’s private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world. It’s filled with grace. It’s filled with possibility. It’s filled with newness.   

The resurrection is not a miracle story to prove the divinity of Christ, something that makes him the winner. It’s a storyline that allows us all to be winners. ALL! No exceptions! There’s no eternal death for anybody: All are invited to draw upon this infinite Source, this infinite Mystery, this infinite Love, this infinite Possibility. Spiritually speaking, we live in a world of abundance, of infinity, but most of us walk around operating in a world of scarcity.

And so we hoard it—Spirit, Love, Life—to ourselves. We hoard grace and we hoard mercy. We don’t allow ourselves to be conduits through which it pours into the world. Truly, the only way we can hold onto grace, mercy, love, joy—or any spiritual gift—is to give them away consciously and intentionally. If we stop acting as a conduit, we lose them ourselves. That’s why there are so many sad, bitter, and angry people. Disconnected from God, we choose death and contribute to negativity, cynicism, anger, and even the oppression of other races and religions. [1]

I believe the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus is summed up in the climactic line from the Song of Songs: “Love is stronger than death” (8:6). In Christian art, the risen Christ often holds a blank, white banner; if that banner should say anything, it should say: “Love will win!” Love is all that remains. Love and life are finally the same thing, and we know that for ourselves once we have walked through death. 

Remember, Love has you. Love is you. Love alone, and your deep need for love, recognizes love everywhere else. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear “that your lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity, is absurd” (Romans 3:3), says Paul. Love has finally overcome fear, and your house is being rebuilt on a new and solid foundation. This foundation was always there, but it took you a long time to find it, for “It is love alone that lasts” (1 Corinthians 13:13). All you have loved in your life and been loved by is eternal and true. [2]

_________________________________________________________

John Chaffee

1.

“Spirit is always present, just as the sun is always shining above the clouds.”

– Dan Millman, American Author

This felt poetic and true.

Whatever Spirit is, it is always present and just beyond our perception.

2.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers, American Psychologist

This is something I think about often.  None of us can change until we have a sense that we are unconditionally loved as we are, and that includes even ourselves.

Until we accept ourselves as we are, we are still trying to change a false version of ourselves, a version of ourselves that doesn’t really exist anyway.

We have to start with reality.  We have to begin with who we are in this exact moment, with all the warts, memories, scars, humors, faults, strengths, sins, and glories.  That is the whole person, that is the person who actually exists.

I think this is the wisdom of grace.  Grace takes us as we are.  However, in religious circles, we feel as though we must change who we are to then warrant that same grace.

Fortunately, after enough failed attempts at changing ourselves, grace interrupts those attempts and tells us that even if we never change, we are still loved.

3.

“Bidden or not bidden, God is Present.”

– Carl Jung, Swiss Psychotherapist

Apparently, this was written above Carl Jung’s doorway.

It is probably another way of saying the first quote from Dan Millman today.

However, the difference is that here the question is not about one’s ability to see the Spirit, but whether someone has asked God to be present.  It leads me to think that whether a person is a theist or an atheist, it does not matter; God is always present.

4.

“Throughout the time of my showings, I wished to know what our Beloved meant. More than fifteen years later, the answer came in a spiritual vision. This is what I heard. “Would you like to know our Lord’s meaning in all this? Know it well: love was his meaning. Who revealed this to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why did he reveal it to you? For love. Stay with this, and you will know more of the same. You will never know anything but love, without end.”

– Julian of Norwich, English Mystic

This might be one of the best sections from Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love.  It comes at the very end of her infamous book.

I think what draws me to Julian’s insights is the absolute primacy of the Love of God.

Everything is created by, for, and through Divine Love.  All that is good, beautiful, and true is an expression of that same Love.  All that is wrong, ugly, and false will be made right by Love.

And, for our purposes now, Love is simply another name for God.

5.

“Spiritual maturity begins when we choose to bow before something greater than ourselves rather than to give in to self-destructive tendencies.”

– Unknown

It is when we begin to live by a standard higher than ourselves, and, dare I say, even higher than the surrounding culture, that we enter into spiritual maturity.

For many people, their highest ethic lies within themselves; for others, their morality is defined by the social majority.  However, there is something even larger than the surrounding culture or social majority: the infinite mystery we call “God.”

Which Quote Most Jumped Out at You?

A Risen Existence

Thursday, April 9, 2026

Theologian Paula Gooder describes how Jesus’s resurrection would have been interpreted as a sign that the end times—of justice, mercy, and love—had begun:

To a lot of Jews living at the time of Jesus, believing that a resurrection had happened would have meant believing that the end times … had already started.

No wonder, then, that the earliest disciples struggled to get their heads around Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus had risen from the dead but no one else had; Jesus had risen from the dead but the world was, apparently, no different from the way it had been before: the Romans still occupied Palestine, the poor were still the poor, Israel was still downtrodden. A lot of the New Testament writers made sense of this by seeing Jesus’ resurrection as a radical and transforming event which changed the world now…. For them, Jesus’ resurrection signaled far, far more than a dead person living; it marked the start of a whole new way of being. The end times had begun, but not in their entirety. [1]

We can be encouraged by glimpses of resurrection in the here and now:

The world is as it always was with its wars, heartache, poverty, and oppressions, but … in the midst of conflict and aggression, we can, from time to time, see moments of reconciliation and of compassion. Occasions when the parent of a murdered son can forgive his killers, when a community can rise against the gangs that terrorize it and make it a better place, when we can rise above the petty arguments that spoil our human relationships are, for me, all a slice of the end times now. Some are dramatic world-changing occasions; others are small and apparently insignificant. Some affect whole nations and continents; others one or two individuals. The occasions may only be momentary and we quickly move back into the harsh reality of the everyday, but their effects linger, suggesting that new creation is possible and that transformation can happen.…

Belief in the resurrection is an act of rebellion against the evil, corruption and oppression that can so easily swamp us. Believing in the resurrection can be a refusal to accept the world as it is, that it can never change…. Believing in resurrection allows us to see the world with a long view, a perspective that looks backward to resurrection and forwards to the end times, recognizing traces of resurrection and end times in what is happening now. Believing in the resurrection can and should transform not only how we view the world, but how we live in it. We should become people in whom others can see new life, and people who introduce that new life wherever the world is stultifying and life-denying. Resurrection makes a difference not only to Jesus and the earliest disciples but also to us, as we live out our lives day by day.

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Jesus Calling Sarah Young

Trust Me in every detail of your life. Nothing is random in My kingdom. Everything that happens fits into a pattern for good, to those who love Me. Instead of trying to analyze the intricacies of the pattern, focus your energy on trusting Me and thanking Me at all times. Nothing is wasted when you walk close to Me. Even your mistakes and sins can be recycled into something good, through My transforming grace.
     While you were still living in darkness, I began to shine the Light of My Presence into your sin-stained life. Finally, I lifted you up out of the mire into My marvelous Light. Having sacrificed My very Life for you, I can be trusted in every facet of your life.

RECOMMENDED BIBLE VERSES:

Joshua 10:14-15 NLT
14 There has never been a day like this one before or since, when the LORD answered such a prayer. Surely the LORD fought for Israel that day! 15 Then Joshua and the Israelite army returned to their camp at Gilgal. (Related scriptures = Exodus 14:4, Deuteronomy 1:30, Joshua 10:6, Joshua 43)

Romans 8:28 NLT
28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (Related scriptures = Ephesians 1:11 & 3:11, 2nd Timothy 1:9)

Additional insight regarding Romans 8:28: God works in “everything” – not just isolated incidents – for our good. This does not mean that all that happens to us is good. Evil is prevalent in our fallen world, but God is able to turn every circumstance around for our long-term good. Not that God is not working to make us happy but to fulfill his purpose. Note also that this promise is not for everybody. It can be claimed only by those who love God and are called by Him, that is, those whom the Holy Spirit convinces to receive Christ. Such people have a new perspective, a new mindset. They trust in God, not in worldly treasures; their security is in Heaven, not on earth. Their faith in God does not waver in pain and persecution because they know God is with them.

Psalm 40:2 NLT
2 He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. (Related scriptures = Psalm 27:5 & 69:1-2, Jeremiah 38:6)

Additional insight regarding Psalm 40:1-3: Waiting for God to help us is not easy, but David received four benefits from waiting:
1) God lifted him out of despair
2) God set his feet on solid ground
3) God steadies him as he walked
4) God put a new song of praise in his mouth.
Often blessings cannot be received unless we go through the trial of waiting.

1st Peter 2:9 NLT
9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. (Related scriptures = Exodus 19:5-6, Deuteronomy 7:6 & 10:15, Isaiah 43:20-21, 1st Peter 2:5, Revelation 1:6)

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 2:9: Christians sometimes speak of “the priesthood of all believers.” In Old Testament times, people did not approach God directly. A priest acted as an intermediary between God and sinful human beings. With Christ’s victory on the cross, that pattern changed. Now we can come directly into God’s presence without fear (Hebrews 4:16), and we are given the responsibility of bringing others to him also (2nd Corinthians 5:18-21). When we are united with Christ as members of his body, we join in his priestly work of reconciling God and people.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 2:9-10: People often base their self-concept on their accomplishments. But our relationship with Christ is far more important than our jobs, successes, wealth, or knowledge. We have been chosen by God as his very own, and we have been called to represent him to others. Remember that your value comes from being one of God’s children, not from what you can achieve. You have worth because of what God does, not because of what you do. 

Today’s Prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father,

I trust You with every aspect of my life. I know nothing is random in Your kingdom, and You work all things for good for those who love You. Instead of analyzing out of a desire to be in control, I choose to focus on trusting and thanking You always in all circumstances.

Thank You for lifting me out of darkness and transforming my mistakes into something good. Help me to live out Your purpose for me and to show Your goodness to others.

Amen.

Hope for the Wounded

Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Womanist theologian Yolanda Pierce reminds us that the resurrection and its promise of new life doesn’t erase the pain of what has been lost: 

You cannot read the stories of the resurrected Jesus as accounts of life triumphing over death without contending with layers of grief, mourning, and pain. A beloved mother has lost her first-born child; students and disciples are grieving the death of a teacher, confidant, and friend. Everyone has borne witness to the excruciating pain of the cross, the consequences of daring to defy empire, and the cost of declaring Jesus as Messiah. Some believers go into hiding, and others are confused about who they should now follow.

In the chaos of this time, the risen Savior shows up again, and again, and again—not as a ghostly, ethereal being but as wounded flesh. “Look at my hands and my feet,” he says to some of the frightened folks to whom he appears. “It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39)….

How do we understand God-in-flesh, broken and vulnerable, and yet also resurrected and triumphant? How do we, like [doubting] Thomas, make meaning of Jesus with his still visible wounds? To Thomas, Jesus speaks the words, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side” (John 20:27)….

There is an intimacy to Jesus’s command to Thomas, a closeness that we cannot overlook. Christ invites him to touch the unhealed wounds—to feel the places where nails and spear had pierced his body. It is a proclamation that the physical body still matters…. Wounds, too, are a part of the divine story.

By sharing his wounds, Jesus reveals that our wounds are places for God’s healing presence and love:

This is a theology for the wounded, for those who are still healing, and even for those who aren’t quite ready for healing. The risen Savior insistently welcomes the doubting, the uncertain, and the grieving to touch and see that he is real and present and here with us. The risen Savior, who had been abandoned, denied, betrayed, and crucified, doesn’t hide his wounds or rush their healing. As wounded people encased in the frailties of human flesh, can we, too, summon enough grace and kindness to acknowledge that our own very human wounds need time to heal?…

This is an embodied theology. In these stories, the physical body and the tangible world are consistently presented as ways of intimately knowing God. Some saw and believed; others have not seen and still believed. At the center of both experiences is God-in-flesh, loving us in our own wounded places.

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APR 7, 2026 Right-ness. Skye Jethani

Amid a stunning array of beliefs, religions, philosophies, and cultures, there are two things that all people agree on. First, this world is not what it ought to be. Second, we do not behave as we ought. Both the Hindu and the humanist will lament when an earthquake razes a village or a disease kills a child. Likewise, both the believer and the atheist can agree that the powerful should not abuse the weak and the rich should not cheat the poor.An inherent sense of ought–ness is universal in our species. As C.S. Lewis observed, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson.” While the particulars of what constitutes right and wrong vary somewhat across cultures, the existence of the categories “right” and “wrong” does not. We have yet to discover a society that is truly and consistently relativistic in its morality, where right and wrong are defined by each individual and never imposed upon another. This is because such a society cannot endure. To be a society, people must agree upon a sense of order—they must share a framework for how the world ought to be and uphold it when it is violated. Anything less is not a culture; it’s chaos. Modern American culture speaks a lot about “justice,” but the common biblical word for this universal instinct is “righteousness.” We often focus on the word’s spiritual or moral dimensions, but righteousness simply means “rightly ordered relationships.” A righteous person, for example, fulfills all their relational obligations in a way that allows everyone within their network to flourish. Of course, this also applies to a properly ordered relationship between God and his people. Violating this relationship makes one “unrighteous,” while keeping the covenant with God results in a declaration of one’s “righteousness. ”Whether it is the shout for justice by a protestor or the call to live in union with God by a preacher, Jesus affirms this longing for righteousness. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” He equates the soul’s desire for justice with the unrelenting physical desire for food and water. It is an inescapable aspect of our human condition, and he promises that it will be quenched. We can be assured that in time God will put everything back into its proper order so that all he has made will flourish. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 5:3–12 LUKE 18:1–8 WEEKLY PRAYER. From the Liturgy of St. Basil (329 -379) Remember, O Lord, those who are poor and in need, the widows, the orphans, the strangers, those in captivity and those in exile, the sick and the suffering. Remember, O Lord, those who love us and those who hate us; those who have asked us to pray for them, and those whom we have not remembered through ignorance. Remember all Your people, O Lord, and pour out Your rich mercy upon all. Amen.

Group Discussion — choose one:

What does it mean to you that the risen Jesus still carries his wounds? Does that comfort you, disturb you, or both?

Jethani defines righteousness as “rightly ordered relationships.” Which relationship in your life feels most out of order right now — and what would it look like if it were made right?

Both readings suggest God meets us in the broken, longing places rather than past them. Where have you experienced that — and where do you find it hardest to believe?