The Simplicity of Divine Love

Father Richard emphasizes the clarity and simplicity of trusting in divine grace: 

The early English Franciscan brother William of Ockham (c. 1285–c. 1349) had an overriding principle that’s called “Occam’s razor” (using the Latin spelling of his name). As he put it, “The answer that demands the fewest assumptions is likely the correct one.” If his students wanted to discover the truth of something, he encouraged them to “shave” away as many assumptions, beliefs, or complicating explanations as possible. Great truth might well be mysterious, Ockham believed, but it is never complex. The better answer is almost always the simpler one was his conclusion.  

I’ve found that mature prophets are those who simplify all questions of justice, reward, and punishment by a simple appeal to divine love. God’s infinite, self-giving care is the only needed assumption, cause, factor, or possible variable in the drama of creation. All else must be “shaved” away as creating needless and useless complexity—which only confuses the soul and the mind.  

This is the nature of mature, mystical religion—simple and clear. We shave away as many religious assumptions and judgments as possible and reground religion on one lone conviction—a divine love that can only be experienced and not proved by rational logic. The prophets claim such divine experience and tell us that we can and must, too. This is their one absolute foundation and their radical center on which the entire rest of their message is built, and it makes them unlike any other kind of teacher. Anything that gets in the way of this divine and absolute love must be shaved away. This is the purpose of the sacred criticism practiced by prophets like Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.  

The prophets—and Jesus—are the ones who have the courage to make God’s way of loving action the source, the goal, the criterion, and the standard for all human morality and behavior. The questions for all of us should eventually be What is God doing? and How does God act? 

We cannot dismantle the violence we find in the world if we allow threats and promises to be the overarching frame of Christianity, or any religious or secular creed. This dualism—the idea of an infinite God being caught up in a naive reward/punishment worldview—must be undone by the deeper gospel of radical grace, unconditional love, and true respect, or nothing will ever change. The loving people I’ve met across the world seem to know that if it’s love at all, it has to be love for everybody. As soon as we begin to parcel it out, we’re not in the great field of love.  

The prophets want us to love God above all else,  
And be loved by God above all other partners.  
Which will, and must, lead to a universal love.  
The kind that sets out to rescue those we’d much  
rather condemn.  
That is the prophets’ hard-won conclusion,  
Their tear-filled victory.  
Is there any other kind of winning?  

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5 on Friday; John Chaffee

1.

“God is the name of the blanket we throw over the mystery to give it a shape.”

– Barry Taylor, Former Road Manager for AC/DC

Most theology, or God-talk in the West and since the Enlightenment fell into “kataphatic theology.”  In some ways, it was almost inevitable.  As the world became more rationalistic and quantifiable, the church might take the bait and do the same thing.

However, long before “kataphatic theology” there was “apophatic theology.”

What are these two things?

“Kataphatic theology” discusses God through affirmative statements that we can rationally argue and “prove.”  It emphasizes certainty and logic.

“Apophatic theology” involves discussing God through negative statements or avoiding what can be said.  It emphasizes mystery and paradox.

This quote from Barry Taylor is in the “apophatic” stream of thought.  How did you experience this quote from him?  Did you disagree with it?  Or did it feel like it scratched an itch on your back that has been there for a long time but nothing quite got at it?

Yeah.

Again, that is because we are probably overdoing it with that certainty and logic in the West.

2.

“There’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, British Fantasy Author

A few months ago, I read that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings resonates with people so much because it finds a way of re-enchanting the world.  That epic fantasy tale of Frodo taking the Ring of Power to be destroyed reminds us of our responsibility to fight for whatever good is left in the world…

And to fight for that good, even if there is no certainty that we will return from the task.

3.

“We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires, but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.”

– W.E.B. Du Bois, American Sociologist

This past week, Tesla stock plummeted.

In response, the President of the United States did product placement for Tesla cars while on the front lawn of the White House.

This is something which has never been done before.

Just imagine that, a sitting President used his media influence to give a product bump to his most significant political donor (Elon Musk donated $288 million to Trump’s Presidential campaign).

I do not consider myself a liberal, neither do I consider myself a conservative.  My faith demands that I think critically of any form of political power and follow the way of the Lamb, who shows a preferential option for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger among us.

The only way forward is for better education, an increase of compassion, and the decision to show solidarity with those at the Bottom rather than those at the Top of a society.

This all reminds me of the words of Yahweh in Amos 5:21-25,

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

4.

“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”

– Simone Weil, French Philosopher and Mystic

So, anything we give sustained attention to is prayer?

This leads me to think about how we give sustained attention to social media, to politics, to the endless outrage feedback loop we call the news, to binge watching shows.

Imagine if we gave one another unmixed attention, .

5.

“If you know that the reconciliation of all things is the grand design of the Creator of the universe, then your own individual and communal acts of faithfulness to one another become signs in this world of the world to come.”

– Fleming Rutledge, American Episcopal Priest

In other words, our small acts of kindness and love are apocalyptic.

But when I say this, I mean apocalyptic in a different sense than Hollywood.

Apocalyptic does not necessarily refer to calamity or destruction, because in its original use, it means that something is being revealed.

Once again, our small acts of kindness and love reveal what the Kingdom of God will be like.

Already Forgiven

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Author and Lutheran minister Nadia Bolz-Weber describes an experience of lapsing into guilt and self-incrimination during a silent retreat:   

What am I doing with this openness? Resting? Sending love and light out into the world? No. In the space left from leaving the city, everyone else and all creature comforts behind, my regrets float in and stay like toy boats in a tide pool….    

I always [mess] things up eventually. Why didn’t I pay more attention to that one person? I could have been more patient, spent more time with my kids, spent less time at work, asked for help when I needed it, been a better friend, been a better mom, been a better pastor. I should have done better. Never-ending accusations…. This is a toy-boat regatta of self-incrimination.   

I’m nervous to say what happened next, because I know how it sounds. Eleven words came to me from … dare I say God? Maybe it was my own mind finding the emergency brake, but it didn’t seem like the words were my own, since what my own mind usually comes up with sound much closer to “Stop being such a crybaby” than the ones I heard that day on the hill. Eleven words: What if you have already been forgiven for all of that?…  

The relief I felt was not a result of hearing that the things I accuse myself of are not true, but that they are not the most true thing. Grace is the most true thing.  

Bolz-Weber recalls how the prophet Jonah had difficulty accepting God’s grace and forgiveness for all, especially his enemies:  

The image that comes to my mind as I am cry-laughing during this “silent retreat” is that of Jonah sitting alone on his own hill, questioning God’s forgiveness…. When Jonah’s enemies repent and are shown mercy by God, Jonah … says: “That’s why I didn’t want this stupid job in the first place—because I knew, God, that you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” [see Jonah 4:2]. And it’s hard to manipulate a God like that….   

God’s grace and mercy throws the whole reward and punishment system out the window. So sometimes I want to yell “noooooo” and reach as fast as I can to get it back. Forgiveness can sting when we don’t feel “worthy” of it, when it seems like we are getting away with something…. As if feeling bad for what I have done is the same as being good, when in fact it is not.   

What if we’ve already been forgiven for the ways we’ve hurt the people we love? What if we’ve already been forgiven for not being perfect parents? What if we’ve already been forgiven for the [stuff] we haven’t even done yet?… Maybe forgiving myself isn’t something that happens once on a silent retreat but is a daily option. Give us this day our daily forgiveness, even for ourselves.   

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Jesus Calling; Sara Young

Waiting, trusting, and hoping are intricately connected, like golden strands interwoven to form a strong chain. Trusting is the central strand, because it is the response from My children that I desire the most. Waiting and hoping embellish the central strand and strengthen the chain that connects you to Me. Waiting for Me to work, with your eyes on Me, to evidence that you really do trust Me. If you mouth the words, “I trust You” while anxiously trying to make things go your way, your words ring hollow. Hoping is future-directed, connecting you to your inheritance in heaven. However, the benefits of hope fall fully on you in the present.
     Because you are Mine, you don’t just pass time in your waiting. You can wait expectantly, in hopeful trust. Keep your “antennae” out to pick up even the faintest glimmer of My Presence.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:
John 14:1 (NLT)
Jesus, the Way to the Father
14 “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.

Additional insight regarding John 14:1-3: The disciples were obviously worried about death and what happens afterward. Jesus’ words still comfort us today. We know from what Jesus said that the way to eternal life, though unseen, is secure for us if we trust him with the future. He has already prepared the way to eternal life. The only issue that may still be unsettled is our willingness to believe him. 

Psalm 27:14 (NLT)
14 Wait patiently for the Lord.
    Be brave and courageous.
    Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 27:14: David knew from experience what it meant to wait for the Lord. He had been anointed king at 16, but he didn’t become king until he was 30. During the interim years, he had been changed through the wilderness by jealous King Saul. David had to wait on God for the fulfillment of his promise that David would reign. Later, after becoming king, he was chased by his rebellious son Absalom. 

    Waiting for God is not easy. Often he doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers or understanding the urgency of our situations. That kind of thinking implies that God is not in control or is not fair. But God is worth waiting for. Lamentations 3:24-26 calls us to hope in and wait for the Lord; God often uses times of waiting to refresh, renew, and teach us. Make good use of your waiting times by discovering what God may be trying to do in you while you are in them. 

Hebrews 6:18-20 (NLT)
18 So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. 19 This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. 20 Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Additional insight regarding Hebrews 6:18-19: These two unchangeable things are God’s promise and his oath. God embodies all truth; therefore, he cannot lie, and we can be secure in his promises. We don’t need to wonder if he will change his purpose and plans. Our hope of heaven stands secure and immovable, anchored in God, just as a ship/s anchor holds firmly to the seabed. To someone truly seeing who comes to God in belief, God gives an unconditional promise of acceptance. When you ask God with openness, honesty, and sincerity to save you from your sins, he will do it. If this truth gives you encouragement, assurance, and confidence, grasp it. Don’t let go no matter what happens around you. 

Additional insight regarding Hebrews 6:19-20: A curtain hung between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, God’s inner sanctuary. This curtain prevented anyone from entering, gazing into, or even getting a fleeting glimpse of the interior of the Most Holy Place (also see Hebrews 9:1-8). The high priest could enter these once a year to stand in God’s presence and stone for the sins of the entire nation. But Christ dwells in God’s presence at all times – not just once a year – as the High priest who continually intercedes for us. 

Universal Liberation and Love

Father Richard points to Jesus’ first sermon, when he quotes the prophet Isaiah to emphasize a message of inclusion:  

Isaiah is the Hebrew prophet Jesus quotes directly when he first introduces himself in the synagogue in Nazareth:  

The Spirit of God has been given to me,  
YHWH has anointed me.  
He has sent me to bring good news to the poor,  
To bind up hearts that are broken,  
To proclaim liberty to captives,  
Freedom to those in prison,  
To proclaim the Year of Favor from the Lord.  
(Luke 4:18–19, quoting Isaiah 61:1– 2)  

Jesus, like the prophet he quotes, reveals not only his self-confidence but also his likely and intended audience. His message of good news is not likely to be sought after or heard by the comfortable and the secure, he seems to say, but by the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed—which fully explains Jesus’ behavior throughout the rest of his ministry.   

Notice that Jesus deliberately does not quote the final line of the full, yet contradictory, Isaiah passage: “to proclaim a day of vengeance from our God.” It’s almost as though Jesus is tired of making God into one who limits and threatens, instead of the limitless one whom the passage has just talked about, and so different from the glorious vision of the New Jerusalem Isaiah has just described in the whole of chapter 60. Jesus refuses to let Isaiah end with caution and fear. Fortunately, we see that Isaiah does not stay there, either. Later in the book, he exclaims:  

I am ready to be approached by those who do not consult me,  
Ready to be found by those who do not seek me.  
I say, “I am here. I am here!” to a nation that does not  
even invoke my name. (Isaiah 65:1)   

This sounds like so much availability and generosity from God’s side, perhaps too much for us to hope for. And yet this is where Isaiah lands for the rest of the prophecy, until the very final verse (66:24) where he makes a seeming allusion to the fires of Gehenna. But in Jewish teaching, the metaphor of fire doesn’t focus on eternal punishment. In the whole Bible, fire is almost entirely a “refiner’s fire” of purification in this world, not a fire of torture in the next.  

The final chapters of Isaiah entertain themes of universal liberation and salvation for all, beginning with eunuchs and foreigners (56:1–7), along with agnostics and the barely interested (65:1–7), continuing with hints of universal salvation (through much of chapter 65), and moving into a total cosmology with a “new heavens and a new earth” (65:17; also 66:22). These images will return again at the end of the New Testament (Revelation 21:1). Thank God the Bible ends with an optimistic hope and vision, instead of an eternal threat that puts the whole message off balance and outside of love. 

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From Juggling to Shelving

A De-Stressing Exercise

BRADLEY JERSAK

Last week I spent an hour with Nelson Boschman, my spiritual director. If you don’t have a spiritual director or life-coach or the like, I highly recommend him. He’s willing to give you a trial session to test for fit and does sessions online for convenience. He even has a few openings left in his schedule!

Juggling

Anyway, I entered the session quite stressed. As we listened together, the picture I had was that I was juggling too many things at once—each of five ‘balls’ (or bowling pins or chainsaws) represented a specific non-negotiable item on my to-do list for that day. As I imagined trying to keep all the balls in the air, I experienced the anxiety of wondering which one I might drop. 

In addition, it felt like any extra call or email or invitation was an intrusion of further items, deeper stress, and the inevitability that they could all topple at any moment. I knew immediately that the way I was seeing it was ‘off,’ especially if my perspective made it impossible to stay present to whoever or whatever was right in front of me. That lurking angst is no way to live. 

As he often does, Nelson kindly pressed pause on my monologue to offer a moment to be still, breathe, and listen. Those moments of stillness may be quiet but they are also always full—in the joyful, fruitful way.

Shelving

The juggling scene melted away and I saw a wall of shelves before me—they featured square cubby-holes that contained scrolls. I remember this picture from decades ago when I might be called to speak contemporaneously at conferences for six hours on end. In those days, I would picture this same shelf and ‘feel’ the Holy Spirit beside me. Without any rush or pressure, I would wait for a nudge to pick out one scroll. Just one. That’s the key. I would pull it from the shelf, open it, and share whatever was there. It could be Scripture, a story, a testimony, a parable, a prayer, a meditative, exercise, a citation from some book. Years of prep comprised of good mentors, loads of reading, and interesting life experiences had loaded the wall. It was just a matter of pulling one item at a time as the Spirit led (that’s a real thing) and sharing them in whatever sequence came. 

From Juggling to Shelving

I wondered, in the moment, if I could transpose my stressed-out juggling act into the joy of my old speaking gigs. I pictured the wall and imagined depositing every item on my calendar and in my to-do list into the cubby-holes immediately as they arrived. I could see other scrolls—loads of them—that I hadn’t left there. Surprise scrolls that were pre-planned by Someone else—divine appointments, real life encounters, unexpected gifts, anything but intrusions. 

I imagined the Spirit beside me say (in Nelson’s voice), “You don’t have to. You get to.” And the Spirit would pull a scroll and hand it to me. “No juggling. Just take the next scroll I give you. This one. Now.” And I heard, “Some scrolls say Rest. Recover. Reflect. Reflection is not squandering. Some even say Struggle. That’s not the same as crisis or chaos. Struggle is about growth and strength.”

In every case, the other to-dos were still present, but they had to remain shelved until their turn so that I could stay completely present to the one I was on. SO present that I could experience time stopping and a Muse greater than myself involved in my conversations and my listening, my reading and writing, emails and flights. 

It meant that the unexpected hour-long call from my godfather David, followed by the unexpected reading from my old friend Paul were not merely joyful interruptions that I could misuse as procrastination from my ‘real work.’ They were gifts of the Spirit, treasured moments of NOW that were in fact the next thing on the shelf and very much my real work—not for putting off what had to be done, but the important things I got to do first. And the other stuff that needed to be done did get done. Not only that, I didn’t have to do that other stuff in my head and nervous system while I was enjoying the first things. And because of that, they weren’t so heavy after all. One scroll at a time. Stay present. Breathe. Done. Next? 

Cured!

Just kidding. I wasn’t instantly healed of my habituated juggling obsession yet. But I’ve tasted the goodness of my return to the shelf such that I can feel the internal difference of reframing the same, look-alike day of duties inside me. For readers who perpetually feel like they’re about to drop the ball, maybe this exercise will be of some help. 

Theologian Serene Jones offers a compelling description of God’s ever-present and transformative grace: 

Divine love is the source of the universe and of the dinosaurs, the planets, the elements, and the air, the force that sparked us into existence and baffles us all while we exist, the current of love and joy and beauty that runs through the human experience.… All life flows into being out of one source, Divine Love, and it is forever deeply related and responsive to that love. That love defines, holds, and promises to be present to the lives that God calls into being. That eternally present love is, most simply stated, my definition of grace.…  

God does not stay at a distance from us but constantly seeks to transform our lives by asking us to awaken to the divine presence. God is a mysterious, creative, sustaining life force.… God is there all the time. The challenge for us is to open our eyes, ears, hands, minds, and hearts to receive the truth of God’s real, persistent presence, God’s grace. When we open ourselves to it, we are changed by it. The way we perceive the world shifts, like a radically refocused camera lens, and we experience life differently. You see everything around you as suffused with God’s love. You see God’s grace everywhere, saturating all existence. This process of awakening to what is already true, but you haven’t previously seen it, is called conversion—a word that literally means “to see anew.”  

Jones highlights the paradox of awakening to God’s grace alongside the realities of sin and evil:   

Sin simply refers to all aspects of life where the reality of grace is not manifest and evil flourishes. It’s what happens when we’ve got the wrong story about reality in our heads. If we do not recognize grace, we latch onto lies about who we are. These lies are manifest in an endless variety of godless dispositions: hatred, violence, greed, injustice, pride, despair, isolation, self-loathing, unbridled arrogance, a hardened heart, a cold soul. When these lies are aggregated over time, they get compressed into social systems and cultural patterns that look to us as if they are true, when in truth they are not. They are evil and profoundly destructive. This is what it means to be godless—to not be awakened to the light of God’s love. It describes grace-asleep people as well as whole grace-asleep societies.…  

This constant tension between sin and grace in our lived experience doesn’t mean, however, that they are equal partners in determining our destiny. Because grace is of God, it ultimately wins. We are forgiven by God, whatever horrors we commit or are done to us, however unmeritorious our deeds and broken our lives, because that’s who God is. Grace is free; we don’t earn it nor are we required to deserve it. That’s what makes grace grace. It comes unbidden to us all.

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A blog By Terri Sullivant at Life Model Works, the repository of thinking at the intersection of Scripture, NeuroScience and Therapy.

I have always loved these verses in Psalm 107 (NIV): 

29 He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed.  

30 They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. 

31 Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind.  

On our way to Kansas City in 1987, the Lord highlighted these verses from Psalm 107 to me. The whole Psalm is about God coming to rescue and provide what people need in tumultuous times. There truly is nothing new under the sun. We live in an imperfect world with lots of challenges. There will be many storms that we will walk through in our lifetimes, including those within our church communities.  

God is with us during every storm, and He wants us to cry out for His help. When we do, He will come to our rescue. In Psalm 107 He promises to hush and calm the waves and winds, and to guide us to our “desired haven”.  

The word “haven” means harbor or port; place of safety or refuge; a place offering favorable opportunities or conditions. 

I have personally experienced this over and over again throughout my lifetime. I’ve discovered that we can inhabit this “haven” He provides for us – it becomes our own oasis of peace where we can abide and live at peace with our families and friends in our communities. The storms will come, but we will be able to return to joy and peace from all the emotions they create. It is a shelter in every storm.  

What do we need to do to “get there”? 

1. Cry out to the Lord. 

• “Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress.”  Psalm 107:28 

2. Practice gratitude and golden memories. Connect with Immanuel in them. 
3. Engage with Immanuel amid your emotions. Allow Him to calm the waves. 
4. Anchor the new story of returning to peace and joy from those emotions. 
5. Share with your family and friends and help them follow these same rhythms. 
6. Enjoy each other and live together in the oasis of shared peace and joy.  
7. “Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind” Psalm 107:31 

Michael and I have been following Jesus and serving in leadership in churches since we began our journey with Jesus. We have experienced many storms in our 48 years of ministry. Wherever you live and work, you will encounter those storms – church included. Because we have higher expectations of what we will experience in Christian communities, the disappointment can be greater. There are mentalities and patterns of relating in religious groups of people that can be mind-bending. Don’t let that make you “quit” church altogether! That is the enemy’s plan, not God’s. We may need to change communities if the one we are in is too unhealthy to remain in, but do find another, healthier one. Because there are no perfect people, there will be no perfect communities.  

Amid imperfect communities, we can create a haven of peace with others who are like-minded and doing the practices we have learned in the Life Model. These healthy rhythms build stronger and stronger attachment with the Lord and one another. This is where we can abide in our haven of peace, our refuge from every storm.  

We were able to do this with our family in our years of ministry. We also were able to find a “community within our community” to live with in peace and joy. I’m so grateful for this! The Lord did provide for us our “desired haven” just as He promised. 

Immanuel truly can and will calm your storms and guide YOU to YOUR desired haven, it’s His promise to YOU. 

Father Richard Rohr insists that grace is the essence of who God is.  

The goodness of God fills all the gaps of the universe, without discrimination or preference. God is the gratuity of absolutely everything. The space in between everything is not space at all but Spirit. God is the “goodness glue” that holds the dark and light of things together, the free energy that carries all death across the great divide and transmutes it into life. When we say that Christ “paid the debt once and for all,” it simply means that God’s job is to make up for all the deficiencies in the universe. What else would God do?  

Grace is not something God gives; grace is who God is. Grace is God’s official job description. Grace is what God does to keep alive—forever—all things that God has created in love. If we are to believe the primary witnesses—the prophets, the mystics, the saints, the transformed people—an unexplainable goodness is at work in the universe. (Some of us call this phenomenon God, but that word isn’t necessary. In fact, sometimes it gets in the way of the experience, because too many have named God something other than Grace).  

There’s no way that the Scriptures, rightly understood, present God as an eternal torturer. Yet many Christians seem to believe this, and many are held back from trusting God’s goodness because of this “angry parent in the sky” that we have created. The determined direction of the Scriptures, fully revealed in Jesus, is that God’s justice is not achieved by punishment, but by the divine initiative we call grace, which enables us to bring about internal rightness, harmony, balance, and realignment with what is.  

The concept of grace is first called mercy, or hesed in Hebrew: the ever-faithful, covenant-bound, infinite and eternal love of God. All God’s power for renewal and resurrection proceeds from this source, never from punishment. Jesus punishes nobody! I would go so far as to call grace the primary revelation of the entire Bible. If we miss this message, all the rest is distorted and even destructive. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough.  

The only prerequisite for receiving the next grace is having received the previous one. As the mystics have often said, God “hides.” Every moment is not obvious as God, as grace; it looks quite simply like another ordinary moment. But our willingness to recognize it as gratuitous—as a free gift, as self-revelatory, as a possibility—allows it to be that way. God’s hiding ceases. God and grace become apparent as a gift in each moment. And those who learn how to receive gifts keep receiving further gifts. “From God’s fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” as John 1:16 puts it. 

The “Threat” of Unconditional Love

In The Tears of Things, Father Richard presents the journey of the prophets as one that ends in trusting God’s unconditional love and grace. He uses the prophet Jeremiah as an example: 

The first covenant between YHWH and Israel appeared to be bilateral: “If you obey my voice and hold fast to my covenant, you of all the nations shall be my very own” (Exodus 19:5). But the covenant that emerged in Jeremiah’s time was unilateral from YHWH’s side: “Deep within them I will plant my law, writing it on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). This dramatic change replaces the earlier order by surpassing it, not destroying it. God forgives undeservedly, even after direct disobedience! This is a love that waits and hopes and desires, working toward surrender and trust. It gifts us a new covenant that we can actually fulfill, just not perfectly or by ourselves. Only God can fill in all the gaps. Henceforth, there is no such thing as deserving or earning anything. All is grace. 

Jeremiah 31 is frankly a total changing of the guard—and what is guarded is only the human capacity for intimate reciprocal love! As many scholars have agreed, the notion of a God-initiated, unilaterally fulfilled divine relationship is the highest peak of any spirituality, especially since most of us fear, deep down, that we’re unworthy of it.  

It is deeply unfortunate that our interpretation of the old covenant is so enmeshed in our dualistic logic of tit for tat that most Christians remain untouched by Jeremiah’s proclamation of a spiritual revolution. We remain content with retribution and vengeance passing for justice. We would rather stand outside of love than receive a love of which we believe we are not worthy—or have not earned or cannot figure out. We think the old covenant at least tells us where we stand, even if it is outside of paradise. We seem to find certitude more comforting than we do trust or love. Infinite love is literally too much for most of us to comprehend. We think we know how to love—alone. But how do we know and love together with a “divine another” living within us? The answer is by participation rather than performance—riding the divine coattails, as it were.  

In his aloneness and anguish, Jeremiah saw what a majority still cannot see twenty-five hundred years later. Our refusal to allow ourselves to be loved undeservedly and unconditionally will probably forever be the anguish of every prophet and the burden of every mystic or saint. Jeremiah’s scroll of writings was cut into pieces and burned by King Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 36). This is how threatening any new covenant of grace, or any new anything, is to a world already set in full and determined motion. 

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Watching Movies as Spiritual Practice

Updated repost after Oscar season

MARK LONGHURSTMAR 9

One of my favorite T-shirts is from my local community movie theater. It has a picture of a nun in a habit standing behind a director’s camera and a caption above that reads, “Movies are my religion.” I’m on the second version of the same shirt, since I wore the first one out until it frayed. As a longtime Christian and former pastor, I readily affirm that “movies are my religion,” since I experience God every time I slouch slightly into a cinema chair and receive the good news—or terrible or complicated news—of that particular movie of the week. Movies are sacred. We can find God at the movies—just as we stumble upon God in life itself—if we allow ourselves to participate in a larger story. The marvelous combination of film reel, acting craft, musical score, screenwriter dialogue, and story arc, matched with a community theater (best-case scenario), can draw us out of ourselves to experience empathy, awe, grief, and enjoyment. Movies mirror life to us so that we can see life anew.

It’s a spiritual practice for me and I try to go as often as I can. I’m fortunate enough to have the exquisite curation of my local art-house cinema to guide me to films that matter, both then and now, but I also love a trip to the multiplex with its luxury seats, surround sound, and large screen. I’ll watch anything, and this year I did, from the powerful Saoirse Ronan recovery movie “The Outrun,” to director Andrea Arnold’s latest “Bird,” to the awards favorites “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “A Complete Unknown,” and more. I even watched “The Substance” through gaps between hands covering eyes. 

Two weeks ago, I saw Nickel Boys, a poetic, experimental exploration of two boys’ friendship amid a Florida private school’s hidden horror of racism, murder, and abuse. Based on the exquisitely-told story by Colson Whitehead, I experienced this film as a contemplative meditation on suffering, memory, and beauty. It’s absolutely heartbreaking and utterly beautiful. The filmmaking is done in first person, so the viewer sees through the character’s eyes and does not immediately know what the protagonist looks like. I found it destabilizing at first, causing me to wonder what was happening, and then mesmerizing as I settled into the pain and longing of characters Elwood and Turner’s experience. Other than “Dune Part Two,” “Nickel Boys” was my favorite film of the year. (“Anora” is right up there, too. I may have been the only one in the theater laughing out loud at the slapstick comedy turn the movie takes. Sean Baker is a genius!)

Like any longstanding religion, going to the movies has its rituals. If you’re like me, the popcorn and soda fill in for Eucharistic bread and wine, or trail mix and kombucha. If I arrive early, there’s sometimes a prayerful hush during the pre-movie anticipation. Ads for the local dentist or bank might roll while I read over the printout of coming attractions. The lights darken as if calling us to worship, trailers prepare us for the main event, and we plunge into the experience for which we’re all there.

Watching movies is a contemplative practice for me because of how they change me. Movies have always stretched my imagination and consciousness and helped me grow. Watching The Normal Heart rivetted me as I learned about the AIDS crisis that took place when I was in elementary school; Almost Famous electrified me with the energy and confusion of rock and roll; Malcolm X provided a perspective of Black Power that I had never yet heard; The Bourne Identity catapulted me into the desperate thrill of finding out who you are (amid fights and car chases); I’m pretty sure the first Top Gun contained the first sex scene I saw (my friend’s parent told us to cover our eyes, but of course we didn’t); Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master depicted the dynamics of cultic charisma and abuse; and on and on.

I also rest when I watch movies. Some call it escapism, but it’s more than that for me. The video loop of my constant thoughts pauses, and I feel my whole body relax. I’m thinking but not thinking for once, almost as if meditating. I’m experiencing how the characters’ words and decisions, enhanced by the pulsing or peaceful soundtrack, impact me.

I’m convinced, too, that movies can create empathy—for those ready to watch them with an open heart. They invite us to witness a story different from ours, like Daniel Craig’s drunk, debauched, and deeply unhappy William in “Queer.” Craig’s vulnerable and powerhouse performance chronicles the insatiable hedonistic desires of a bohemian literary type, wandering from bar to bar in Mexico City, and eventually into the Ecuadorian rainforest searching for ayahuasca. Craig’s character’s gargantuan sadness provides an invitation for empathy. The hope is that such exposure to stories creates greater inclusion and compassion in our lives. I let go of the ultimacy of my own story, I witness another, and I am more human as a result.

The religion of film can often bridge the gaps between us.

Sitting with Reality

Friday, March 7, 2025

Mirabai Starr shares what she learned about the nonviolent direct actions of Jesuit peace activist Father Daniel Berrigan (1921–2016). Inspired by conversations with her friend and iconographer Father William (Bill) McNichols, she reflects:  

What many of his followers may not have known was that Daniel Berrigan was inconsolable. As a champion for nonviolence, Dan did not see a lot of evidence that the culture of war would ever wane. Nevertheless, he persevered. What else can a true prophet do? “One is called to live nonviolently,” he said, “even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the United States around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better.” [1] He also said, “Peacemaking goes nowhere and yet it must be done.” [2] 

As a young Jesuit, Fr. Bill lived in a communal house with Dan Berrigan in New York City. Sometimes, when Dan did not come down for dinner, Bill would go upstairs and knock on his door. “He’d look like he’d been assaulted,” Fr. Bill told me. It wasn’t the criticism he received that burdened him, because when Bill asked him what it was like to be continuously attacked, he answered, “I think I must be doing something right.” It was more about what Fr. Bill describes as “taking on God’s anguish for the world and walking around with it.” Fr. Bill says that in these moments, he was so deeply moved by Dan’s sorrow that all he could do was to sit quietly beside him. “It was like visiting Job,” he told me.…  

A prophet cannot know that all will be well, that those in power will wake up and mend the damage they have caused, and that peace will prevail. The mystic can never be certain that union with God will be the outcome of longing for God. They must rest in unknowing. Unknowing is not always comfortable. In fact, it can feel a lot like grief.  

And yet that emptiness, that waiting, that liminal space is sacred. It’s what distinguishes a prophet-mystic from a self-righteous activist or a spiritual narcissist. It is in the interior desert, where the landscape appears barren, that patience reveals the miracle of life teeming just below the surface. The more we mindfully observe what is, the more beauty comes into focus. There is nothing broken here, nothing to fix. Rather, the prophet-mystic practices sitting with reality as it is. From that space of quiet listening, we may perceive what is ours to do and tap into the vitality we need to do it. We take up our birthright of belonging and, in the spirit of the mystical Jewish teaching of tikkun olam, we mend the broken world and restore wholeness to the web of interbeing.  

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Listening for Jesus in a Hurting World: A Guide to Listening for Jesus in our Hurting World

“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” — Matthew 18:20

Jesus never required large crowds to do His greatest work. He spoke to Nicodemus in the quiet of the night (John 3), dined with just twelve disciples, and often withdrew with a few to pray and seek the Father’s will. Your Church of Few reflects this same model—a gathering of men seeking Christ together, listening for His voice, and responding to a broken world.

When Jesus speaks, He rarely shouts. Elijah found Him not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:12). Listening for Jesus requires stillness, humility, and a heart tuned to His Spirit.

So how does a small group of men discern His voice?

1. Seek Him Together Daily
   Commit to silence before prayer—waiting, listening, and expecting His Spirit to guide your thoughts. Jesus often taught that those who have ears to hear will understand (Mark 4:9). Pray for those ears.
2. Watch for Divine Appointments
   The world’s pain is all around you, but the Holy Spirit highlights the people God wants you to touch. Ask: Lord, who are you sending us to today? When your group meets, share what you’ve seen—someone hurting, someone in need, or a moment that felt like a call to action.
3. Act in Unity and Love
   The early church didn’t have buildings or big programs, but their love transformed the world (Acts 2:42-47). As a small group, your strength is in personal, intentional acts of grace—mentoring a young man, helping a struggling neighbor, or simply being present for someone who feels forgotten.
4. Trust the Spirit to Lead You
   Jesus told His disciples, “Do not worry about what to say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say” (Luke 12:12). Sometimes, He leads you to speak truth. Other times, He calls you to listen. Either way, trust that He is working through you.

Prayer

Jesus, we are listening. Speak through Your Spirit and guide us as we gather in Your name. Show us the hurting and the broken You want us to reach today. Give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and hands willing to serve. Amen.

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Jesus Calling: Sara Young

Jesus Calling: March 7th

    Let Me help you through this day. The challenges you face are far too great for you to handle alone. You are keenly aware of your helplessness in the scheme of events you face. This awareness opens up a choice: to doggedly go it alone or to walk with Me in humble steps of dependence. Actually, this choice is continually before you, but difficulties highlight the decision-making process. So, consider it all joy whenever you are enveloped in various trials. These are gifts from Me, reminding you to rely on Me alone.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 63:7-8 (NLT)
7 Because you are my helper,
    I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings.
8 I cling to you;
    your strong right-hand holds me securely.

James 1:2-3 (NLT)
Faith and Endurance
2 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.

Additional insight regarding James 1:2-3: James doesn’t say if trouble comes your way but when it does. He assumes that we will have troubles and that it is possible to profit from them with increased endurance. The point is not to pretend to be happy when we face pain but to have a positive outlook (“consider it an opportunity for great joy”) because of what troubles can produce in our life. James tells us to turn our hardships into times of learning. Tough times can teach us perseverance.

Additional insight regarding James 1:2-4: We can’t really know the depth of our character until we see how we react under pressure. It is easy to be kind to others when everything is going well, but can we still be kind when others are treating us unfairly? God wants to make us mature and complete, not to keep us from all pain. Instead of complaining about our struggles, we should see them as opportunities for growth. Thank God for promising to be with you in rough times. Ask him to help you solve your problems or give you the strength to endure them. Then be patient. God will not leave you alone with your problems; he will stay close and help you grow.

Lamenting All That’s Lost

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Artist and organizer Stephen Pavey finds parallels between Israel during the prophet Amos’ time (8th century BCE) and the United States today: 

In Amos’s time, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had extended its lands and increased its influence over trade routes, which brought great economic prosperity to the nation. God’s vision of society—in which wealth is shared and the needs of every member of society are met—was fracturing because of rampant materialism, greed, corruption, and bribery. Like we see in the United States, the gap between the wealthy few and the masses of poor and oppressed had grown wide. While moral standards were collapsing in the public sphere, religious practices and worship of God remained very important in society.…   

In chapter 5, Amos begins a lament, or cry of sorrow, against this way of life: “There will be wailing in all the streets” (5:16). In our own day, the prophet Callie Greer, who lives in Selma, Alabama, and organizes with the Poor People’s Campaign, tells the nation, “You must let me wail.” In February 2020, she testified to her pain and oppression at a public gathering in Selma: years earlier, her daughter had died in her arms due to poverty and lack of health care. Callie cried out, “You must let me wail for the children I’ve lost to poverty and will never get back, wail for all the children we mothers have lost. I won’t waste my pain. I hope I make you feel uncomfortable. I hope I make you feel angry. I’m wailing because my babies are no more.” [1]

Richard Rohr reflects on Jesus’ blessing for those who weep:  

Jesus did not intend his statement “Blessed are those who weep” (Luke 6:21) to be sentimentalized or remain unnoticed. Hard-heartedness, or what Zechariah and other prophets called “hearts of flint,” prevented the people from hearing the law and the words that YHWH had sent by the Spirit. A heart of stone cannot recognize the empires it builds and the empires it worships. Lamentation does. It moves us through anger and sadness, empowering us to truly hear and respond to the always-tragic now.  

The prophet Ezekiel says: “I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you…. You shall be my people and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:26–28). This is the organ transplant that we all long for, the interior religiosity that all spirituality seeks.  

Of course, language about God having emotions is always a projection of our human emotions onto God. But if we can understand that God weeps over the human situation—as Jesus wept over Jerusalem, again over Lazarus’ death, and in Gethsemane—we know it’s a universal truth. God doesn’t hate anything God created; God pities it in the true meaning of the word pity, which is to have compassion for the suffering of everything. [2] 

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Lamenting but Not Losing Hope…

Scripture: Lamentations 3:22-23
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Devotional Thought

Life brings seasons of deep sorrow, disappointment, and grief. The Bible does not shy away from this reality. In fact, an entire book—Lamentations—is devoted to expressing sorrow. The psalmists also pour out their hearts to God in lament, and even Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.

Lament is not a lack of faith—it is an expression of it. When we cry out to God, we are acknowledging His sovereignty and inviting Him into our pain. But biblical lament does not end in despair; it leads us back to hope.

Jeremiah, the author of Lamentations, describes the destruction of Jerusalem in agonizing detail. Yet, in the midst of his sorrow, he remembers the faithfulness of God: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end.”

No matter how dark our circumstances, God’s mercies are new every morning. Our weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5). Even when we don’t see the way forward, we can trust that God is working all things for good (Romans 8:28).

Reflection Questions

• What sorrow or disappointment are you carrying today?
• Have you brought your lament to God in prayer?
• How can you remind yourself of God’s faithfulness in this season?

Prayer

Father, I bring my sorrow before You. I don’t understand everything that is happening, but I trust in Your faithfulness. Thank You for Your mercy that never runs dry. Help me to hold on to hope even in the midst of pain. Renew my strength and remind me that You are with me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

As Christians begin to observe Lent, the forty days before Easter, Father Richard highlights lamentation as an essential aspect of our faith:  

Only one book in the Bible is named after an emotion: the book of Lamentations. Jeremiah is said to have written it to express grief over the people’s exile from Jerusalem when they were invaded by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. But the book reads more like an expression of universal sadness over the human situation, or what is often called “the tragic sense of life.” It’s notable for an almost entire lack of anecdotes or clear examples. Elsewhere in the prophetic writings, we read references to specific rulers, kingdoms, and moments in history. Not here. This is universal sadness. It is an invitation to universal solidarity.  

The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha expresses the devastation of grief and the longing for peace:  

I wish I could wake up and find the electricity on all day long.  
I wish I could hear the birds sing again, no shooting and no  
     buzzing drones.  
I wish my desk would call me to hold my pen and write again,  
  or at least plow through a novel, revisit a poem, or read a play.  
All around me are nothing  
but silent walls  
and people sobbing 
without sound. [1] 

Richard continues:  

The prophets, and Jeremiah in particular, invite us into a divine sadness about reality itself, more than outrage at this or that event. The language then changes from anger at “sin” to pity over suffering and woundedness, yet still holds out for relief: “I will restore you to health and I will heal your wounds, says YHWH” (Jeremiah 30:17). Felt reality is invariably wept reality, and wept reality is soon compassion and kindness. Decisive and harsh judgments slip away in the tracks of tears. 

As an example of this “slipping away,” my mind recalls the Roman church’s change in its official stance toward suicide, shifting from an emphasis on punishment to empathy for the person and family. I also think of Alcoholics Anonymous’ recognition that addiction isn’t a malicious moral failing but “a sickness to be cured.” Anger can’t make such switches. Tears can.  

Has God changed, or have we just grown up enough to hear a grown-up God? Old Scripture passages of mercy and pity that once seemed sentimental or impossible begin to finally make sense—and we suddenly notice their frequency, although they were always there. “You had left in tears, but I brought you back. I guided you to springs of water by a smooth path” (Jeremiah 31:9, Jerusalem Bible). This process of transformation by way of tears is largely hidden and unconscious, characteristic of the work of the Spirit.  

My belief is that tears, although they look like a mere emotive reaction, are much more: a deeply free action that many do not enjoy. They proceed from deep inside, where we are most truly ourselves. Tears reveal the depths at which and from which we care.  

Ash Wednesday’s Bad Piety

We’re doing it all wrong — at least according to the prophets

DIANA BUTLER BASS MAR 5

TODAY IS ASH WEDNESDAY

We come to the most reflective, and most discomforting, time of the Christian calendar: Lent.

This is the hard season. A time of repentance and repair.

The Ash Wednesday passage from the Hebrew scriptures is from Isaiah. Our Jewish friends read this same text for Yom Kippur, their holy day of repentance. The prophet’s vision of true piety is shared by Jews and Christians — and is central to faithful living. 

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Isaiah 58:1-12

Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!

Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.

Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.

“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.

Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.

Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?

Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;

your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

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On this Ash Wednesday, my heart is broken and every shred of hope I once had is gone. 

I’m not well. My soul is sick. I see nothing but greed, destruction, lying, inhumanity, and evil all around. 

If anyone tells me that I came from ash and will return to it, I may well laugh in their face. Or cry and never stop. I just hope I don’t hit the priest. Because — read the room, people — we’re standing in ash up to our knees. 

This is a brutal Ash Wednesday. 

There. I said it. 

I’ve prayed so much in recent months that I can’t tell you how much I’ve prayed. Literally face on the ground sobbing prayer. I’ve taken cues from Anne Lamott’s famous dictum that there are three kinds of prayer — help, thanks, and wow — by occasionally yelling (I’m not kidding) “Help, help, help!” in a loud voice when we sit down for dinner. 

Shouting help is really not bad, especially when compared with prostrate wailing. I’ve become an expert at the HELP prayer. On rare occasion, I’ve made it to “thanks.” But wow? Nope. None of that. One out of three isn’t bad, is it? 

In short, the last thing I want or need right now is Lent. I’m nearly Lent-ed out already. I’ve been Lenting for months. 

Honestly, I’ve got questions for God. Like: Why? Why is this happening? Why don’t you stop this? What kind of God would allow these amoral, corrupt men to purposefully hurt and destroy the good work, dignity, and lives of so many truly decent people? 

I’m making a lot of noise down here praying and fasting — and you, God, don’t seem to be doing your part. 

Enter Isaiah the Prophet on this Ash Wednesday. 

Most historians and biblical scholars believe that this text was written after the Jews returned to Jerusalem from having been enslaved in exile for fifty years by the Babylonians, sometime around 540 BCE. They came home to, well, not much. A ravished homeland in ruins. There’s a lot of hard work ahead. Where is God in the midst of all this mess? 

They probably think they are doing the right things — after all, they are praying and fasting. But God didn’t seem to be helping. God was silent:

Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?

I hear echoes of my own prayer: HELP DOWN HERE! WHY AREN’T YOU PAYING ATTENTION? WHAT HAVE WE GOT TO DO TO GET SOME ASSISTANCE? WHERE ARE YOU?

There’s a pretty surprising divine answer. God’s not the problem. Instead of blaming God, the prophet criticized them:

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.

Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.

Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?

Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

Ah, can I take it back? Maybe I’m sorry I asked? If all my praying, sobbing, self-humiliation, and wailing won’t work to change things, what will then? 

God demands a different kind of fast. 

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Historian Amy Oden describes it thus, “The fasting acceptable to God is a daily fast from domination, blaming others, evil speech, self-satisfaction, entitlement and blindness to one’s privilege. The fast that God seeks calls for vigilance for justice and generosity day in and day out.” 

A daily fast from domination?

Sounds nice. But maybe a bit vague. Overly theoretical. Perhaps a little too Walter Wink or Dom Crossan. Can we have some specifics, God? 

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

If…then. If…then. It’s like a to-do list. 

Do these things. Then, I’ll give you strength. I’ll water your souls. 

But: You have to do it. Your ruins will be rebuilt because you laid new foundations. You will be repairers of the breach. You will restore the streets. 

God doesn’t say that God will do these things for us. We will do them. God says that we must. We must build, repair, and restore. 

Hey, wait a minute. I’m a Protestant. We don’t believe in works. We believe in grace. We can’t be saved by what we do. We believe in letting go and letting God. That sort of thing.

But Isaiah says: “If…then.”

Up off the floor. Stop sitting around sniveling about sin. You are part of the solution. Get to work and do something about injustice. Overthrow the domination system. Stand up to evil. Feed the hungry. Care for the suffering. Don’t beg for a miracle or a magic fix. Just do it. Spiritual wellness and social justice are intimately entwined. Indeed, spiritual wellness depends on doing the work of justice.

If….then….

That’s the piety God wants. Thus says the prophet. That’s the acceptable fast. 

Welcome to Lent. Let’s do this thing

Father Richard considers the inherent connection between anger and grief that ultimately heals and liberates:  

After a lifetime of counseling and retreat work—not to mention my own spiritual direction—I have become convinced that most anger comes, first of all, from a place of deep sadness. Years ago, when I led male initiation rites at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, I would watch men’s jaws drop open and their faces turn pale when I said this. Life disappoints and hurts us all, and the majority of people, particularly men, don’t know how to react—except as children do, with anger and rage. It’s a defensive, reactionary, and totally understandable posture, but it often goes nowhere, and only creates cycles of bitterness and retaliation.  

Over time, the Hebrew prophets came to see this profound connection between sadness and anger. It was what converted them to a level of truth-telling. They first needed to get angry at injustices, oppression, and war. Anger can be deserved, and even virtuous, particularly when it motivates us to begin seeking necessary change. But only until sunset, Paul says (Ephesians 4:26). If we stay with our rage and resentment too long, we will righteously and unthinkingly pass on the hurt in ever new directions, and we injure our own souls in ways we don’t even recognize. 

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III shares how the prophets’ grief empowers them to seek justice:  

We must learn to grieve prophetically, seeing our world, even at its darkest, with the spirit and energy of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Those ancient teachers warned that the world was out of balance and that its repair requires our help. Grieving with them, we weep sometimes, yes, but without giving in to cynicism, hatred, and violence. We mourn as we work for change.… The challenge is to remember, even in our justified hurt and anger, that answering insult with insult and harm with harm just worsens the situation for everyone. We must remember the words of Dr. King: “Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.” When we grieve prophetically, we heal ourselves and the world by looking to shape the larger forces that damaged the soul of the person who caused hurt or anger, whether minor or devastating. [1]  

Richard Rohr considers Jesus a model of prophetic tears.  

In this way, the realization that all things have tears, and most things deserve tears, might even be defined as a form of salvation from ourselves and from our illusions. The prophets knew and taught and modeled that anger must first be recognized, allowed—even loved!—as an expression of the deep, normally inaccessible sadness that each of us carry. Even Jesus, our enlightened one, “sobbed” over the whole city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) and at the death of his friend Lazarus (John 11:35). In his final “sadness … and great distress” in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37), “his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44).  

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 Originally posted on August 6, 2023. Diana Butler Bass

Luke 9:28-36

Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” —not knowing what he said.

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago, on a Sunday evening after a speaking engagement, I flew out of St. Louis. My hosts dropped me off at the airport about three hours before my flight. As I waited, I noticed that the sky grew threatening and my weather app indicated large storms moving toward the city from the west.

“Maybe we’ll beat it out of here,” I said to a fellow passenger, my words wary in a half-prayer and half-plea for assurance.

No such luck. We boarded just as the storm was bearing down on the airport.

As it happened, my seat-mate was an airline pilot who didn’t much like the look of things out of the window. He was glued to a professional flight app on his phone. The weather worsened, and I couldn’t believe that we were actually going to fly through it. I’ve flown a couple million miles in my life and had never seen a plane take off in such a storm. I asked him questions — a lot of them. He could tell I was nervous as we pulled out of the gate.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “We’ll be just fine as long as there’s no lightning.”

At that moment, the sky lit up. “Like that?” I asked and pointed out the window.

He looked out and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. My sense was that even he wasn’t completely comfortable. He buried himself in his navigation app.

We took off. It was raining like a monsoon. The plane rose into the cloud, turbulence bouncing us through the ascent. People gasped, one woman let out a scream. I gripped the armrest and my knuckles really turned white. I was glad not to be hooked up to a blood pressure monitor.

It went on like that for about ten minutes — terrified in those clouds.

Then, the plane broke through the top of the storm. Smooth air greeted us. We left the turbulence below. The rest of the flight was uneventful — and the clouds beneath us soon dispersed. 

Some Christians believe that today’s gospel story records a literal miracle of Moses and Elijah meeting Jesus on a mountain. I don’t know about miracles — we historians can be skeptical about evidence when it comes to miracles. That’s just our DNA. But I do recognize it as something else, something mysterious at the very least.

This episode sounds like thousands of stories from native religions or a transcript of a contemporary psychedelic therapy session. This gospel passage relates a mystical experience that was shared by Jesus and his closest followers. It includes all the requisite elements of such — prayer, the mountain, “dazzling” light, altered reality, hearing sacred voices.

And clouds. The transcendent zenith of the passage isn’t the appearance of Moses and Elijah — the prophets are the prelude to the real point of the story.

The climax is in the clouds:

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

They were terrified as they entered the cloud.

I can relate. Clouds are scary.

There are, of course, different kinds of clouds. If you’ve ever lived by the shore, you might experience clouds as fog. Embracive, protecting, silent fog. Carl Sandberg’s cloudy “little cat feet” is an enigmatic presence: “it sits looking/over harbor and city/on silent haunches/and then moves on.” Or, if you live in the hills, you know the cloud wisps that cling to a mountain at night or in the morning, the sort of thickened mists that beg you to stay inside by the fire rather than venture out on uncertain roads. 

They were terrified as they entered the cloud.

That’s a stunning line, if you think about it. Written centuries ago by someone who never took off in a storm, never descended through rough clouds, it is a metaphor for an experience of God on the ground. Certainly, the author had known violent thunderstorms and desert haboobs. But to describe the divine presence as a cloud — a terrifying obscurity, a kind of blindness — speaks as much to our contemporary experience as it did ancient fears. 

The Transfiguration isn’t about celebrating glory. It is about encountering God in the turbulence. You won’t hear God — you can’t really know the presence — in temples that commemorate dazzling miracles. 

Rather, the Voice speaks in the midst of tumult. And its directive is odd — not “come and see,” a phrase often repeated in the gospels, but it is instead, “listen.”

Yes, this is a mystical experience of the sensory perception of hearing.

And it is also oddly true in its description of life — our ordinary reality these days — and compelling in its practicality. Because the best mystical experiences speak to living with faith in the world. Everyone comes off the mountain, carrying only the memory of what was learned.

The news right now is a bit like staring out the window of the plane in St. Louis or being glued to a weather app while speeding down the runway. There are storms in every direction — and we’re going right into the clouds. There’s no way out but through. And it is terrifying.

But what if that’s where God is? In the turbulence, the instability, the wild windy currents? Longing for miracles — and building lovely temples on a scenic hillside — might be the delusion of our days. Too much of politics caters to our craving miracles; faith is too often about finding some magical safe place. Promising miracles is little more than planting seeds of cynicism. You may win an election or grow a church, but if you are seeking the quick spiritual fix, the fruit will be rotten. 

Learning to navigate through the storm is what is needed.

Don’t cling to what dazzles, all those glittering images. On Transfiguration Sunday, God comes in the clouds: listen.

When lightning lit the sky in St. Louis, I closed my eyes. We were heading into the storm and there was no turning back. The plane rocked, making a way through the clouds. And I remember hearing inwardly: This is the way home, the only way. Breathe. Trust. You are not alone.

You are loved. 

Listen. 

It is we who need to be transformed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLtnThtaET4

In his book The Tears of Things, Father Richard Rohr describes the path of tears as one that leads to sympathy with suffering and communion with reality.   

Are we the only animal that cries and sheds tears as an emotional response? It seems so, but what function do they serve for us? Jesus says we should be happy if we can weep (Luke 6:21), but why? Tears seem to appear in situations of sadness, happiness, awe, and fear—and usually come unbidden. What is their free message to us and to those who observe them? Has humanity gotten the message yet? Whatever it is, it’s surely a message too deep for words.  

In the first book of Virgil’s Aeneid (line 462), the hero Aeneas gazes at a mural depicting a battle of the Trojan War and the deaths of his friends and countrymen. He’s so moved with sorrow at the tragedy of it all that he speaks of “the tears of things” (lacrimae rerum). As Seamus Heaney translates it, “There are tears at the heart of things”—at the heart of our human experience. [1] Only tears can move both Aeneas and us beyond our deserved and paralyzing anger at evil, death, and injustice without losing the deep legitimacy of that anger.  

This phrase “the tears of things” has continued to be quoted and requoted in many contexts over centuries. We find it on war memorials, in poetry, in the music of Franz Liszt, and in Pope Francis’ recent encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti. (I myself remember it because of a haggard, bent-over Latin teacher who would often enter the classroom moaning “Lacrimae rerum” several times before he began quizzing us.) 

Because the phrase has no prepositions in Latin, it allows two meanings at the same time: Virgil seems to be saying that there are both “tears in things” and “tears for things.” And each of these tears leads to the other. Though translators often feel compelled to choose one or the other meaning, I believe the poet implies it is both.  

There’s an inherent sadness and tragedy in almost all situations: in our relationships, our mistakes, our failures large and small, and even our victories. We must develop a very real empathy for this reality, knowing that we cannot fully fix things, entirely change them, or make them to our liking. This “way of tears,” and the deep vulnerability that it expresses, is opposed to our normal ways of seeking control through willpower, commandment, force, retribution, and violence. Instead, we begin in a state of empathy with and for things and people and events, which just might be the opposite of judgmentalism. It’s hard to be on the attack when you are weeping.  

Prophets and mystics recognize what most of us do not—that all things have tears and all things deserve tears. The sympathy that wells up when we weep can be life changing, too, drawing us out of ourselves and into communion with those around us.  

Letting Grief Flow

In an article for ONEING: The Path of the Prophet, Pixie Lighthorse, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, describes how grief can encourage us to change:  

As external chaos rises, inner chaos is touched off. The need for inner resources to “see the bigger picture” and maintain faith is becoming amplified. As within, so without. The world out there reflects what’s going on inside.  

What’s going on inside is grief and the need for healing the constricted parts of us that are ready to be revealed and healed. The underground river within each of us is becoming more conscious, truth is coming to the surface, and with that comes collective and individual accountability…. 

When felt and acknowledged, grief becomes a daily reprieve. Healing involves inviting in the truth of how we feel, which is constantly changing, and valuing it as much as our perception of reality and the world of matter. Our feeling bodies have been relegated to the shadows for the most part, pushed under the rug in favor of what’s more convenient and acceptable. Feeling can be vulnerable, and we’ve learned all the ways to mask emotions as part of our social conditioning.  

Lighthorse prompts us to reflect on the grief we may be experiencing today: 

Our feelings are our inner waters, and to Indigenous peoples, water is our First Medicine. We should not find it surprising that authentic feelings had to go underground during the centuries-long process of colonization and expansive frontierism. The raw material of awakening to healing is found in tolerating the discomfort of our heinous mistakes and those of our ancestors. What if we are at a tipping point on humanity’s timeline, where we must name what hurts, grieve the losses, and learn how to make larger-scale repairs? Redemption is the process by which we make new choices to clear our debts. Emotionally speaking, noticing and naming injustice leads to protection of what is sacred, starting today.… 

What new levels of grieving, feeling, healing, and awakening to deeper individual and collective purposes will be required to make the kinds of shifts you want to see in the world? What waters can you honor and protect as sacred? What kind of world do you want for all our grandchildren? What fears are held in your unconscious, underground river that may be holding you hostage? What items from the past are tied to unprocessed grief?…

When grief flows, the past heals. We inherit new transmissions of wisdom from sources already surrounding us. By honoring grief and healing, we re-member, and we put ourselves back together. We can make decisions about how to move forward from our core selves rather than our guarded hurts. The shape of us and our world is being reimagined in this process from a place that has a little bit more wholeness. When the past is offered healing, compassion, and forgiveness, the future will have good water to put our feet in.  

Learning from the Mystics: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. from John Chaffee

Quote of the Week: “The only thing that I can be; a voice that repeats, opportune et importune, that the Church will waste away so long as she does not escape from the factitious world of verbal theology, of quantitative sacramentalism, and over-refined devotions in which she is enveloped, so as to reincarnate herself in the real aspirations of mankind…Of course I can see well enough what is paradoxical in this attitude: if I need Christ and the Church I should accept Christ as he is presented by the Church, with its burden of rites, administration and theology…  But now I can’t get away from the evidence that the moment has come when the Christian impulse should ‘save Christ’ from the hands of the clerics so that the world may be saved.”- A Journal Entry from Teilhard included in Spirit of Fire by Ursula King Reflection  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is a polarizing figure.  And, I think, for the right reasons. During his lifetime, de Chardin was exiled to China by the Catholic Church for his writings, which at the time, were wrestling with how to understand Christianity alongside the understanding of evolution at the time.  As a result, he was present at the finding of the Peking Man.  The Peking Man is understood as the remains of the Homo Erectus and dates back 400,000 years. This event led Teilhard to ask very important questions and to re-evaluate the role of the Church, ministry, the priesthood, and Christ.  Along with his observations of the Catholic Church during WWI and WWII, Teilhard wrote the journal entry above.  Rather than being ossified or concretized into something static and unchanging, Teilhard imagined a Church that could evolve WITH humanity and the world rather than hold it back. He believed that Christianity was AHEAD of where humanity finds itself today. And so, what does it mean for Teilhard to “save Christ”?  It means to reclaim an understanding of the Christ that is ahead rather than behind.  It means to wrestle the Christ from the hands of a priesthood that is looking to maintain a status quo that was established in the past.  If God is our Alpha and Omega, then it is important to recognize that our trajectory is headed toward the Omega, who is Christ and Christ is in the future. Teilhard calls this “Christ of the future” as our “Omega Point” to which all of cosmic history is headed.  And before you might say that this is a stretch, consider this passage from St. Paul. “With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment – to bring unity to all things in heaven and earth under the headship of Christ.” – Ephesians 1:8-10  Has our understanding of Christ become something that holds humanity back?  Is our understanding of Christ still something that inspires and beckons humanity into tomorrow?  Does our understanding of Christ integrate this material world or reject it?  Does our understanding of Christ remind us of our calling to “cultivate and care” for nature?  Does our understanding of Christ endorse a status quo that the Omega of History would say is holding humanity back?  Is it possible that the next evolution of humanity is an involution of a deepening spirituality along with the interconnectedness of the whole cosmos in Christ? The failure to recognize all these questions could lead to disaster.  Remember, Teilhard lived and wrote during the invention and inauguration of nuclear warfare.  For Teilhard, understanding what Christ would have for humanity is of absolute importance. These are all the questions that Teilhard was censored for asking.  These may be questions you are asking as well.  If so, then you are in good company.  You are not alone. May we be like Teilhard, and help “save Christ from the clerics so that the world may be saved.” Prayer  Alpha and Omega, inspire us and grant us the eyes to see your plan for cosmic history to reclaim all things back to you.  We admit that we have allowed  Christ to be small, allowed our faith to hold us back rather than invite us forward, and allowed our gaze to be more to yesterday than to tomorrow.  Help us to reclaim a view of Christ that calls us with courage into the future.  Help us to see that anything that helps us to grow in health and holiness, unity and community is what you want and will.  Help us to already live out Ephesians 1:10.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen and amen.

Life Overview Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:  Who is He: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin  When: Born on May 1st, 1881 in Orcines, France. Died on April 10th (Easter), 1955 in New York City, USA.  Why He is Important: Teilhard is a figure that “saw things deeply” while also navigating being a modern scientist.  He was an archaeologist as well as a Jesuit priest and sought to bring together evolution and Christianity by writing about how Christ is the goal of all cosmic history.  He was exiled and censured by the Vatican during his life, but his writings were allowed to be published after his death.  He was recently quoted by Pope Francis, which many see as an endorsement.  Most Known For: Synthesizing his scientific worldview along with his religious worldview, to then offer a modern approach to Christian spirituality. Notable Works to Check Out: The Divine Milieu | The Phenomenon of Man | The Future of Man | Selected Writings