Most Christians falsely assumed that God is strictly masculine even though there are numerous descriptions of a mothering, feminine God throughout the Bible. In spite of patriarchy’s attempt to marginalize women, the feminine incarnation continues to appear in innumerable ways. —Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, June 9, 2019
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes of enduring comfort found through images of the Divine Mother:
In a world that is often heart-stopping in horror and breath-taking in beauty … the Blessed Mother is so unspeakably gracious with brilliant inspirations…. There is such blessed reason to seek out and remain near this great teaching force known worldwide as Our Lady, La Nuestra Señora, and most especially called with loyalty and love, Our Mother, Our Holy Mother. Our very own.
She is known by many names and many images, and has appeared in different epochs of time, to people across the world, in exactly the shapes and images the soul would most readily understand her, apprehend her, be able to embrace her and be embraced by her.
She wears a thousand names, thousands of skin tones, thousands of costumes to represent her being patroness of deserts, mountains, stars, streams, and oceans. If there are more than six billion people on earth, then thereby she comes to us in literally billions of images. Yet at her center is only one great Immaculate Heart….
In Blessed Mother’s view, all are lovable; all souls are accepted, all carry a sweetness of heart, are beautiful to the eyes; worthy of consciousness, of being inspired, being helped, being comforted and protected—even if other mere humans believe foolishly or blindly to the contrary. [1]
Public theologian Christena Cleveland shares how she discovered a radically new image for God.
My whole life, I had been indoctrinated into American society’s constrictive worship of a white male God; my spiritual imagination didn’t know how to venture beyond the Protestant white male God that colonized and subdued America’s spiritual imagination….
In early 2017, I mustered all of the desperate courage I could find and took one single, trembling step away from all I had known and all I had been taught to ask…. Just beyond the Protestantism of my origins and from the mystical depths of rogue Catholicism, rose the Black Madonna, a Black female image of the divine who is often claimed by Catholicism but draws seekers of all religions and spiritualities.
Within seconds of viewing photos of Black Madonnas, my gut shifted from terror to hope…. My soul immediately recognized that these photos and drawings of ancient Black Madonnas declared a truth about my own sacredness and gave birth to a new understanding of God.
I call Her the Sacred Black Feminine. She is the God who is with and for Black women because She is a Black woman. She is the God who definitively declares that Black women—who exist below Black men and white women at the bottom of the white male God’s social pecking order—not only matter but are sacred. And, in doing so, She declares that all living beings are sacred. [2]
Dec 12, 2024; Skye Jethani The Idol of Tradition: Consider the Turkey
Dec 12, 2024 The Idol of Tradition: Consider the Turkey
Author Nassim Taleb has written in numerous books about what psychologists call the “narrative fallacy.” It refers to the way our minds make cause-and-effect connections where none actually exist, and how we foolishly make predictions about the future based on patterns we’ve observed in the past. To illustrate the problem, Taleb uses the following story:
“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests.’ On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.”
Taleb’s point is important—there is no guarantee that a consistent pattern from the past will continue uninterrupted into the future. This way of thinking, however, is very common, especially among religious believers.
Using Scripture or experience, we deduce how God has acted in the past and then build a theological tradition that insists he will always act in the same manner going forward. This elevation of religious tradition, like Taleb’s turkey, makes a fatal error. Rather than seeing God as a person free to act as he pleases—including unpredictably—it reduces God to a knowable formula; a kind of natural force like gravity or magnetism whose actions can be measured and predictably foreseen.
You know a religious community has slipped into the idolatry of tradition when they often use absolutist language like, “God only . . .,” “God never . . .,” “God must . . .,” and “God can’t . . .” Exchanging the living God for the predictability of tradition is an error the religious leaders of ancient Israel made. Based on their examination of how God had acted in the past, they came to definitive conclusions about his nature that blinded them to his work and presence among them.
They were confident the Messiah would never come from a place as backward as Galilee, and he wouldn’t associate with tax collectors and sinners. He would certainly vanquish the Roman idolaters from Judaea, and he would NEVER be humiliated by dying on a cross. Like Taleb’s turkey, the religious leaders found comfort in the certainty of their tradition, but their comfort was shattered by the unexpected actions of an uncontainable God.
DAILY SCRIPTURE Mark 7:1–13 Romans 11:33–36
WEEKLY PRAYER A Gaelic prayer God guide me with your wisdom, God chastise me with your justice, God help me with your mercy, God protect me with your strength, God shield me with your shade, God fill me with your grace, For the sake of your anointed Son. Amen.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. —Philippians 2:5–8
Brian McLaren shows how Jesus as the image of God changes our understandings of who God is:
The implications of the Philippians 2 passage are staggering. Simply put, God as known in the Christ is not the stereotypical Supreme Being of traditional “omnitheology.” That Supreme Being of Christian theology was characterized first and foremost by controlling, dominating, dictatorial power … not limited by any law except the will of the Supreme Being Himself: omnipotence.
In sharp contrast, the God imaged by Jesus exerts no dominating supremacy. In Christ, we see an image of a God who is not armed with lightning bolts but with basin and towel, who spewed not threats but good news for all, who rode not a warhorse but a donkey, weeping in compassion for people who do not know the way of peace. In Christ, God is supreme, but not in the old discredited paradigm of supremacy; God is the supreme healer, the supreme friend, the supreme lover, the supreme life-giver who self-empties in gracious love for all. The king of kings and lord of lords is the servant of all and the friend of sinners. The so-called weakness and foolishness of God are greater than the so-called power and wisdom of human regimes.
In the aftermath of Jesus and his cross, we should never again define God’s sovereignty or supremacy by analogy to the kings of this world who dominate, oppress, subordinate, exploit, scapegoat and marginalize. Instead, we have migrated to an entirely new universe, or, as Paul says, “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) in which old ideas of supremacy are subverted.
If this is true, to follow Jesus is to change one’s understanding of God. To accept Jesus and to accept the God Jesus loved is to become an atheist in relation to the Supreme Being of violent and dominating power. We are not demoting God to a lower, weaker level; we are rising to a higher and deeper understanding of God as pure light, with no shadow of violence, conquest, exclusion, hostility, or hate at all.
We might say that two thousand years ago, Jesus inserted into the human imagination a radical new vision of God—nondominating, nonviolent, supreme in service, and self- giving…. Maybe only now … are we becoming ready to let Jesus’s radical new vision replace the old vision instead of being accommodated within it. Could some sectors of Christian faith finally be ready to worship and follow the God that Jesus was trying to show them [and us]?
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DEC 11, 2024 The Idol of Tradition: Perpetuate Love, Not Practices
Click Here for Audio The central temptation of all idols is the same: control. The false god always promises that by serving it we will gain control and avoid the fears that assail us in an unpredictable world. This is certainly the case with the idol of tradition. By strict adherence to an inherited set of values and practices, we are led to believe that the same positive outcomes experienced in the past will continue uninterrupted into the future. This desire for control through devotion to tradition is often seen within the organizations we construct and perpetuate.
Consider this pattern. A man or woman powerfully filled with Christ’s Spirit accomplishes amazing ministry for God. Others are attracted to the leader and over time a community forms. But once the Spirit-filled leader is gone, those remaining assume his or her ministry can and should be perpetuated. The wind may have shifted, but they want it to keep blowing in the same direction. So, an institution is established based on the departed leader’s tradition, values, methods, and vision. If this tradition is rigorously maintained, it is believed, then the same Spirit-empowered ministry that was evident in the leader’s life will continue through the institution. Many ministries and denominations originated in just this way.
But what we often fail to see is that the Spirit’s power was not unleashed in the leader’s life because he or she had the right values or employed the right strategy. This “fire of God,” as Dallas Willard calls it, was in their soul because of their intense love of Jesus Christ. Rather than focusing on perpetuating a leader’s ministry methodology or tradition, we ought to focus on reproducing his or her devotion to God, but that is a far more challenging task. We have become experts at replicating systems and programs, but how do you replicate something as mysterious as a soul consumed with the fiery love of Christ?As Willard writes, “One cannot write a recipe for this, for it is a highly personal matter, permitting of much individual variation and freedom.
It also is dependent upon grace—that is, upon God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot accomplish on our own.” In other words, rather than trusting in tradition to give us a sense of control, we need to surrender control entirely and trust in the grace of God.
WEEKLY PRAYER A Gaelic prayer God guide me with your wisdom, God chastise me with your justice, God help me with your mercy, God protect me with your strength, God shield me with your shade, God fill me with your grace, For the sake of your anointed Son. Amen.
Father Richard explores how we often create God in our image, rather than the other way around.
It takes a long time for us to allow God to be who God really is. Our natural egocentricity wants to make God into who we want God to be. The role of prophets and good theology is to keep people free for God and to keep God free for people. While there are some “pure of heart” people (Matthew 5:8) who come to “see God” naturally and easily, most of us need lots of help.
If God is always Mystery, then God is always in some way the unfamiliar, beyond what we’re used to, beyond our comfort zone, beyond what we can explain or understand. In the fourth century, St. Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” [1] Could we truly respect a God we could comprehend? And yet, very often we want a God who reflects and even confirms our culture, our biases, our economic, political, and security systems.
The First Commandment (Exodus 20:2–5) says that we’re not supposed to make any graven images of God or worship them. At first glance, we may think this means only handmade likenesses of God, but it mostly refers to rigid images of God that we hold in our heads. God created human beings in God’s own image, and we’ve returned the compliment, so to speak, by creating God in our image! In the end, we produced what was typically a small, clannish God. In the United States, God looks like Uncle Sam or Santa Claus, an exacting judge, or a win/lose businessman—in each case, a white male, even though “God created humankind in God’s own image; male and female God created them” (Genesis 1:27). Clearly God cannot be exclusively masculine. The Trinitarian God is anything but a ruling monarch or a solitary figurehead.
Normally we find it very difficult to let God be greater than our culture, our immediate needs, and our projections. The human ego wants to keep things firmly in its grasp; so, we’ve created a God who fits into our small systems and our understanding of God. Thus, we’ve produced a God who requires expensive churches and robes, a God who likes to go to war just as much as we do, and a domineering God because we like to dominate. We’ve almost completely forgotten and ignored what Jesus revealed about the nature of the God he knew. If Jesus is the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) then God is nothing like we expected. Jesus is in no sense a potentate or a patriarch, but the very opposite, one whom John the Baptist calls “the lamb of God” (John 1:29). We seem to prefer a lion. =======
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DEC 10, 2024 The Idol of Tradition: An Excuse for Disobedience
Click Here for Audio Can you imagine having an unmediated encounter with the Creator of the universe who commands you to do something, but you say “No” to him? Remarkably, this happens several times in the Bible. What could cause a person to say no directly to God in a miraculous moment of divine self-revelation?
Moses said no when God told him to confront Pharaoh because he felt inadequate. Jonah said no when God told him to go to Nineveh because he knew God would be merciful to his enemies there. And Peter said no when God told him to eat something that violated his strict kosher diet.
For Moses the issue was his fear, for Jonah it was his pride, and for Peter it was his tradition. Most of us recognize the way fear and pride may disrupt our obedience to God, but fewer see the dangers of tradition. The strict dietary laws in the Old Testament had a pragmatic function. They were a means of keeping Israel separate from the pagan societies surrounding it. After all, if you do not share the same diet, you will not share the same table. If you do not share the same table, you will not develop close relationships. If you do not develop close relationships, you will not intermarry. And if you do not intermarry you will not abandon your own religion to adopt the beliefs of your non-Israelite relatives. So, the Torah’s dietary tradition was meant to keep God’s people dedicated to him, holy and separate.
By the time of Peter, however, the dietary tradition had become an end in itself. In Acts 10, the Lord called Peter to abandon his Jewish dietary tradition in order to fully welcome non-Jews as followers of Jesus and as his brothers and sisters in God’s kingdom, but Peter refused. The Jewish dietary tradition, whose purpose had been to ensure obedience to God, was instead used by Peter as a reason to disobey God. Peter’s tradition had become an idol.
The complicated dynamic between Old Testament traditions and New Testament faith is one that we must wrestle with, as Peter did. On one hand, we ought to honor traditions as valuable and important. They often help us deepen and maintain our communion with God. On the other hand, we must discern when a tradition is no longer serving its intended purpose; when it is interfering with rather than advancing faithfulness. Like all of God’s good gifts, traditions must never become more important than God himself.
God guide me with your wisdom, God chastise me with your justice, God help me with your mercy, God protect me with your strength, God shield me with your shade, God fill me with your grace, For the sake of your anointed Son. Amen.
Father Richard Rohr invites us to consider our images of God and how they shape us:
Our image of God creates us—or defeats us. There is an absolute connection between how we see God and how we see ourselves and the universe. The word “God” is a stand-in word for everything—Reality, truth, and the very shape of our universe. This is why good theology and spirituality can make such a major difference in how we live our daily lives in this world. God is Reality with a Face—which is the only way most humans know how to relate to anything. There has to be a face!
After years of giving and receiving spiritual direction, it has become clear to me and to many of my colleagues that most people’s operative image of God is initially a subtle combination of their mom and dad, or other early authority figures. Without an interior journey of prayer or inner experience, much of religion is largely childhood conditioning, which God surely understands and uses. Yet atheists, agnostics, and many former Christians rightly react against this because such religion is so childish and often fear-based, and so they argue against a caricature of faith. I would not believe in that god myself!
Our goal, of course, is to grow toward an adult religion that includes reason, faith, and inner experience we can trust. A mature God creates mature people. A big God creates big people. A punitive God creates punitive people.
If our mothers were punitive, our God is usually punitive too. We will then spend much of our lives submitting to that punitive God or angrily reacting against it. If our father figures were cold and withdrawn, we will assume that God is cold and withdrawn too—all Scriptures, Jesus, and mystics to the contrary. If all authority in our lives came through men, we probably assume and even prefer a male image of God, even if our hearts desire otherwise. As we were taught in Scholastic philosophy, “Whatever is received is received in the manner of the receiver.” [1] This is one of those things hidden in plain sight, but it still remains well-hidden to most Christians.
All of this is mirrored in political worldviews as well. Good theology makes for good politics and positive social relationships. Bad theology makes for stingy politics, a largely reward/punishment frame, xenophobia, and highly controlled relationships.
For me, as a Christian, the still underdeveloped image of God as Trinity is the way out and the way through all limited concepts of God. Jesus comes to invite us into an Infinite and Eternal Flow of Perfect Love between Three—which flows only in one, entirely positive direction. There is no “backsplash” in the Trinity but only Infinite Outpouring—which is the entire universe. Yet even here we needed to give each of the three a placeholder name, a “face,” and a personality.
In the Beginning
Pastor and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality Victoria Loorz considers the origins of our traditional images of God:
God as the Patriarch. Christ as the Lord. God as the King. Christ as the One and Only Word. These are all metaphors or images created by people (well, men) at particular times in history to define relationship with sacred reality. These are metaphors that made sense to people who were ruled by violent, imperial monarchs—people who depended on the whims of lords and property owners for their survival. These metaphors also conveniently helped those in charge to legitimate and enforce their power.
Ecotheologian Sallie McFague calls on us to construct new images and metaphors that are relevant to our lives and time in history. For us, living in this century, metaphors for God must somehow experiment with metaphors other than the royalist, triumphalist images, which are clearly inappropriate. They must, she insists, express the ecological interdependencies of life. [1]
Loorz reflects on an image of God inspired by John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word.”
I offer another relevant metaphor for our time, yet rooted in a forgotten tradition: Christ as Conversation. Christ as Conversation says to me that the oak tree and that deer in the meadow are not God. And I’m not God. But we [each] carry the Christ, the Logos, the Tao, the spark of divine love within us. And the conversation between us: that is the manifestation of the sacred, moving forward the evolving kin-dom of grace. The wild Christ….
Jesus as the Christ embodies that in-between presence between the Creator and the created. Between the transcendent and the incarnated. But not just Jesus. All of us. Even the trees and the microbes and the stars are made and imbued with and held together by Conversation. Christ is dynamic, abundant relationship, a cacophony of interrelated connections navigated by conversation. Christ is the opposite, in fact, of a static word, a single utterance controlled by powerful men….
What would a wild Christ—a Conversation who is the intermediary of love between all things, whose divine presence connects wild deer with my own wild soul—evoke in our world? Is it possible to imagine the worldview of kingdoms and empires transforming into a worldview of kin-dom and compassion? Imagine how different life would be right now if Christianity could become a place for sacred conversation: a place to explore possibilities and express doubts and disagree and encourage voices on the edges. Imagine the church honoring sacred conversation by lifting up the voices shut down by empire. Imagine the reconciling role the church could offer in bringing together opposite forcesto remember that we are all interconnected.
Quote of the Week: “I pray, therefore, God rid me of God.”– Sermon 52 Reflection: On the surface, it looks as though Meister Eckhart is espousing atheism. However, just as many of these Christian mystics, wisdom is found just past the surface readings we sometimes give them. Eckhart was a master at taking people right up to the edge of their understanding and inviting people to take the next step into wonder. As the department chair of theology at the University of Paris, was no stranger to mystery. We could say that in his day and age, church teaching was more comfortable with mystery than we are today in our post-enlightenment world. Eckhart was keenly aware of the limitations of human language to define God. This was so much the case that Eckhart even asked if the word “God” was even close enough to the reality of God for us to even warrant using it. Eckhart regularly reminded his congregation that God was beyond every thought or idea we could have about God. And how could he not? Especially when God is absolutely beyond anything we could say about Him?
And so here is the paradox: Every possible thought or idea we could have about God is inherently limited, and therefore idolatrous if we cling to it too tightly. Yet, we cannot help but at least try to use words to understand this mystery we call “God.” Which brings us back to the main quote this week. It may only be an act of God that is capable of separating us from clinging to thoughts, ideas, concepts, and vocabulary about God. It is a paradox, for certain, but there is a deep truth to the fact that as soon as we let go of our conceptual boxes of what and who God is, we are then most able to accept the reality and personhood of this mystery that we call, “God.” Prayer Good God, we are fully aware that our thoughts, ideas, concepts, and even vocabulary fall short of the glory and the mystery of You. Come to us and eliminate every idolatrous understanding we have of You and help us to bend the knee at the infinite mystery of You. Guide our steps and light our paths for us, so that we might always be willing to follow a little further into who You truly are. And, if you see fit, grant us the courage to not cling to a small but familiar understanding of You for longer than we ought. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen and amen.
Life Overview of Meister Eckhart: Who Were They: Eckhart von Hochheim, later to be known as Meister Eckhart, OP (Order of Preachers aka Dominicans).
Where: Born near Gotha, Landgraviate of Thuringia (now Germany). Died in Avignon, Kingdom of Arles (now France).
When: 1260-1328AD
Why He is Important: Without a doubt, Meister Eckhart was misunderstood in his day and age. He was almost excommunicated but that was largely due to the Inquisition not being able to understand the complexity and paradox of his teaching. Over time, he has come to be known as an impressive figure of theology and spirituality.
What Was Their Main Contribution: Meister Eckhart is most known for being a Dominican monk who understood the Christian faith with “an eastern mind.” He often taught through paradox and what has come to be known as “non-dual” thinking (rising above either/or conceptualizations).
Philosopher Brian Swimme and historian Mary Evelyn Tucker reflect on the story of the universe:
We are the first generation to learn the comprehensive scientific dimensions of the universe story. We know that the observable universe emerged 13.7 billion years ago, and we now live on a planet orbiting our Sun, one of the trillions of stars in one of the billions of galaxies in an unfolding universe that is profoundly creative and interconnected. With our empirical observations expanded by modern science, we are now realizing that our universe is a single immense energy event that began as a tiny speck that has unfolded over time to become galaxies and stars, palms and pelicans, the music of Bach, and each of us alive today. The great discovery of contemporary science is that the universe is not simply a place, but a story—a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong, and out of which we arose.
This story has the power to awaken us more deeply to who we are. For just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a galaxy, and an orchid is the universe in the form of a flower, we are the universe in the form of a human. And every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe, we are actually the universe reflecting on itself. And this changes everything. [1]
Author John Philip Newell honors the work of scientist and Catholic priest Thomas Berry (1914–2009) who witnessed God throughout the cosmos:
Berry wanted us to be amazed, constantly amazed, by this one, single, interrelated body of the universe that new science describes as a single multiform reality, or as “Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement.” [2] It just keeps flowing and flowing into ever-new form. Four and a half billion years ago it flowed into the form of a planet of burning molten rock. And over the course of four billion years this globe of burning rock, Earth as it was later called, has transformed itself into birds and bees and butterflies, and into the emergence of human thought and music and love. We are each a shining flow of sacred energy.
Homo sapiens, meaning wise ones, appeared 200,000 years ago. We are latecomers in this story. The term “wise ones” does not accurately describe what we have been to one another and to Earth, but it could yet describe what we will become. As Berry adds, there is good reason to hope that “the universe is for us rather than against us.” [3] Given the dangerous moments that have been navigated thus far in the unfolding story of humanity and Earth, there is good reason to hope. It is now up to us to live from the wisdom of the Spirit that is deep within us. [4]
Jesus had been fasting in the desert for 40 days. He was understandably hungry, so the enemy presented to him a very practical and relevant idea. “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” The enemy was not saying that Jesus should prove his identity as God’s Son by turning stone into bread, although that is often how we misread the verse. The enemy was saying, “If you are God’s Son then you have every right to satisfy your desires. You don’t have to deny yourself or be hungry. Go ahead, make some bread and eat. You deserve it.”
Of course, Jesus was God’s Son, which God the Father had declared at his baptism just before Jesus entered the wilderness, but Jesus rejected this invitation to satisfy his natural desire for food. Instead, he said, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Many Christians fixate on what they understand to be sinful desires, or desires that are ungodly, unhealthy, or unnatural. But it’s important to notice that Jesus’ desire for food was none of these things. Hunger is normal. Bread is not evil. And eating is not a violation of God’s law. So, why did Jesus deny himself this ordinary and appropriate desire? Because he understood that our lives are not ultimately sustained by what we eat, but by God’s will. True life is to be found by living in communion with him, not simply by pursuing our desires.
The temptation he faced in the wilderness is one we face every day. We live in a culture that tells us we are defined by our desires, and the purpose of life is to satisfy them. We have elevated desires to the status of rights and the thought that a desire should intentionally go unfulfilled is utterly inconceivable to most people today. To deny ourselves a desire is to deny our very identity! Even worse, telling someone else they should not satisfy a desire has become an unpardonable sin. Doing so may get you labeled “judgmental,” “intolerant,” or even a “bigot.”
That is why, more than ever, we need to hear the wisdom of Jesus: we do not live by bread alone. We are more than our desires, our lives are more than our appetites, and the purpose of life is more than satisfying our natural longings, however real and legitimate they may be. True life flows from the living God, and our deepest longings are only satisfied in union with him.
Give us, O Lord, a steadfast heart, which no selfish desires may drag downwards; give us an unconquered heart, which no troubles can wear out; give us an upright heart, which no unworthy ambitions may tempt aside. Give us also, O Lord our God, understanding to know you, perseverance to seek you, wisdom to find you, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Richard Rohr describes how love and grace are present and operational in the world:
True Christianity and true science are both transformational worldviews that place growth and development at their centers. Both endeavors, each in its own way, cooperate with some Divine Plan, and whether God is formally acknowledged may not be that important. As Carl Jung inscribed over his doorway, Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit (Invoked or not, God is still present). [1] We can call this grace, the indwelling Holy Spirit, or just evolution toward union (which we call “love”). God is not in competition with anybody, but only in deep-time cooperation with everybody who loves (Romans 8:28). Whenever we place one caring foot forward, God uses it, sustains it, and blesses it. [2]
Scientist and theologian Ilia Delio writes of the balancing act she has faced in the worlds of science and religion:
When I speak about love as core reality to colleagues in theology (or science) I often get a look of annoyance or the raised eyebrows that signify dismissal. The academy can be like the church, intellectually self-preoccupied with the precision of logical arguments. I want to shout out … but I often remain silent because love cannot be defended by analytical arguments; love has its own internal logic….
All of nature is endowed with the energy of love (which is grace), and yet only by being open to love … can one know love as the precious gift of nature itself. In this receptivity of love I began to let go of my fixed ideas and narrow definitions of God, church, and world, and I invited into my heart and mind a new universe of life and a new way of seeing the world. I did not seek a new worldview; rather I went in search of truth and found love at the heart of all things. I have come to realize that all knowledge is true knowledge—whether in the sciences or in the humanities—if it moves one to fall more deeply in love.
Having studied the work of French priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), Delio writes:
Teilhard thought that love is the most mysterious and unknown energy in the universe. It is this center drawn to that center; this person drawn to that person. There is no logical explanation for this core energy of life; it is deeply personal and yet whimsical; … an energy field that is somehow entangled with an infinite energy of divine love—for God alone, who is absolute love, is completely personal and ineffable intimacy. Love is rooted in the fundamental nature of reality itself…. Love forms every star, atom, leaf, daffodil, bird, earthworm, cat, giraffe, tiger, and human; everything that exists is born from love. Even consciousness is born of love so that mind is not intellect alone but includes the body and senses and emotional life. Love makes the world go around because love makes the world; matter is formed by love. _________________________________________________
Let My Presence override everything you experience. Like a luminous veil of Light, I hover over you and everything around you. I am training you to stay conscious of Me in each situation you encounter. When the patriarch Jacob ran away from his enraged brother, he went to sleep on a stone pillow in a land that seemed desolate. But after dreaming about heaven and angels and promises of My Presence, he awoke and exclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” His discovery was not only for him but for all who seek Me. Whenever you feel distant from Me, say, “Surely the Lord is in this place!” Then, ask Me to give you awareness of My Presence. This is a prayer that I delight to answer.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 31:20 (NLT) 20 You hide them in the shelter of your presence, safe from those who conspire against them. You shelter them in your presence, far from accusing tongues.
Genesis 28:11-16 (NLT) 11 At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. 12 As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway. 13 At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I am giving it to you and your descendants. 14 Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will spread out in all directions—to the west and the east, to the north and the south. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants. 15 What’s more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.” 16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it!”
Additional insight regarding Genesis 28:10-15: God’s covenant promise to Abraham and Isaac was offered to Jacob as well. But it was not enough to be Abraham’s grandson; Jacob has to establish his own personal relationship with God. God has no grandchildren; each person must have a personal relationship with him. It is not enough to hear wonderful stories about Christians in your family. You need to become part of the story yourself (see Galatians 3:6-7 – “6 In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” 7 The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.).
Contemplative theologian Beatrice Bruteau (1930–2014) considers engaging with science as a way of honoring God’s presence in the cosmos:
There are two motivations for including some knowledge of science in our contemplative lives: one, we need to understand God’s artistic work in order to appreciate it properly and relate lovingly to the Creator; two, we need to know something of the work in order to join it, to participate in creating the world from here on. This last is the real way of loving, that is, by joining in the life of the beloved.…
Somewhere deep down, we are all filled with mystical longing, longing for meaningful belonging, for profound union, longing to be securely embedded in the ultimate meaningfulness, and therefore we need to see all our world in that context. We long to feel the ultimate meaningfulness as real, all around us, concrete, real, intimate, tangible, communicating with us. To attain this in today’s climate, we need a new theology of the cosmos, one that is grounded in the best science of our day. It will be a theology in which God is very present, precisely in all the dynamisms and patterns of the created order, in which God is not rendered absent by the self-organizing activities of the natural world, but in which God is actual as the one who makes and the one who is incarnate in what is made by these very self-making activities.
Can our science be seen that way? Yes, I think so, and I would like to show it to you in those terms, so that all the world turns sacred again and we truly feel our unity and our wholeness and our belonging to the all. [1]
Contemplative and physicist Joy Andrews Hayter affirms a mystical oneness at the heart of the cosmos.
Whether you call it Sacred Unity, God, Universe, Ground of Being, the Source, or One, it is not out there somewhere, but is written into what we are and where we are…. Where could the Source of this loving, relational reality, the luminous web connecting all things, ever not be?
When we discover and live from the coherence in our being, we discover that we are in a relational field with all beings, with a mystical spark at the center that connects us all. Merton saw this clearly at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, [when he realized “the gate of heaven is everywhere”] [2] and Teilhard de Chardin saw this and his writings are permeated with it. In Cosmic Life, he said, “To live the cosmic life is to live dominated by the consciousness that one is an atom in the body of the mystical and cosmic Christ.” [3]…
Just as all began (from the Big Bang, or the Word, depending on whether you are talking about physics or the New Testament) and expanded into the myriad forms that are permeated with the One, all returns to Oneness, which could be described as the cosmic Body of Christ. [4]
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The Idol of Desire: The Problem with Peter Pan
J.M. Barrie began his classic book, Peter Pan, with the line: “All children, except one, grow up.” The powers fueling our consumer culture’s idolatry of desire are trying hard to prove him wrong. Statistics reveal more adult children are living with their parents well into their 30s, the average age for marriage has risen steadily among both men and women since 1980, and the age of cosmetic surgery patients is rapidly declining. We are quickly moving toward what one author has called a culture of “perpetual adolescence.”That may not sound horrible to some of us, but consider what is lost by rejecting a transition into adulthood. Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck defines maturity as the ability to delay gratification. He writes, “Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.” The ability to make rational decisions and delay gratification to maximize future benefits, the very ability discouraged by a culture that idolizes desires, is the prescribed road from adolescence to adulthood. But more people are failing to take this journey, opting instead to remain in Neverland indefinitely. Given the extent to which popular Christianity has accepted the deification of desires, we shouldn’t be surprised at the spiritual immaturity evident in the contemporary church. Scripture and tradition tell us that formation into the likeness of Christ—the Christian definition of maturity—is not achieved by always getting what we want. Spiritual maturity is not a product of seeking immediate gratification of our desires. The Apostle Paul compares his pursuit of Christ to competing in a race. It’s a focused effort of self-control and discipline, and Peter calls us to supplement our faith with self-control and steadfastness, and to do it all with diligence.These values are not championed in our consumer culture, and they certainly don’t prove popular among church shoppers seeking a comfortable religious experience. But since the earliest days of the Church, surrendering control and embracing self-denial ensured that believers received what they needed to mature in Christ, not just what they wanted.
DAILY SCRIPTURE
1 CORINTHIANS 9:24–27 2 PETER 1:5–10 WEEKLY PRAYERThomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Give us, O Lord, a steadfast heart, which no selfish desires may drag downwards; give us an unconquered heart, which no troubles can wear out; give us an upright heart, which no unworthy ambitions may tempt aside. Give us also, O Lord our God, understanding to know you, perseverance to seek you, wisdom to find you, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Father Richard praises modern science for its emphasis on “practice” and openness to new questions and discoveries, which seems more like faith than the certainty embraced by many Christians.
The common scientific method relies on hypothesis, experiment, trial, and error. We might call this “practice” or “practices”! Yes, much of science is limited to the materialistic level, but at least the method is more open-ended and sincere than that of the many religious people who do no living experiments with faith, hope, and love, but just hang on to quotes and doctrines.
Under normal circumstances, most scientists are willing to move forward with some degree of not-knowing; in fact, this is what calls them forward and motivates them. Every new discovery is affirmed while openness to new evidence that would tweak or even change the previous “belief” is maintained. In contrast, many religious people insist upon complete “knowing” at the beginning and being certain every step of the way. It actually keeps them more “rational,” “fact-based,” and controlling than the scientists. This is the dead end of most fundamentalist religion, and why it cannot deal with thorny issues in any creative or compassionate way. Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary.
The scientific mind has come up with what seem like beliefs: for example, explanations of dark matter, black holes, chaos theory, fractals (the part replicates the whole), string theory, dark energy, neutrinos (light inside of the entire universe even where it appears to be dark), and atomic theory itself. Scientists investigate and teach on things like electromagnetism, radioactivity, field theory, and various organisms such as viruses and bacteria before they can actually “prove” they exist. They know them first by their effects, or the evidence, and then work backward to verify their existence.
Even though the entire world has been captivated by the strict cause-and-effect worldview of Newtonian physics for several centuries, such immediately verifiable physics has finally yielded to quantum physics. While it isn’t directly visible to the ordinary observer, it ends up explaining much more—without needing to throw out the other. True transcendence always includes!
It feels as if there are some scientists of each age who are brilliant, seemingly “right,” but also tentative—which creates a practical humility that we often do not see in clergy and “true believers.” A great scientist builds on a perpetual “beginner’s mind.” Many scientists believe in the reality of things that are invisible, and thus the active reality of a “spiritual” world, more than do many believers. Thus, although they might be “materialists,” they actually have the material world defined with an openness to a “spirit” that they themselves often cannot understand. Is this not “faith”?
Maybe this is all summed up in these words of Saint John Paul II: “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.” [1] So let’s walk forward with wide and rich sight!
Friday – Tuesday – Five from our friend, John Chaffee
Since I struggle with a scarcity mindset, I easily overlook things that I should be grateful for. However, Thanksgiving is an annual celebration of gratitude that causes all of us to slow down for a moment. It is no wonder that if we increase our gratitude, we thereby increase our joy.
2.
“When a system is not dominated by anxiety, everyone is free to speak truthfully, everyone is free to listen curiously.“
These are the closing lines of the epic English poem, The Hound of Heaven. It was written in response to Thompson’s own life failures and addictions while homeless in London in the 18th century. It is a lovely poem highlighting God as “the Hound of Heaven,” who has our scent and is in a relentless pursuit/chase of us even as we run from the very Love we yearn for.
If you have time today, take a moment to read the poem (the blue link above will take you to it) as a devotional practice.
While doing formal church work, I felt pressured to maintain a specific line in the sand. A paycheck attached would be threatened if I said something that challenged a status quo or would eat me up inside if I did not say something that I felt necessary. You may be reading this and not understand that struggle, but to others who have gotten a “peek behind the curtain” to the life of professional ministry, I know they resonate with this.
All that goes to say, Origen was correct in many ways. He was an Early Church Father who was controversially deemed a heretic centuries after he passed away because many of his students took his teachings in directions that he may not have done himself. His writings influenced the significant figures we still highly esteem today (especially the Cappadocian Fathers).
For Origen, the Gospel was always about the restoration of everyone and everything from all of time. The wrath of God was more purgative than punitive, and the power of Christ to save utterly eclipses humanity’s ability to doom itself. I believe that we have utterly shifted away from the Gospel of the Early Church because, with every generation of humanity, we all begin with disbelief that the Gospel could actually be that good until we relax and allow the Good News to disarm us, to let go the need to take vengeance and to acquiesce to being rescued.
5.
“Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.“
This is a classic quote that I have shared before.
It is a timeless and universal mantra that all of us could benefit from living out.
Lyrics from the song.
Lyrics
Deconstructed these walls to find a business Where the company line was the only way to get paid We built a church on certainty that fears everything against it Where the refugee suffers and the white man has it made
I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover
I sat myself in your pews every single week And I gave you my money so you could tell me what to think And I learned from a book that you had taken the heart out of And that’s how I learned to make exclusion look like love.
I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover
Come, come as you are, take up your cross, and use it to build a wall Reach across the aisle and fire your gun so you can keep them Love, love how you want, if we approve, and you’ll be undefiled Come, accept our gift, of salvation from sinners
I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover I won’t do it anymore it’s taken me too long to recover I’ll go feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover
Gonna take a while to wade through the fear and the hurt But I think there’s a way for us to love and heal the world
From the beginning of time until now, the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth. —Romans 8:22
Father Richard Rohr writes of an evolutionary faith informed by Scripture and a foundational trust in God’s never-ending love and creativity:
In this passage, St. Paul seems to fully acknowledge evolution. It’s always seemed completely strange to me that there should be any resistance whatsoever to evolution or evolutionary thinking in Christian theology or practice. Christians should have been the first in line to recognize and cooperate with such a dynamic notion of God. But maybe many do not enjoy such a relational God—with all that implies—and have just met a “substance” they call God. A static notion of God makes everything else static too, including our very notions of spirituality, history, and religion.
If our God is both incarnate and implanted, both Christ and Holy Spirit, then an unfolding inner dynamism in all creation is not only certain, but also moving in a positive direction. If not, we would have to question the very efficacy, salvation, hope, and victory that the Christian gospel so generously promises. Foundational hope demands a foundational belief in a world that is still and always unfolding.
I believe that as “children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36), we are both burdened and brightened by a cosmic and irrepressible hope—and we can never fully live up to it. We are both burdened and brightened with the gift of an optimism whose headwaters are neither rational, scientific, nor even provable to those who do not have it. Yet it ticks away from a deep place within us. [1]
Evolutionary thinking is actually contemplative thinking, because it leaves the full field of the future in God’s hands. It’s a way of thinking that agrees to hold the present humbly, with what it only tentatively knows for sure. For me, that’s true faith, and it’s the heart of the matter, because we no longer need a totally predictable outcome. I know it’s very hard to exist in such an uncertain place and most of us aren’t practiced in it. The Christianity handed down to many of us didn’t define faith in that way; it was a very static notion of time and knowledge. We didn’t have to participate in the organic movement in our own soul, in the soul of our marriage, our family, or our community.
The contemplative mind is an evolutionary mind, and I think it’s the mind of Christ. It allows the future to reveal itself, without present circumstances totally predicting it. We all need some degree of predictability, but in faith, I can live without certainty to some degree. Living in that tension, that in-between, could be called evolutionary thinking or it could be called trusting in deep time. I’m trusting there’s a deep river flowing. Even when not much is happening on the upper river, I still trust the deeper river. [2]
Evidence for Things Not Seen
Faith provides evidence for things not seen. —Hebrews 11:1
Richard Rohr describes how mystics and sincere seekers discover “evidence for things not seen”:
The entire faith tradition insisted that there was indeed “evidence for things not seen,” and yet too often the common notion of faith had little to do with discerning the actual evidence available in the present, in the mind, memory, heart, soul, and in creation itself.
Sts. Augustine, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross all found that “unseen” evidence in the very nature of the soul and its inner workings, but we must admit this hasn’t been taught to or experienced by most Sunday Christians. Many formal believers found evidence in Scripture and dogmas that supported and affirmed their personal God encounter, but perhaps even more of them used Scripture and dogma to make their own experience unnecessary. Others like St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, Teilhard de Chardin, many poets, and everyday mystics found evidence in the natural world, in elements, seasons, animals, and all living things, but sadly they were often marginalized as mere “nature mystics” and placed outside the mainline tradition. This makes me think that we Christians never understood our core message of incarnation, must less its massive implications. This was despite St. Paul’s direct and clear message:
What can be known about God is perfectly plain since God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity—however invisible—has been perfectly evident for the mind to see in the things that God has made (Romans 1:19–20).
This generation has at its disposal a whole new type of evidence, display, and apparition that is proving Paul was correct. And this wonderful evidence is arising from the discoveries of the scientific mind! God comes into the world in always-surprising ways so that the sincere seeker will always find evidence. Is sincere seeking perhaps the real meaning of walking in faith?
The search for truth, the search for authentic love, and the search for God are finally the same search. I would rather have “one who lays down one’s life for one’s friend” (John 15:13) by sincere seeking, demanding scholarship, and authentic service, than those who are on no search, do no mental or emotional work, and have no open heart for the world, but just want to personally “go to heaven.” We have coddled this individualistic non-Christianity for far too long, and with no encouragement from Jesus whatsoever.
The very shape, possibility, and meaning of evidence is quickly broadening. Religious people would be wise to get on board. Frankly, I think it is what the Christian desert fathers and mothers, mystics and saints, meant by concrete spiritual “practices,” and what Eastern religions meant by “skillful means.” Such “doing” will give us the kind of evidence that cannot be denied. It moves us into the world of action and beyond the mind—to a place where we now “believe” because we know for ourselves.
Learning from the Mystics: John of the Cross
Quote of the Week: “How gently and lovinglyyou wake in my heart,where in secret you dwell alone;and in your sweet breathing,filled with good and glory,how tenderly you swell my heart with love.”- Verse 4 of The Living Flame of Love
Reflection: The Living Flame of Love is a wonderful companion and sequel of sorts to the Dark Night of the Soul. After one has gone through the ruthless elimination of idols and competing loves, there is nothing left but the sweet embrace of God. It is nothing more than a love poem to God in the vein of the Song of Songs (also known as the Song of Solomon) from the Bible. There is something both sweet as well as scandalous about this poem. In this original Spanish, it reads almost erotically. The intimacy described is quite profound and touching.
This is in large part due to the intimacy with God that St. John of the Cross models for us. In the medieval ages, there were three stages of sanctification: illumination, purgation, and union (sometimes called perfection). Illumination is the act of God shining on the human heart and conscience, awakening the person to the reality of the Spirit. Purgation is the act of purging or burning away that which does not belong in the human heart, a purifying of one’s love. Union, though, is the final stage. It is understood as the marriage of the soul to and with God. Throughout church history, there have been many figures who wrote from this marriage perspective. Many are “courting” God, fewer are “engaged/betrothed” to God, and fewer still are “married” to God. Some have called this final stage “Spiritual Marriage.” The Living Flame of Love is a poem of a soul being united and married to God. The brilliance of the poem is that the maturity of faith is not defined by perfection, morality, or doctrine. Rather, the maturity of faith is completely defined by loving intimacy with God. In many ways, despite his difficult life, St. John of the Cross has stood as an example of divine intimacy despite the hardships of life, some imposed by life outside of the church and some imposed by life within the church. St. John of the Cross believed in this intimacy with God so much, that he couldn’t NOT want to write eloquent Spanish poetry about it… and it has been all to our benefit that he did.
Prayer: Oh Love That Will Not Let Us Go, enable us the tenacity as well as the vulnerability to be intimate with you. Swell our hearts to ever greater love of you, and our neighbors as ourselves. Help us not to distance ourselves from you and help us to instead long for your sweet embrace at every moment of every day, knowing that that same sweet embrace is already happening, if only we have the faith to trust that it is true. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen and amen.
Life Overview of St. John of the Cross: Who Were They: Juan de Yepes y Alvarez, later known as Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross) Where: Born in Fontiveros, Spain. Died in Ubeda, Spain. When: June 24, 1542-December 14, 1591 Why He is Important: Understood as a prime example of scholasticism and spirituality. What Was Their Main Contribution: John of the Cross is most known for his commentary on his own poetry, of which the Dark Night of the Soul is one of a few main texts. He was jailed and beaten by his religious superiors and escaped to only then write some of his most enduring work. Click here for The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.
Hillsong’s Joel Houston Clarifies Evolution Views After Sparking Debate With Worship Song ‘So Will I’
Joel Houston explains the meaning behind the Hillsong Worship song, “So Will I (100 Billion X)”, December 2017. | (Screenshot:Youtube)
With one of Hillsong United’s latest hits, “So Will I (100 Billion X),” at the center of a creation versus evolution debate, worship leader Joel Houston is setting the record straight on where he stands.
“So Will I (100 Billion X)” is a song off of the album, There Is More, recorded live at the Hillsong Worship and Creative Conference in Sydney, Australia. Houston was recently asked on Twitter why the song mentions evolution.
The lyrics in question are: “And as You speak/A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath/Evolving in pursuit of what You said.”
Houston, who is the eldest son of Hillsong Church’s founders as well as lead musician in the worship band Hillsong United and worship leader of Hillsong Church in New York City, responded by saying:
“Evolution is undeniable—created by God as a reflective means of displaying nature’s pattern of renewal in pursuance of God’s Word—an ode to the nature of the creative God it reflects—and only ever in part—not the SOURCE! Science and faith aren’t at odds. God created the Big-Bang.”
His response sparked a Twitter debate on evolution versus creation and drew some backlash. In back-and-forth exchanges with various Twitter users, Houston went on to offer some context to his earlier tweet.
He wrote: “Context—things evolve, they change and adapt, I DON’T believe in evolution as a theory of SOURCE, I believe it’s merely a pattern of nature—created by God, reflecting Nature’s desire for renewal, survival, new life—something-SomeONE—Like God.”
He also said: “I think what gets lost, strangely enough, is that in any case, The Word, comes before any kind of Big Bang.. ‘let there be light’!! BOOM!! And there WAS!!!
When asked if he believes in the “Big Bang theory” or “literal 6 day creation,” Houston said, “It means I believe God created everything and His Word cane first..”
He further clarified his beliefs on whether man evolved from an ape, saying, “i believe God created humanity out of the dust.. and breathed his breath/Spirit into us..”
The popular worship leader admitted that when writing the song, the band was “aware of the implications ‘evolving’ would serve as a conflicting adjective for some” but said they still felt “it was worth it—if just a foolish desire to enlarge our thinking of a God who was-is-&-is to come, making all things new, ‘from-Him, through-Him, To-Him.'”
He explained that God is “way bigger than we think,” and regardless of one’s theological or scientific beliefs, He “is undiminished by our limitations.”
“If God’s creative process was an easy working week, or finely crafted over six-ages of millennia, does it make Him any more or less God?” Houston posed. “Or us any more or less created in His image? Either way, it was an unfathomably wonderful six-day process, however you think to see it.”
He added, “The way I see it—the NATURE of a fallen-world evolves in-decay BECAUSE of our best attempts to adapt to a—’survival of the fittest’ kind of existence—yet God, fully reveals His NATURE in-and-through JESUS, who embodied ours, and showed us a DIFFERENT way. Spirit & Flesh.”
The millennial worshiper went on to break down the structure of the song to help critics understand the development of the lyrics. He maintained they couldn’t sing of or understand God’s promises (in second verse) without the premise of the first verse (God of Creation). “Nor can we fully comprehend the reconciling power of the third-verse (God of SALVATION), without the tension in the middle.”
“The entire premise of ‘So Will I’, is the redemptive, creative, authority & power of God’s Word. That at the end of the day, all our best theories, ideas, dogmas & best attempts at understanding, will ultimately surrender to the ‘Word at the beginning,'” he concluded.
In an interview on TBN earlier this month, Hillsong Church Senior Pastor Brian Houston shared that all of Hillsong’s music is reviewed by theologians.
The pastor revealed they’ve been “more intentional” about vetting their songs in the last decade.
“We do put more effort into the theology of our songs than we ever have before for that very reason (of being able to reach into the hearts of people around the world),” he said. “So we have people specifically who, every single song has to fit through a system of being tested by theologians.
“There’s often a lot of grind, hopefully in a positive way, between the songwriter and getting it to a point where we feel like it’s not going to be too easily misrepresented.”
He noted that they usually do not throw a song out but they work on it until it’s theologically sound. Otherwise, if they release a song “that’s going to be misunderstood or theologically weak, believe me, we hear about it.”
Jesus invites us to withdraw our allegiance from a world of bigness, clarity, immediacy, looking good, and security and to see life instead as smallness, patience, humility, inner wisdom, and risk-taking. —Richard Rohr, Jesus’ Alternative Plan
Father Richard considers how Jesus’ parables reveal the realm of God:
Chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel contains seven parables on the kingdom of heaven or “realm of God.” In the first, Jesus says the word of God is like a seed which is sown in the hearts of many, but only those who let it grow within them belong to God’s realm (Matthew 13:4–9). [1] In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Jesus seems to say that this world is a mixture of different things. God allows both good and bad to grow in the same field together. Then, at the end of time, God will decide what is wheat and what is a weed. In a certain way, the parable is saying it’s none of our business to fully figure it out (13:24–30). [2]
This divine realm is also not to be found in just one person; it spreads and grows from person to person, influencing groups and societies. In the third and fourth parables, Jesus compares the kingdom to a tree that spreads its branches and to yeast that filters through dough, always pervading, organically forming and transforming structures (13:31–33). The realm of God is something that touches, inspires, and enlivens all things from their very center outward—and changes them.
The next parables are the shortest, but they are two of my favorites. They show that people can recognize the kingdom when they find it, and if they are willing to give up a great deal to become part of it:
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he keeps it safe, goes off happy, sells everything he owns, and buys the field. (13:44)
The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls; when he finds one of great value he goes and sells everything he owns and buys it (13:45–46).
I can think of many contemporary examples of how people have risked security to share lives and seek God’s realm: prayer groups, peace and justice ministries, social agencies and shelters, communities of contemplation and action. Living in this sacred dimension may be spiritual, but it’s also very real, and it’s very attractive when we discover it.
In the seventh parable, Jesus reiterates the idea that the realm of God has little to do with the ego-based expectations of our culture or religion (13:47–50). No church, community, or individual is perfect. We humans are always turning away from the realm of God and then undergoing a new conversion to return. To turn toward the kingdom, we must turn away from our smaller selves. To say, “Thy kingdom come,” we must say in the next breath, “My kingdom go.”
Walk peacefully with Me through this day. You are wondering how you will cope with all that is expected of you. You must traverse this day like any other; one step at a time. Instead of mentally rehearsing how you will do this or that, keep your mind on My Presence and on taking the next step. The more demanding your day, the more help you can expect from Me. This is a training opportunity, since I designed you for deep dependence on your Shepherd-King. Challenging times wake you up and amplify your awareness of needing My help. When you don’t know what to do, wait while I open the way before you. Trust that I know what I’m doing, and be ready to follow My lead. I will give strength to you, and I will bless you with Peace.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 33:14 (NIV) 14 The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Deuteronomy 33:29 (NIV) 29 Blessed are you, Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword. Your enemies will cower before you, and you will tread on their heights.”
Hebrews 13:20-21 (NIV) Benediction and Final Greetings 20 Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Psalm 29:11 (NIV) 11 The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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