When we die, we don’t go anywhere, but rather, we cross over into unmediated, infinite union with God. We cross over into loving God, with God’s own love for God, which is the Holy Spirit. We cross over into knowing God, with God’s own knowledge of God, which is Christ. —James Finley, Turning to the Mystics, podcast
James Finley leads us through a meditation to help us experience the immediate presence and intimacy of God’s love and those who have joined God before us:
I invite you to imagine that you are sitting alone in the middle of a well-lit room. There are no windows and no furniture in the room other than the chair you are sitting in…. As you sit there alone in silence, the light in the room slowly begins to dim. As the room dims, a light on the other side of the wall you are facing slowly becomes brighter and brighter. You begin to realize that the wall you are facing is not really a solid wall, as you had imagined, but is rather a gossamer veil that is becoming increasingly translucent in the light that is shining through it, filling the darkness of your room with an unfamiliar light.
In the light shining out from the other side of the veil you see God, the angels, and the saints. They are all laughing and waving at you, letting you know how delighted they are that you can see them. You start laughing and waving back at them.
Then God, the angels, and the saints pass through the veil to join you, rendering the room radiant with communal joy and delight in which your very presence begins to glow with the presence of God. Illumined and transformed in this way, God and the angels and saints carry you with them into heaven, just on the other side of the veil, where all are dwelling who have died and crossed over into God. Then God and the angels and saints carry you with them back through the veil, back to the room, now aglow with heavenly wonder and delight. Then, once again, they transport you back into the celestial realm, and then back again into the room….
You are left once again in the familiarity of your earthly experience of yourself sitting there alone in the room, facing the wall. But while everything is the same as before, everything is, in an interior way, radically different. For you now realize that while, yes, it is true that, on one level, the wall you are facing really is a wall, … yet in the afterglow of the unitive experience that has just graced your life, you now know in the depths of your awakened heart that, ultimately speaking, the wall is no wall at all…. You have been graced with a fleeting experience of being immersed in God-immersed-in-you in a boundless communion that utterly transcends, even as it utterly permeates, the darkness and fragmentations of this world.
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Eight Lessons from Charlie Kirk’s Life
Put God First Charlie never shied away from declaring his faith. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Every decision we make must flow from that starting point. If we’re not putting Christ first, we’re building on sand.
Be Bold Charlie embodied Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.” He wasn’t timid, he wasn’t quiet, and he certainly wasn’t “safe.” He was bold. And that boldness shook the foundations of a society addicted to lies.
Go Into Hostile Territory Who else but Charlie would walk into the lion’s den of a liberal college campus and speak truth to young minds being discipled by secularism? “Go into all the world and preach the gospel” (Mark 16:15). That command doesn’t say “go only where you’re welcome.” We need more warriors willing to storm enemy ground with the banner of Christ.
Stand on Your Principles In a world where compromise is currency, Charlie stood tall. He knew who he was and Whose he was. Jesus said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24). That’s the call: principles anchored in Scripture, not popularity.
Fight Back with Ideas, Not Weapons Charlie never raised a fist; he raised ideas. He armed himself with words, debates, logic, and truth. Paul wrote, “The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4). Let us wield ideas and the Word of God with just as much courage.
Challenge the Status Quo Charlie rattled cages. He asked hard questions. He dismantled long-held assumptions. And guess what? That’s what Christians are called to do. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). If your faith isn’t shaking up the world, you’re doing it wrong.
Be Devoted to Your Country and Family Charlie loved America. He loved his family. He saw both as gifts from God to be cherished and defended. “If anyone does not provide for his relatives… he has denied the faith” (1 Timothy 5:8). Let us emulate his devotion at home and in our nation.
Create Change Charlie was just 18 years old when he launched Turning Point USA out of his parents’ garage. From that humble beginning came a movement that impacted millions. “Who dares despise the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10). What’s stopping you from creating something for Christ that will outlive you?
Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking abouthis exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. —Luke 9:30–31
In a small Christian community in Nicaragua, everyday people reflect on the meaning of Jesus’ transfiguration, especially his conversation with Moses and Elijah. Writing from within the liberation movement, priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal shares their insights:
TOMÁS: “And those two dead men that appear beside him and that are very happy, it’s to make us see that they hadn’t died, and they were not only alive, they had a better life.”
FELIPE, Tomás’s son: “That was also to give them courage, because Jesus was going to be like the two of them….”
They asked me [the priest] why Moses and Elijah appeared, and I said that Moses was the great liberator of the people, that he brought them out of Egyptian slavery, and Elijah was a great prophet, a defender of the poor and the oppressed, when Israel again fell into slavery, with social classes. Both of them were closely identified with the Messiah, for it had been said that the Messiah would be a second Moses and that Elijah would come back to earth to denounce injustices as a precursor of the Messiah (and Jesus said that Elijah had already arrived in the person of John the Baptist).
The people gathered continue reflecting together on the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, and what it means to suffer, hope, and rise with Christ together.
WILLIAM: “They’re talking about his death, and they’re in glory too, sharing that glory of his. It seems to me it’s because all people who share the sufferings of Christ and struggle for his cause (for freedom) will share in that same glory of his, like those two prophets. And I believe that when they were talking about his death they weren’t talking just about him but also about all people who together with him were going to enjoy that same happy ending.”
OLIVIA: “As I see it, the resurrection is something you can already begin to have in this life. Christ was still made of mortal flesh, and they already see him with that brightness, that light so beautiful, the way he’d be after his death, resurrected.… They’ve seen Jesus this way, already transfigured in life because of the death he was going to have. And what they saw there you can apply to the people, the people still suffering. They’re transfigured like Christ even though we can’t see it, because the people are Christ himself.”…
WILLIAM: “It seems to me the victory over death is when somebody, because of the good he’s done for others, becomes part of future humanity, which will be resurrected. Even though your death is obscure and nobody remembers it, you stay alive in the consciousness of humanity. And what the disciples saw in that little moment is the glory of that future humanity.”
How ignoring context turns Scripture into a weapon against the poor.
If you haven’t heard yet, millions of low-income Americans will lose access to food aid on Nov. 1, when half of states plan to cut off benefits due to the government shutdown.
Twenty-five states have said they are issuing notices informing participants of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, that they won’t receive checks next month. Those states include California, Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Mississippi and New Jersey.¹
Christians should be the loudest voices against this, but too many are busy justifying it with a single verse of Scripture.
The Verse They Love to Quote
I am no stranger to this rhetoric. I grew up hearing 2 Thessalonians 3:10 weaponized. “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” Case closed. Scripture said it. The lazy can starve. It wasn’t until years later, when I actually began reading the letter to the Thessalonians in context, that I realized how catastrophically we’d missed the point. Paul wasn’t writing public policy recommendations for a 21st-century democracy. He was addressing a very specific problem in a very specific church where some believers had stopped working because they thought Jesus was coming back at any moment. They’d quit their jobs and were mooching off the generosity of other church members while they waited for the Second Coming. Paul’s response wasn’t “cut off all social safety nets and let the poor starve.” It was “hey, get back to work and stop being a burden on your church family while you wait.”
The context matters. Paul had just spent the previous chapter talking about how believers should encourage each other and support the weak. He’d been clear throughout his letters about the church’s responsibility to care for those genuinely in need.
The Verses They Conveniently Forget
Here’s what kills me about watching politicians, pundits, and Christians pull out this one verse to justify gutting SNAP benefits: they act like it’s the only thing Scripture has to say about hunger and poverty. They quote Paul’s one corrective to a specific situation and ignore the thundering chorus of over 2,000 verses commanding God’s people to care for the poor, feed the hungry, and defend the vulnerable. It’s not even close. The Bible is practically obsessed with how we treat those who have nothing.
Leviticus 19:10 commands farmers to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so the poor can eat. Deuteronomy 15:11 says “there will always be poor people in the land, therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy.” Proverbs 19:17 goes so far as to say that whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord himself. Isaiah 58 tells us that the kind of fasting God desires isn’t religious performance but sharing our food with the hungry and bringing the poor into our homes. Jesus launches his ministry in Luke 4 by announcing good news to the poor and kicks off the Sermon on the Mount by blessing them. He feeds thousands with loaves and fish, and he promises in Matthew 25 that how we treat the hungry, the stranger, the naked, and the imprisoned is how we treat him.
The biblical witness isn’t ambiguous here. God is unequivocally, passionately, relentlessly on the side of the poor. Every major prophet rails against societies that neglect the vulnerable. The psalms repeatedly celebrate God as the defender of the fatherless and the widow. The early church in Acts shares everything in common so that no one goes without. James says that religion that doesn’t care for orphans and widows is worthless. This isn’t a side issue in Scripture. This is the issue. You cannot read the Bible honestly and come away thinking God is fine with people going hungry.
Selective Literalism and the Politics of Scarcity
What we’re watching is selective literalism in service of a political agenda. The same voices that want to apply 2 Thessalonians 3:10 with rigid literalism to justify cutting food assistance have no interest in applying that same literalism to Jesus’s command to sell all you have and give to the poor, or his warning that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. They don’t want to talk about Amos pronouncing judgment on those who “trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land.” They’re not quoting Ezekiel 16:49, where the sin of Sodom is described as having “excess of food” while not helping “the poor and needy.”
When we take one verse and use it to build walls, justify scarcity, or to punish people, we’re not reading Scripture faithfully. We’re conscripting it into our culture wars. We’re making Paul say things he never meant to advance policies that directly contradict the heart of the God he served.
The “Church’s Job” Dodge
The other line I hear constantly is this: “It’s the church’s job to feed the poor, not the government’s.” It sounds spiritual. It sounds like we’re defending the proper role of the church. But it’s mostly just a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility while feeling righteous about it.
Let’s be honest about what this argument actually means in practice. The church in America, for all our buildings and budgets and good intentions, is not currently feeding the hungry at anywhere near the scale needed. We’re not even close. According to Feeding America, over 47 million Americans face food insecurity.² The church runs food pantries and soup kitchens, and that work is beautiful and necessary, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the need. SNAP serves roughly 42 million people.³ There is no universe in which the American church could suddenly absorb that responsibility if the government cuts the program. We don’t have the infrastructure, the volunteers, or the funding.
But here’s the deeper problem with the “church’s job” argument: it creates a false dichotomy. Who says it has to be either-or? The biblical command to care for the poor doesn’t come with a footnote that says “only through religious institutions.” When Scripture tells us to feed the hungry, it’s speaking to all of us, in all the ways we organize our common life together. Government is simply one of the ways we do things collectively. We pool resources through taxes to build roads, fund schools, provide fire departments, and yes, help people eat. That’s not opposed to biblical values. That’s biblical values being lived out through civic structures.
The prophets didn’t just call individuals to personal charity. They called nations and kings to establish justice. They demanded that societies create systems where the vulnerable are protected. Jeremiah 22 says that King Josiah was righteous because “he defended the cause of the poor and needy.” Isaiah 10 pronounces woe on “those who make unjust laws, to deprive the poor of their rights.” This is about more than individual acts of kindness. This is about how we structure our communities and our countries.
Besides, let’s name the game being played here. The people who say “it’s the church’s job” are often the same people who don’t want to fund the church’s work either. They’re not writing bigger checks to their local food bank. They’re not volunteering at soup kitchens. They just don’t want anyone to be fed if it costs them anything, and they’ve found a religious-sounding way to justify it. It’s spiritualized selfishness, and we should call it what it is.
The Reality They Don’t Want to See
Let me tell you about the first few years of my ministry. I was working part-time at a church in Iowa and full-time in the local school district. Two jobs. Nobody could accuse me of being lazy or unwilling to work. I was doing everything right according to the bootstrap gospel that gets preached from too many pulpits. But here’s what that verse about “if you don’t work, you don’t eat” doesn’t account for: the cost of healthcare and daycare alone wiped us out. Completely. If it weren’t for WIC, my family wouldn’t have eaten. That’s not hyperbole, that was the simple math.
This is the reality for millions of Americans that the “you don’t work, you don’t eat” crowd conveniently ignores. Most people receiving SNAP benefits are working. They’re working full-time jobs that don’t pay enough to cover rent and groceries and medical bills and childcare. They’re working multiple part-time jobs because their employers won’t give them full-time hours specifically to avoid providing benefits. They’re disabled or elderly or caring for family members who are. The lazy freeloader narrative is a myth we tell ourselves to justify our lack of compassion. It’s a story we invented to make ourselves feel better about letting people go hungry.
The people who quote 2 Thessalonians 3:10 like it’s an economic policy have never had to choose between paying for insulin and buying groceries. They’ve never stood in line at the WIC office feeling the weight of judgment from people who assume you’re gaming the system instead of just trying to feed your kids. They’ve never done the mental math at the grocery store, putting items back because you’re five dollars over what your EBT card will cover. And because they’ve never lived that reality, they can reduce poverty to a simple moral failing. Work harder. Make better choices. Pull yourself up. As if the problem is effort and not a system designed to keep people on the edge of survival.
What Paul Actually Cared About
I digress, but if we’re going to quote Paul, let’s at least be honest about what he actually cared about. In Romans 12:13, he tells believers to “share with the Lord’s people who are in need” and “practice hospitality.” In Galatians 2:10, he says the apostles’ only request was that he “remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” In 2 Corinthians 9, he spends an entire chapter encouraging generous giving to help those in need. Paul organized a massive collection effort across multiple churches to support the poor believers in Jerusalem. The man was laser-focused on making sure nobody in the church family went hungry.
So when Paul writes to the Thessalonians about people who won’t work, he’s not advocating for dismantling social safety nets in a modern nation-state. He’s addressing church discipline for members who are exploiting community generosity. That’s pastoral counsel for a specific congregation, not a universal economic policy.
The Heart We’re Missing
Here’s the deeper issue: when we use Scripture to justify letting people go hungry, we reveal that we’ve fundamentally misunderstood the character of God. The God of the Bible is one who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. The God who invites us to a banquet and tells us to go out into the streets and compel the poor and crippled and blind to come in. The God who cares so much about hungry people that he promises blessing to those who feed them and judgment to those who don’t.
Jesus never asks “are you deserving?” before he feeds the five thousand. He doesn’t run background checks or require proof of job applications. He sees people who are hungry, has compassion on them, and provides. That’s the heart of God. That’s what it looks like when divine love encounters human need.
The Invitation
So here’s what I’m asking: before we quote one verse from Paul to justify our attitude, maybe we should sit with the 2,000 verses that command generosity. Maybe we should ask ourselves whether our theology is being shaped by Scripture or by our politics. Maybe we should consider that when we use the Bible to build walls around the table instead of expanding it, we’re missing the entire point.
The God who became flesh and dwelt among us, who had nowhere to lay his head, who fed the hungry and welcomed the outcast, is still inviting us to participate in the abundant life of the kingdom. That kingdom doesn’t operate on scarcity and suspicion. It operates on grace and generosity. And it has always, always made room for the hungry.
The question isn’t whether we can afford to feed people. The question is whether we can afford to call ourselves followers of Jesus while we let them starve.
If you’re wondering what to do next:
Call your U.S. Representative and Senators and urge them to fully fund SNAP and end the shutdown.
Call your pastor and ask how your church can help meet the need in your own community.
Volunteer with a local food bank or meal program.
Give to an organization feeding families in your city.
Share this story with someone who still thinks hunger is a “choice.”
I’m grateful to be part of a church that is stepping up in a big way. You can see the news story here.
Father Richard Rohr reflects on our universal participation in life and the connectedness to which Christ invites us:
We all need to feel and know, at the cellular level, that we are not the first ones who have suffered, nor will we be the last. Instead, we are in one universal parade—God’s “triumphal procession,” as Paul calls it, using the metaphor of a Roman triumph after a great victory (2 Corinthians 2:14). In this parade, he says, we are all partners with both the living and the dead, walking alongside countless ancestors and descendants who were wounded and longed for healing. This idea, “the communion of saints,” became the last phrase added to the Apostles’ Creed centuries later, almost as if it took us a while to recognize its importance. Someday, maybe we will have the courage to add “the communion of sinners,” too. The body of Christ is one great and shared sadness and one continuous joy, and we are saved just by remaining connected to it.
Since the Enlightenment, however, we have been trained to believe that we each can “do it my way,” like Frank Sinatra’s song, instead of participating in everybody else’s great parade. As I often say,if we do not mythologize our pain, all we can do is pathologize it. We Westerners have lost the ability to frame the significance of our own little lives. I suspect that those who grew up with the richness of the myths and sacred stories of Ulysses and Athena or the Corn Mothers or Kali may have found meaning and consolation for their pain more readily than many of us do today. They knew they weren’t alone on the journey, while we no longer believe or live as if we are an inherent part of a much bigger story. We believe ourselves separate from the cosmic dance that created Greek comedy and tragedy and led the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest to dance and carve kachinas as a way of marking human events or emotions. Helping people see that they are cooperating members of a performance that is already showing—and will keep showing—is surely why so many of the religions of Indigenous people were, at their heart, ancestor worship.
We are invited to realize I am not the first nor the last to feel this suffering. I can now choose to be a weak but willing member of the whole communion of saints!Surely such solidarity is our salvation, rather than private purity or personal wholeness. Paul called it living “en Cristo,” a phrase that he used multiple times to name the shape and coherence of our collective participation.
Maybe hope needs to be cosmic hope to be hope at all. Maybe pain needs to be borne together, and for all time; it is very hard to bear alone, or in the moment. We fight it as unfair and undeserved when we could instead carry it as an act of human and loving solidarity.
Community Continues
Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes describes the gifts and wisdom she has received from the ancestors of her faith and culture:
Although some folks use a very narrow definition of the word ancestor, I use the word as an indicator of legacy and interconnections. The ancestors are elders who pour their lives into the community as a libation of love and commitment. They live and die well, and when they transition, they do so in full connection with an engaged community. Thereafter, they dwell in the spaces carved out by our spiritual and cultural expectations. They may be in another life dimension, but they connect with us in dreams, in memories, and in stories….
The stories reveal a promise that the community will continue beyond the breath of one individual and that all transitions will be well attended by relatives from the other side. This is a cosmology of connection that values but also transcends cultural contexts; life is considered to be a continuum of transitions, ruptures, and returns. Those who admit that the “ordinary” is punctuated by the ineffable cherish those indescribable and nonrational events as an enigmatic but welcome gift. The fact that I grew up in a family that included the presumptions of transcendence and the unseen in our everyday lives has affected my journey in powerful ways….
The end result is that I know that I am not alone. I am connected to the past and the future by the ligatures of well-lived lives, the mysteries of “beyondness,” and the memories and narratives that lovingly bind and support me. While I hope that when I die, one of the elders in my family who have crossed over to the realm of the ancestors will be at my bedside, I certainly did not expect contact prior to that time. And yet here I am, [in my work] hearing from liberation leaders I have never personally met. As it turns out, they are also my elders as certainly as if they occupied a branch of my family tree. They have bequeathed to all of us a legacy of resolve, resistance, and spiritual expansiveness.
Holmes points to Jesus’ experience with his ancestors in faith:
Christianity hides its ancestors in plain view. Those familiar with the Bible know that Jesus had a very public conversation with ancestors in full view of chosen disciples [Matthew 17:1–13]…. We choose safe words and images like prayerand transfiguration to soothe our discomfort with ancestor contacts that require the crossing of dimensions…
Ancestors within the context of African Diasporan legacies are those family members who have poured out their lives for the good of the family. In life, they live well and for others. Although they are human and fail often, they are seldom deluded by the distractions of ego or the desire for earthly acquisitions. They also transition well to the other side and continue their intercession and prayers for the living.
To be part of a life-giving tradition brings with it a moral responsibility to make it even better as we pass it on to future generations. –Brian McLaren, “Engaged Contemplative Christianity”
In the latest issue of the CAC’s journal ONEING, Brian McLaren reflects on the moral responsibility we carry toward our traditions, inviting us to discern if they are life-giving, death-dealing, or somewhere in between:
Traditions are cultural communities that carry on, from generation to generation, ideas and practices (what I call treasures) in which they see great enduring value. Like everything in this universe, traditions are constantly changing, even if the change occurs at a glacial pace. (Though these days we know that sometimes even glaciers change quickly.) Sometimes they change for the better. Sometimes they change for the worse. Even if a tradition were to stay exactly the same, to be the same thing in a different environment is not the same thing….
We have no choice as to the tradition into which we were born. As we grow older, we must decide: Is this inherited tradition life-giving, death-dealing, or a mix of both? If it is in an unhealthy condition right now, is it improvable or salvageable? Does participating in it perpetuate harm? Is it time to migrate to a new spiritual tradition?
When we choose to invest our precious time in the most life-giving tradition we can find, we have a responsibility—we might call it a moral responsibility—to understand the tradition’s core treasures: its deepest values, vision, practices, and insights; its origins, history, and leading figures. We also have a responsibility to face its shortcomings, missteps, imbalances, and current needs for growth, so we can someday, if possible, pass on an even better version of the tradition than we have received.
McLaren describes the healing power of discovering contemplative Christianity:
Every day, more and more of us find ourselves unable to perpetuate the religious traditions in which we were raised. We have experienced them as taking more than they give, or, in some cases, we fear they do more harm than good. We have made a great spiritual migration: We have left, often with tears, beloved inherited traditions we considered death-dealing and stubbornly resistant to change. If we hadn’t found (or been found by) the tradition of engaged contemplative Christianity, many of us couldn’t consider ourselves Christians anymore. We would find ourselves spiritually homeless.
As we rejoice in this growing, life-giving, living tradition, we face important questions: How will we help our tradition to grow, mature, and expand its influence for good? How will we enrich and improve the tradition as it stands? How can we discern its present weaknesses, not in order to criticize and condemn the tradition, but in order to heal, strengthen, and energize it for greater fruitfulness in the future? What might the growing edges of our tradition be?
Hello Friends! Okay, so I want to let you in on something. I am typing this right now, next to my wife.And she frequently jokes that I have “storytelling grandpa vibes.” Just because I enjoy root beer floats, a slow start to the morning, sitting down to talk with people over lemonade or beer, and wanting a lovely porch or a backyard for a good bonfire.
I have little desire to be flashy or to look super professional. I am good with a few pairs of the same pants in different colors because they fit well. As I said, I have “grandpa vibes.” And I own it.
I always smirk a little when she reminds me of the aura or milieu I create because it’s spot on. It’s okay, though. A humble, small life that is meaningful and sprinkled through and through with quality people sounds lovely to me.
Well, jokes on you, Jess. You give off “cute grandma vibes.” I think we belong together. Good thing we got married back in June. Anyway, I hope all of you enjoyed this week’s introduction. Just a little windown into the absurdity of my life. As always, thank you for reading!
(This was part of my workday on Wednesday, sitting on this porch with a beer and talking about upcoming work. I know, I know, it’s a rough life.)
1.“The renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning.”- Athanasius of Alexandria, 4th Century Church Father In Christian theology, there is the idea that Jesus is the Logos, the “word, logic, rationale, blueprint, or principle” by and through and in which all things were created and sustained. The Logos was a fundamental concept for Philo of Alexandria, a very influential Jewish philosopher.
And so, for Athanasius, who was also a formidable figure of Alexandria, it makes sense that for his understanding of the renewal of all things, the Logos would be just as intimately involved as He was in the beginning.
2.”The Inner creates the Outer, and the Outer molds the Inner.”- Jiddu Krishnamurti, 20th Century Indian Philosopher Honestly, I forgot where I heard this from this past week. It might have been from a podcast episode that I listened to. However, it has stuck with me since.
Our Inner world/soul/values create the Outer world, including how we organize society, our jobs, our family lives, etc. Then, this Outer world molds (but does not dictate) us in turn, and certainly the next generation as well. If we are unhappy with the Outer world, the first thing we should stop and evaluate is our own Inner world.
It is one thing to try and force the Outer world to be better, but it is another thing entirely to turn inward and see where the blame might be. Fascinatingly enough, The Sermon on the Mount is a rather brutal and honest evaluation of the Inner world.
One of the most important paradigm shifts I have experienced is valuing the sophiological side of Christianity —the incarnate wisdom of it all. I have been around people who only emphasize the soteriological side of Christianity, who tend to prioritize the question of “What must I do to be saved?”
It is not that such a question is bad, but it now feels limiting to me.Why?Because if all you care about is being forgiven and being saved, then you are not really allowing yourself to be confronted with how Jesus teaches us to forgive our enemies, fight for those being sacrificed on the altar to the empire, push back against injustices, be more marked by generosity than stinginess, and display hospitality more than hostility.
4.”Your accumulated offenses do not surpass the multitude of God’s mercies; your wounds do not surpass the great physician’s skill.“- Cyril of Jerusalem, 4th Century Church Father Hope. There is always hope. No one is beyond the reach of the Good Shepherd, and nothing is beyond the scope of reconciliation. So, again, there is always hope.
5.”The theologian who labors without joy is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this field.”- Karl Barth, Swiss Theologian
This is a good one. Fortunately, I have been under the teaching/preaching of joyful people more than staunch, serious, or dreadful ones. This is why I enjoy reading Karl Barth. Despite all the complexities and paradoxes of the man, he brings a particular kind of relief and joy after having read him. If at the end of the day, the way the Gospel is being presented does not foster relief, then it ain’t the Gospel.If God truly is infinite, outpouring, co-suffering Love, then I don’t think we have much to worry about in life.
Author Cassidy Hall describes the solidarity she feels with other contemplatives who continue to explore new ways of understanding themselves, their lives, and God.
We may word things differently, but this perpetual search to know the unknowable is a familiar feeling for many contemplatives. We have an almost ravenous hunger, or some might say a palpable thirst, or a seemingly aimless dull ache that thrums through us. The ache reminds us we are in touch with the suffering of the whole world. All contemplatives, no matter their religion or spirituality, seem to have this in common, and recognizing this makes me feel less alone.
The contemplative life is not a way of knowing. It is not the path of certitude. In fact, that’s what makes it so alive, so necessarily active. Our glimpses of “arrival” along the way are places we can catch our breathand recall we are moving in the right direction, even if it’s only because it’s exactly where we are. Those times, we remember that the way is not meant to be easy, simple, or comfortable. But these moments only last for a flash in the midst of life because, as the Rev. Dr. Walter Fluker reminds us, “Life will keep going because life itself is alive.” [1]…
These instances are only signposts along the way, affirming us on the lifelong journey of contemplation—this living, breathing, growing journey. Even though we know the search will never end, the hunt continues. In fact, … [Thomas Merton] concluded his best-selling spiritual memoir The Seven Storey Mountain by writing in Latin, “Sit finis libri, non finis quaerendi,” meaning, “Here ends the book, but not the searching.” [2]
To live within the contemplative tradition is not only to keep searching. It is also an invitation to evolve within and alongside it.We are asked to engage with and deepen into the roots of its origins, while also being called to live into what it looks like in our ever-changing world. The contemplative path must grow in order for us to continue on, in order for us to be alive in the living, growing, and breathing tradition.
Hall’s quest led her to the wide and evolving lineage of Christian contemplation—from Thomas Merton’s writings to the wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers, to the work of Dr. Barbara Holmes.
We come from all walks of life, cultures, and markers of identity. There is a unity in our uniqueness, and that common thread binds us together, allowing us to recognize each other…. As I learned from more diverse voices, I came to understand Christian contemplation as a living tradition. The word living insinuates an ongoing, even growing nature. Life necessitates space, breathing room, and an openness to change. That which is living cannot exist in a place of complete certitude—to do so would be to count it dead: not continuing, not evolving, not ever-becoming. In this way, contemplation is its own spiritual paradox, one of tradition and change, stillness and action.
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Sarah Young Jesus Calling
You are on the right path. Listen more to Me, and less to your doubts. I am leading you along the way I designed just for you. Therefore, it is a lonely way, humanly speaking. But I go before you as well as alongside you, so you are never alone. Do not expect anyone to understand fully My ways with you, any more than you can comprehend My dealings with others. I am revealing to you the path of Life day by day, and moment by moment. As I said to My disciple Peter, so I repeat to you: Follow Me.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 119:105 NLT
Nun
105 Your word is a lamp to guide my feet
and a light for my path.
John 21:22 NLT
22 Jesus replied, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.”
E. Trey Clark, a Professor of Preaching and Spiritual Formation, considers the rich history of Black contemplative preaching in the CAC’s latest issue ofONEING: A Living Tradition:
In Christian faith traditions, contemplative preaching is a mode of proclamation that weds prayer, wisdom, and reflection to invite listeners into a transformative encounter with God for the good of the world and the glory of God….
Black contemplative preaching is shaped by the holistic spirituality, communal orientation, and vibrant orality that is part of the rich Africana heritage—even when embodied outside of predominantly Black contexts. Moreover, Black contemplative preaching unites the head and the heart, the personal and the communal, and spiritual formation and social transformation as it bears witness to the liberating and life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ. While recognizing that contemplation is ultimately a gift, Black contemplative preachers seek to guide people to experience loving communion with the divine, while also pursuing the flourishing of Black people and all of God’s creation.…
It is essential to note that Black contemplative preaching is not a recent development. Its deep roots can be traced to the lineage of biblical prophets such as Moses, Isaiah, Mary, and Jesus himself. Moreover, it stems from a tradition of African mystics, including St. Anthony, Moses the Black, and St. Mary of Egypt. It is also part of a larger history of mystic preachers in the Christian tradition that includes Augustine of Hippo, Hildegard of Bingen, St. Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, and others. [1]
Building on this tradition of Black contemplative preaching, Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899–1981) offers a vision of life as a shared harvest. He reminds us that our lives are part of a communal process of sowing, ripening, and reaping together:
This is the season of gathering in, the season of the harvest in nature. Many things that were started in the spring and early summer have grown to fruition and are now ready for reaping. Great and significant as is the harvest in nature, the most pertinent kind of in-gathering for the human spirit is what I call “the harvest of the heart.” Long ago, Jesus said that [people] should not lay up for themselves treasure on earth, where moths corrupt and thieves break in and steal, but that [people] should lay up for themselves treasures in heaven [Matthew 6:19–20]. This insight suggests that life consists of planting and harvesting, of sowing and reaping. We are always in the midst of the harvest and always in the midst of the planting…. Living is a shared process. Even as I am conscious of things growing in me planted by others, which things are always ripening, so others are conscious of things growing in them planted by me, which are always ripening. Inasmuch as I do not live or die unto myself, it is of the essence of wisdom for me conscientiously to live and die in the profound awareness of other people. The statement, “Know thyself,” has been take mystically from the statement, “Thou has seen thy brother, thou hast seen thy God.”
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OCT 22, 2025 The Power of Prayer + Praise. Skye Jethani. With God Daily
Throughout the New Testament, prayer is repeatedly mentioned as a central activity of the gathered church. Today, however, prayer has been sidelined or abandoned as an element of worship in many congregations. It seems that our appetite for uplifting music or a self-help sermon has eaten the time in our services that had previously been used for intercession and confession. This trend reveals a misunderstanding or disregard for the link between prayer and praise.Prayer has many purposes, but among its most elemental is self-revelation. In prayer, we reveal ourselves to God; we remove the layers of pretense and posturing to expose the truth of who we are—our sins, our fears, our joys, and our sorrows. This unashamed self-revelation is boldly depicted in the psalms, where God’s people cry out to him with uncomfortable transparency. Their prayers were brutally honest and sometimes bordered on blasphemous. But that’s what prayer is for; it’s how we present the truth of what’s in us to God. It is the Christian’s tool for self-revelation.
Praise, on the other hand, is a tool of divine revelation. Through the recitation of Scripture and the singing of hymns and songs, we are reminded of God’s character and recall his deeds. Praise recalibrates our imaginations to see ourselves and our world in light of God’s presence and power. We also see this in the psalms as the poems frequently shift from the self-revelation of the author’s sin, fear, or struggle to conclude with a focus on God’s love, power, or faithfulness. The psalms take us on a journey from human frailty to divine sovereignty—and so should the church’s worship.When the church gathers, we are to have our self-revelation through prayer recalibrated by God’s divine-revelation through praise.
Both are essential. If we abandon praise, the church gathering becomes a collection of victims defined by their brokenness and doubts as they search for self-improvement tips and therapeutic advice. If we abandon prayer, the church gathering becomes a concert where unreflective people seek a temporary high through euphoric music. Transformative worship embraces both prayer and praise. It invites us to expose the truth about ourselves but then covers us with the truth of God’s love.
WEEKLY PRAYER. From Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1875)
Take from us, O God, all pride and vanity, all boasting and self-assertiveness, and give us the true courage that shows itself by gentleness; the true wisdom that shows itself by simplicity; and the true power that shows itself by modesty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In ONEING: A Living Tradition, spiritual writer Katie Gordon shares how her life has been shaped by living alongside Benedictine nuns. Through their monastic rhythms, the sisters find themselves living out an evolving tradition of renewal. An elder Benedictine nun named Sister Carolyn memorably insisted Katie remember that “Godis change. We are all evolving, growing. We are never done changing!”
I had just moved into the Pax Priory, an intentional living community that the Benedictine Sisters of Erie [Pennsylvania] started in 1972 as a peace and nonviolence center in the city. Carolyn, a Benedictine Sister in her eighties, had been one of the original residents there. Meanwhile, I was more spiritual-but-not-religious, though raised Catholic, in my early thirties, and the house’s newest resident. When I moved in, she invited me to share this office with her…. Looking back on our convent corner office, I can see all the ways we stood on the threshold of a living tradition—between the past and the future, between our generations, and between our expressions of the monastic call….
Where, once upon a time, nuns in habits observed the Grand Silence, there is now laughter ringing through the rafters from the kids in the daycare program on the first two floors. On the grand wooden staircase once meticulously cleaned with toothbrushes by the sisters, the kids now run up and down, speaking the several languages of the migrant communities represented in the program. Just upstairs, there are offices for several ministries that evolved out of the sisters’ faithful presence in the city, including a soup kitchen and food pantry, an online monastery of contemporary seekers, and an association of monasteries sharing resources across the globe. These might hardly be recognizable to the original sisters who settled here in the 1850s to educate German immigrants, but they are nonetheless extensions of the same call to community and ministry, yet in a new era of need.
This former monastery building … is just one fractal of the transformation of religion and spirituality today. With tradition in one hand and evolution in the other, Christian monasticism’s spirit of conversatio, or continual change, continues to pull us into the future…. From the beginning, monastics have been on the renewing edge of the Christian tradition. Like anyone, though, monks need to remember what that asks of us. We need to recall the practices of renewal already within our tradition.
To remain on this renewing edge takes commitment. It takes practice to not grow complacent. To keep embracing change requires exercising that muscle. Renewal is not a one-time event, something implemented and completed. Renewal is an ongoing practice. It is the reality of being a living tradition….
Monastics today have inherited both a living tradition and an institution. Ideally, one feeds the other. Possibly, one destroys the other. The institution can smother the living tradition, or the living tradition can die out if there is no way to practice it or pass it on.
This is why the monastic holds on to both tradition and evolution.
Why we can’t turn one moment into permission for cruelty
There’s a peculiar kind of Christian who lights up when they talk about Jesus flipping tables in the Temple. Their eyes get a little brighter. Their posture straightens. Finally, they seem to say, here’s the Jesus who vindicates my anger, my sharp tongue, my public callouts, my refusal to budge. Here’s the Jesus who says it’s okay to be mean if you’re right.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I keep seeing it, particularly in my comment sections. In the way some people talk about their political opponents or their theological enemies. They’re not interested in “love your enemies” or “blessed are the peacemakers” or “turn the other cheek.” Those teachings get a polite nod, maybe a quick “yes, but—” before we rush headlong into the one story that lets us off the hook. The one where Jesus gets mad. The one with the whip.
The Table I Grew Up At
I grew up in a church where righteous anger was practically a spiritual gift. If you could Bible-verse someone into a corner, if you could out-quote them, out-debate them, out-conviction them, you were seen as spiritually mature. Strong. Uncompromising. We weren’t mean, we told ourselves. We were just speaking truth. And if people got hurt, well, Jesus flipped tables too, didn’t he? Well, we need to talk about that.
What Actually Happened at the Temple
Here’s the thing: we’ve turned the Temple incident into something it wasn’t. We’ve made it a blank check for our own rage, a permission slip to be unkind in the name of truth. But if we slow down and actually look at what happened, the story gets a lot more complicated.
Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar, has spent years pushing back on the way Christians have misread this moment¹. She points out that the Temple was massive, sprawling across an area that would cover dozens of modern soccer fields. Flipping a few tables wouldn’t have shut anything down. It was symbolic, not practical. It was prophetic theater, a dramatic gesture meant to draw attention to something deeper.
And what was that something? This may surprise you, but it wasn’t the money changers themselves. It wasn’t at the price gouging or exclusionary policy (which is what I had always been taught.) Levine argues that there’s no textual evidence the vendors were exploiting anyone. Instead, she notes that money changing was a necessary service. Pilgrims came from all over the world with foreign coins that couldn’t be used in the Temple. Someone had to exchange them. Therefore, this wasn’t corruption, it was simply logistics.
So what was Jesus actually angry about, then? Levine suggests it was about the disconnect between worship and ethics. It was about people who showed up at the Temple, performed their rituals, said their prayers, and then went out and lived lives marked by injustice. They used the Temple as a refuge, or a spiritual safe house, while continuing to exploit the vulnerable and ignore the commands of God. That’s what “den of robbers” means. Not a place where robbery happens, but a hideout where robbers go after the fact, thinking they’re safe because they’ve done their religious duty.
Jesus wasn’t condemning the Temple system itself. He and his followers kept going there. This was an internal critique, a call for reform, a prophetic demand that worship and life align. It was Jeremiah all over again: “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’, only to go on doing all these abominations?”
The Gospel We’d Rather Ignore
Here’s what gets me: we’ve taken this one moment, this one story of disruption, and turned it into the defining image of Jesus. Meanwhile, we’ve somehow managed to downplay or ignore the overwhelming majority of his life and teaching. The Sermon on the Mount. The parables of mercy. The woman caught in adultery. The lepers he touched. The tax collectors he ate with. The enemies he told us to love. The forgiveness he offered from the cross.
Jesus spent his entire ministry embodying compassion. He wept over Jerusalem. He healed on the Sabbath and took the heat for it. He let a woman wash his feet with her tears. He stopped a stoning. He rebuked his disciples when they wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village. He told Peter to put away his sword. He prayed for the people executing him.
And yet somehow, we’ve decided that the one time he got angry in the Temple is the real Jesus. The unfiltered Jesus. The Jesus who justifies our harshness, our cruelty, our refusal to extend grace. We cling to that whip like it’s the only tool in the Kingdom of God.
It’s not just bad theology. It’s lazy. It’s self-serving. And honestly, it’s gross.
I think the reason we love the table-flipping story so much is because it lets us off the hook. Love your enemies is hard. Turning the other cheek is costly. Forgiving seven times seventy feels impossible. But righteous anger? That comes easy. That feels good. That lets us be mean and still feel holy.
We want a Jesus who endorses our culture war tactics. We want a Jesus who backs our Facebook dunks and our hot takes and our refusal to listen. A Jesus who says it’s okay to burn bridges as long as we’re right. A Jesus who looks a lot like us when we’re at our worst.
But that’s not the Jesus of the Gospels. That’s not the Jesus who said the world would know his followers by their love. That’s not the Jesus who told us to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who persecute us, to go the second mile. That’s not the Jesus who, when given every reason to lash out, chose mercy instead.
If we’re going to follow Jesus, we have to follow all of him. Not just the moment that makes us feel justified. Not just the story that gives us permission to be harsh. We have to sit with the discomfort of enemy love. We have to wrestle with the scandal of grace. We have to let the Sermon on the Mount shape us more than our anger does. (I am currently writing about my personal struggle with this.)
Living Beyond the Whip
So what does this mean for us?
It means we stop using the Temple incident as a weapon. We stop reaching for it every time we want to justify our unkindness. We stop pretending that one moment of prophetic disruption erases three years of radical compassion.
It means we ask ourselves harder questions. Am I defending truth, or am I defending my right to be cruel? Am I calling out hypocrisy, or am I just venting my rage? Am I actually concerned about justice, or do I just like the feeling of being right?
It means we take seriously the fact that the same Jesus who flipped tables also washed feet. The same Jesus who called out religious leaders also ate with sinners. The same Jesus who disrupted the Temple also welcomed children. And when we have to choose which image to follow, which posture to embody, we choose the one that defined his entire life, not just one afternoon in Jerusalem.
Because here’s the truth:
The world doesn’t need more Christians who are good at being mean. It needs Christians who are good at being kind.
It needs people who can hold truth and grace in tension, who can speak prophetically without dehumanizing, who can challenge systems of injustice without using those challenges as an excuse to be cruel.
The table-flipping story isn’t a permission slip, it’s a warning. It’s a reminder that when worship becomes disconnected from the way we live, when our rituals don’t lead to justice and mercy, we’ve missed the point entirely. And if we’re using that story to justify our unkindness? Then we’re the ones who’ve turned the Temple into a den of robbers. We’re the ones hiding behind our religion while living lives that contradict everything Jesus taught.
Maybe it’s time we put down the whip and pick up the towel instead.
We are part of a living tradition of action and contemplation, people who have gone beyond the theoretical and are living out this wisdom in their daily lives. Truly, it will take a movement of such people to create a world where everything belongs. —Richard Rohr
Father Richard Rohr shares his hope that the Holy Spirit will continue to shape the church into a living, evolving tradition:
Christianity isn’t done growing and changing. Jesus himself invites us to take things out of our faith-filled “storage room” and discern what is essential, saying, “Every disciple of the kingdom is like a householder who draws out from his storage room, things both old and new” (Matthew 13:52).
We don’t want the church or the Christian tradition to become an antique shop just preserving old things. We want to build on old things and allow them to be useful in different ages, vocabularies, and cultures. We want our faith to be ever new, so that it can speak to souls alive and in need right now! Otherwise, the faith we cherish so much stops working and it can’t do its job of turning our hearts toward God and toward one another. [1]
I believe it’s possible for Christianity to move toward a way of following Jesus that has much more to do with lifestyle than belief.We don’t want to remain an institution focused on certain words and the writing of official documents. We can’t remain a church obsessed with maintaining power and illusions of innocence.
What is needed in Christianity today is far bigger than any mere structural rearrangement. It’s a revolutionary change in Christian consciousness itself.It’s a change of mind and of heart through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Only such a sea-change of consciousness—drawing from the depths of the Great Ocean of Love—will bear fruits that will last.
I believe the teaching of contemplation is absolutely key to embracing Christianity as a living tradition. If we settle for old patterns of habitual and reactionary thought, any new phenomenon that emerges will be just one more of the many reformations in Christianity that have characterized our entire history. The movement will quickly and predictably subdivide into unhelpful dualisms that pit themselves against one another like Catholic or Protestant, intellectual or emotional, feminist or patriarchal, activist or contemplative—instead of the wonderful holism of Jesus, a fully contemplative way of being active and involved in our suffering world.We can be grateful and content to let our historic churches and denominations take care of the substructures and the superstructures of Christianity. Some are gifted and called to that, but most are not. Our churches have trained us, grounded us, and sent us on this radical mission. We will keep one happy foot in our mother churches, but we have something else that we must do and other places that we must also stand. We have no time to walk awayfrom anything. We want to walk towardand alongside. [2]
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Contemplation Is Christianity
Director of the Center for Spiritual Imagination Adam Bucko describes how practices of contemplation have evolved and enlivened the Christian faith.
From the beginning, the Christian life was shaped by the rhythm Jesus himself modeled—a life of action flowing from deep stillness. He withdrew to pray alone. He took his friends up the mountain to witness transfiguration. He sought the silence of the wilderness. Clearly, something transformative happened when Jesus stepped away, and those around him recognized that his outward life was rooted in his inward union with God.
In the early centuries of Christianity, this pattern took on clearer shape in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The desert mothers and fathers retreated from the cities to resist the empire’s distortions of the gospel. After Constantine’s conversion and the Church’s increasing entanglement with imperial power, many felt that something essential was being lost. So, they left—not to flee reality, but to seek it more deeply. Into caves, huts, and small communities, they went to remember, to pray, to live simply, and to wrestle with God….
What began with Jesus and took clearer shape in the desert then moved West—and began to flourish in new forms. Viewed from a Western monastic perspective, the stream of contemplation flowed through the deserts of the East and eventually exploded into a variety of expressions in Europe. Of course, there are many contemplative traditions—one might say as many as there are people and communities seeking to live in awareness of God’s presence. While we are held by a shared tradition and a common rhythm of prayer, the way this life unfolds can take many forms. The goal has never been to crack some contemplative code or become fluent in the mechanics of prayer. It has always been to become the kind of person who lives awake to God’s presence—in a way that is rooted, communal, and yet responsive to the unique textures of our lives, cultures, and communities….
Contemplation, then, is not a separate path or a unique calling. It is Christianity itself, lived with depth and honesty. It is the heart of the Christian tradition, stretching from Jesus to the desert to today. And as our understanding of the human person has deepened—through psychology, neuroscience, and trauma studies—we are invited to add new tools, not because the tradition was wrong, but because it was formed in a different time, with less knowledge of how we carry and transmit pain. These new tools help us to heal, to stay present, and to love more freely.
In the end, contemplation is not about escaping life but entering it more fully. It is how we listen for God in the silence—and how we hear God in the cries of the poor, the groaning of creation, and the joy of being alive. It is how we remember what’s good and live from that place for the sake of the world.
Let us be carriers of the gospel. The gospel of the revolutionary, brown-skinned Palestinian Jew who made it very clear that he didn’t come to be status quo. He wasn’t a chaplain of the empire but a prophet of God. —Liz Theoharis and Charon Hribar, We Pray Freedom
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Dr. Charon Hribar describe crises as opportunities to work for justice, as Jesus did:
As our society continues to be engulfed by crises, the time for complacency has passed. From the lack of health coverage for tens of millions of Americans to the tragic death toll of endless wars and environmental disasters; from the assault on democracy to the glaring inequalities laid bare by the pandemic, it is clear we stand at a generational crossroads. This is a kairos moment—a time of crisis and opportunity. In biblical terms, it is a moment when the foundations of injustice are exposed, prophetic voices call for change, and movements for justice take root.
Luke 4:14–30 is known as Jesus’ first sermon, delivered in his hometown of Nazareth. It marks the beginning of his public ministry during a kairos moment not unlike our own…. Jesus announces his mission of societal transformation [quoting the prophet Isaiah]. He proclaims: “The Spirit of the Lord isupon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19).
Too often, the Bible’s good news is reduced to matters of individual salvation and detached from Jesus’s goal to transform the world. But a close reading of the Bible, including the teachings of Jesus, reveals a vast antipoverty program and social justice mission, which call on us to resist unjust economic practices and build a society in which everyone’s needs are met.
The Freedom Church of the Poor provides resources to empower prophetic and hopeful movements for justice:
Drawing strength from these biblical principles, the Freedom Church of the Poor tradition teaches us to stand up for one another, care for the least of these, and dismantle laws that perpetuate injustice. If we believe that God stands with the oppressed and that Jesus preached liberation, then collective action by those most impacted by injustice is imperative. By taking collective action with and as poor and dispossessed people, we bridge our spiritual convictions and our hunger for transformative change….
In the Freedom Church of the Poor tradition, we envision a world where every life is sacred and everyneed is met. This vision challenges the normalization of injustice and the valuing of profit over people. Through nonviolent, moral direct action—marches, boycotts, sit-ins, and more—we reject the status quo and reclaim the moral narrative. We create spaces where justice is reimagined and a moral revolution of values becomes irresistible.
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1.
“On that glad night, in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything, with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart.”
The line that gets me is “with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart.”
There are whole theologies that I believe are destructive and dehumanizing that not only encourage but make it a matter of piety to disregard our hearts, to discredit the little voice of the genuine within us, to disbelieve what our deepest core might be telling us with sincerity.
Our hearts can indeed be tricked or deceived. I do not discount that possibility. I think one reason this happens is that we do not have many teachers who invite us to listen to the subtle movements within ourselves.
St. John of the Cross’ favorite thing to do was spiritual direction. He found it to be the most rewarding ministry: helping people listen to God for themselves rather than through a proxy— mentor, pastor, or priest.
True spirituality invites and enables people to listen to the Divine for themselves.
2.
“The fly that clings to honey hinders its flight, and the soul that allows itself attachment to spiritual sweetness hinders its own liberty and contemplation.”
“Spiritual sweetness” is a term that St. John of the Cross invented. It describes how we each are enamored of and enjoy the things that are next to God, but perhaps not God per se.
I think that one of the most profound wisdoms of St. John of the Cross is that we can become addicted to these forms of “spiritual sweetness.”
It is actually a sign of spiritual immaturity, addiction, or co-dependence that we whine, rage, and question everything as soon as those spiritual sweetnesses are either taken away from us or we find ourselves increasing the effort to try and get the same fix as we used to.
The goal is not to avoid experiencing such sweetness; the goal is to give up our attachment to it. Instead, we can be grateful for when it comes to us and keep on keeping on, even when it does not.
As Meister Eckhart says, we must learn to live, love, and be “without a why,” and stop doing all things for some potential “spiritual sweetness” we might stumble across.
3.
“This change is a surprise to them because everything seems to be functioning in reverse.“
The wisdom of the Dark Night of the Soul is so paradoxical and unsuspecting that it is little wonder it throws people completely off kilter.
When all the world seems to endorse the philosophy that more effort, intentionality, and energy put into something creates a better “return on investment,” St. John of the Cross reminds us that faith has a completely different set of mathematics.
The day may come when it is not more effort that is needed, but less. It is not that we need to engage in prayer more than we need to redefine what we think prayer is. It is not that God is absent because we have done something wrong; it is that God is so furiously present that we are blinded by the sheer volume of activity God is engaged in.
Below is a video I made that explains the Dark Night of the Soul in 4 (or 5) stages. I hope it is a help to you.
4.
“Some spiritual fathers are likely to be a hindrance and harm rather than a help to these souls that journey on this road. Such directors have neither understanding nor experience of these ways.”
It pairs well with the New Testament’s exhortation that not many should take up being leaders because they will be judged more harshly.
There are things I have said from the pulpit that I wish I could take back. The same is also true of my time working at a Christian summer camp. I did not know what I did not know.
Fortunately, the seminary gave a list of names that I should continue learning from after I graduated. And so I did. Not only that, but I began studying outside my home denomination, the Lutheran Church, and turned more toward the Reformers, then the Catholics, then the Patristics, then the Christian mystics, and, more recently, Eastern Orthodoxy.
It is so easy to give bad advice when you are a pastor or priest, and some of that stems from the fact that we are often only taught a small slice of the Christian tradition, when, in reality, there is so much more to it than we ever could imagine.
I was joking with my wife that one of my favorite things about what I do is frequently encouraging people to go back and read the New Testament all over again, or simply giving them permission to dive deeper into this mystery we call “God.”
How wild that my path had such an emphasis on telling people what they needed to know, and now it is so much more about inviting people to listen to their deepest self and to go full tilt into the heart of the Christian tradition for themselves, and to report back to me what they found?
Life is too good to me.
5.
“The soul that journeys to God, but does not shake off its cares and quiet its appetites, is like one who drags a cart uphill.”
Note: This does not mean that such a person will not successfully, eventually, journey into God, but that it will involve more struggle, effort, and difficulty.
Which quote jumped out at you?
Reply to this email if one of the quotes above stirred, resonated, or aggravated you!
Old Testament Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann (1933–2025) witnesses Jesus’ prophetic role in his solidarity and his compassion for those on the margins:
Among his other functions it is clear that Jesus functioned as a prophet. In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal [empire] consciousness…. The way of his ultimate criticism is his decisive solidarity with marginal people and the accompanying vulnerability required by that solidarity. The only solidarity worth affirming is solidarity characterized by the same helplessness they know and experience. [1]
Jesus’ prophetic actions were motivated by his deep solidarity and compassion for those who are suffering:
Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context.
Empires live by numbness. Empires, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact. Jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that had become business as usual. Thus compassion that might be seen simply as generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the system, forces, and ideologies that produce the hurt. Jesus enters into the hurt and finally comes to embody it. [2]
At the end of his book The Tears of Things, Richard Rohr identifies characteristics of those he calls “true prophets” who follow in the footsteps of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets.
Prophets embrace religion as a way of creating communities of solidarity with justice and suffering. They look for where the suffering is and go there, just as Jesus did. They speak of solidarity with one God, which also implies union with all else. The prophet learns to be for and with, not against. They are for those who are suffering or excluded. They are centered not on sin but on growth, change, and life. They know that the best teachers are reality itself and creation. They do not reject the way of the priest—they have just moved beyond it alone. [3]
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Jesus Calling Sarah Young
Jesus Calling: October 16th, 2025
Jesus Calling: October 16th
Look to Me continually for help, comfort, and companionship. Because I am always by your side, the briefest glance can connect you with Me. When you look to Me for help, it flows freely from My Presence. This recognition of your need for Me, in small matters as well as in large ones, keeps youspiritually alive. When you need comfort, I love to enfold you in My arms. I enable you not only to feel comforted but also to be a channel through whom I comfort others. Thus you are doubly blessed, because a living channel absorbs some of whatever flows through it. My constant Companionship is the piece de resistance: the summit of salvation blessings. No matter what losses you experience in your life, no one can take away this glorious gift.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 34:4-6 (NLT) 4 I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. 5 Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces. 6 In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened; he saved me from all my troubles. Psalm 105:4 (NLT) 4 Search for the Lord and for his strength; continually seek him.
Additional insight regarding Psalm 105:4-5: If God seems far away, persist in your search for him. God rewards those who sincerely look for him (Hebrews 11:6). Jesus promised “Every who seeks, finds” (Matthew 7:8). The writer suggested a valuable way to find God – become familiar with the way he has helped his people in the past. The Bible records the history of God’s people. In searching its pages we will discover a loving God who is waiting for us to find him. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NLT) God Offers Comfort to All 3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
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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(This was part of my workday on Wednesday, sitting on this porch with a beer and talking about upcoming work. I know, I know, it’s a rough life.) 
Throughout the New Testament, prayer is repeatedly mentioned as a central activity of the gathered church. Today, however, prayer has been sidelined or abandoned as an element of worship in many congregations. It seems that our appetite for uplifting music or a self-help sermon has eaten the time in our services that had previously been used for intercession and confession. This trend reveals a misunderstanding or disregard for the link between prayer and praise.Prayer has many purposes, but among its most elemental is self-revelation. In prayer, we reveal ourselves to God; we remove the layers of pretense and posturing to expose the truth of who we are—our sins, our fears, our joys, and our sorrows. This unashamed self-revelation is boldly depicted in the psalms, where God’s people cry out to him with uncomfortable transparency. Their prayers were brutally honest and sometimes bordered on blasphemous. But that’s what prayer is for; it’s how we present the truth of what’s in us to God. It is the Christian’s tool for self-revelation.
