Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom—freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from these. 
—Rowan Williams, Holy Living 

Author Cassidy Hall considers the paradoxical freedom she experiences through contemplative ritual:  

Routines and rituals can also meld together. The morning cup of coffee becomes a sacred process of movement and pauses, senses and stillness. The evening walk shifts into a meditative trance of watching the ducks in the nearby pond. My routines become rituals the second I sense an internal bow to the moment’s entanglement with holiness, with mindfulness, with love, wonder and awe. In ritual, I am rooted and invited to dive deeper into the expanse of myself and my own unfolding. The mindful shift of acknowledgment takes me into more spaciousness, questions, and curiosities. Without my routines and rituals—and my routines shifting into rituals from time to time—I don’t think I’d be as alive and awake to my own personhood.…  

Ritual also frequently offers me some inexplicable sense of freedom. While traveling to Trappist monasteries, I often felt a strange sensation of freedom. Hearing the bells calling the community to prayer seven times a day felt like a homecoming. The hours of work combined with prayer gave me a sense of rhythm that soothed me. The irony—of rituals feeling like a loving freedom—is not lost on me. When ritual comes as an invitation, a choice to engage or not engage, limits are expanded because freedom is present. And from this place, where ritual meets freedom, our relationship to self, others, and the Divine can be continually deepened. [1] 

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams considers the importance of a rhythm or “rule” of life in Benedictine spirituality:  

The idea that all of time can be sanctified—that is, that the time we may instinctively consider to be unproductive, waiting or routine activity, is indispensable to our growth into Christian and human maturity. How we spend the time we think is insignificant is important. It is not only the well-known Benedictine union of laborare and orare [work and pray], but the wider commitment to a life under “rule,” a life that takes it for granted that every aspect of the day is part of a single offering.… 

Christ’s human life is open to the divine at every moment; it is not that God the Word deigns to take up residence in those parts of our lives that we consider important or successful or exceptional. Every aspect of Jesus’ humanity and every moment of his life is imbued with the divine identity, so that if our lives are to be images of his, they must seek the same kind of unbroken transparency. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

When you worship Me in spirit and truth, you join with choirs of angels who are continually before My throne. Though you cannot hear their voices, your praise and thanksgiving are distinctly audible in heaven. Your petitions are also heard, but it is your gratitude that clears the way to My Heart. With the way between us wide open, My blessings fall upon you in rich abundance. The greatest blessing is nearness to Me–abundant Joy and Peace in My Presence. Practice praising and thanking Me continually throughout this day.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

John 4:23-24 (NLT)
23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Additional insight regarding John 4:24: “God is spirit” means he is not a physical being limited to one space. He is present everywhere, and he can be worshipped anywhere, at any time. It is not where we worship that counts, but how we worship. Is your worship genuine and true? Do you have the Holy Spirit’s help? How does the Holy Spirit help us? The Holy Spirit prays for us (Romans 8:26 – And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.), teaches us the words of Christ (John 14:26 – But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.), and tells us we are loved (Romans 5:5 – And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.).

Psalm 100:4 (NLT)
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
    go into his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him and praise his name.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 100:4: God alone is worthy of being worshipped. What is your attitude toward worship? Do you willingly and joyfully come into God’s presence, or are you just going through the motions, going to church without surrender and connection? This psalm tells us to remember God’s goodness and dependability, and then to worship with thanksgiving and praise.

Mystic and theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) writes of the contemplative practice of making time to “center down”:  

How good it is to center down!  
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! 
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; 
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,  
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still  
    moment and the resting lull.… 
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?— 
    what are the motives that order our days?  
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go?… 
Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.  
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes  
    of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind— 
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart  
    makes clear.  
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are  
    answered,  
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of  
    our daily round 
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.  
How good it is to center down! [1] 

Spiritual director Caroline Oakes writes of the impact of a faithful practice of “centering-in”: 

The reason the gospel writers made a point to include their many accounts of Jesus returning to the presence of God was not so that those hearing their message could marvel at how centered in God Jesus was. The gospel writers were offering those who would hear their message, then and now, an invitation to experience that power ourselves in ways that are real and relevant to our day-to-day lives and relationships.  

Active, engaged, world-changing contemplatives since the desert mothers and fathers of the third century have realized how life-transforming, even world-transforming, that gospel invitation is.  

And we can too….  

The spiritual journey begins with a pause, a centering-in-God pause, and over time becomes a constant and ceaseless prayer, an honoring of and a connection with the Divine in you that awakens your essential self…. 

This returning to our center again and again is a kind of in-and-out, in-and-out movement, like breathing: breathing in, we gather strength and calm, maybe an insight, maybe a sense of an injustice needing to be righted, and then breathing out, we go back out in to the world to live into what we’ve been given and what we’ve received…. 

When you engage in any one of several centering practices that are available to us today, practices in which you can just be, alone, in quiet, in awareness of your innermost self with God, then over time, something holy and extraordinary happens in ways that … we can’t imagine or foresee. The closeness of your inner, relational life will be changed, to yourself, to others, to God, and to the world around you. Your relationship to your own life will shift subtly but profoundly. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

My children make it a pastime of judging one another–and themselves. But I am the only capable Judge, and I have acquitted you through My own blood. Your acquittal came at the price of My unparalleled sacrifice. That is why I am highly offended when I hear My children judge one another or indulge in self-hatred.
     If you live close to Me and absorb My Word, the Holy Spirit will guide and correct you as needed. There is no condemnation for those who belong to Me.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Luke 6:37 (NLT)
Do Not Judge Others
37 “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.

Additional insight regarding Luke 6:37: A forgiving spirit demonstrates that a person has received God’s forgiveness. If we are critical rather than compassionate, we will also receive criticism. If we treat others generously, graciously, and compassionately, however, these qualities will come back to us in full measure. We are to love others, not judge them.

2 Timothy 4:8 (NLT)
8 And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.

Additional insight regarding 2nd Timothy 4:8: Whatever we face – discouragement, persecution, or even death – we know we will receive a reward with Christ in Heaven.

Titus 3:5 (NLT)
5 He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

Additional insight regarding Titus 3:4-6: All three persons of the Trinity are mentioned in these verses because all three participate in the work of salvation. Based upon the redemptive work of his Son, the Father forgives us and sends the Holy Spirit to wash away our sins and continually renew us.

Spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton describes a “rule of life” as key to experiencing the reign of God: 

Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We think that somehow we will fall into transformation by accident.  

Jesus had something to say about this. He used parables to picture a person who had searched long and hard for something very valuable and very special. In one story the prized item is a piece of land; in another it is a valuable pearl [Matthew 13:44–46]. In both stories, the merchant has been looking for this prize all his life, and when he finds it, he doesn’t hesitate. He sells everything he has so that he can buy what he has been searching for.  

Both the field and the pearl are metaphors for the kingdom of God—that state of being in which God is reigning in our life and [God’s] presence is shaping our reality. The kingdom of God is here now, if we are willing to arrange our life to embrace it….  

Christian tradition has a name for the structure that enables us to say yes to the process of spiritual transformation day in and day out. It is called a rule of life. A rule of life seeks to respond to two questions: Who do I want to be? How do I want to live? … [or] the interplay between these two questions: How do I want to live so I can be who I want to be? [1]  

For pastor Ken Shigematsu, a rule of life is not a “one-size-fits-all” solution: 

A monastic rule of life can help us learn what it means to live so that we are attuned to God in our everything. A life that does more than pray sporadically, but is itself a prayer to God.… 

Having a set of deliberate practices also allows us to build on our strengths and shore up areas of weakness. If we are experiencing a failure of self-control, we might deliberately practice fasting…. If we find ourselves overcommitted and distracted, engaging in a daily rhythm of ten or twenty minutes of silent prayer that centers us or meditating on a brief single passage in Scripture (lectio) may be a helpful practice.  

On the other hand, if we have a naturally contemplative bent and find ourselves spending a disproportionately large amount of time in private prayer and solitude, adding another way of praying may not be helpful. In fact, we might consider decreasing the amount of time we spend in formal prayer and perhaps enter into practices of justice or service so we can grow as a contemplative in action….   

Ultimately, a rule can enable us to live our lives, as Thomas Kelly writes, “from a Center, a divine Center … a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity.” [2]  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Let Me show you My way for you this day. I guide you continually, so you can relax and enjoy My Presence in the present. Living well is both a discipline and an art. Concentrate on staying close to Me, the divine Artist. Discipline your thoughts to trust Me as I work My ways in your life. Pray about everything; then, leave outcomes up to Me. Do not fear My will, for through it I accomplish what is best for you. Take a deep breath and dive in the depths of absolute trust in Me. Underneath are the everlasting arms!

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 5:2-3 (NLT)
2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God,
    for I pray to no one but you.
3 Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.
    Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 5:1-3: The secret to a close relationship with God is to pray to him earnestly each morning. In the morning, our minds are more free from problems, and then we can commit the whole day to God. Regular communication helps any friendship and is certainly necessary for a strong relationship with God. We need to communicate with him daily. Do you have a regular time to pray and read God’s word?

Deuteronomy 33:27 (NLT)
27 The eternal God is your refuge,
    and his everlasting arms are under you.
He drives out the enemy before you;
    he cries out, ‘Destroy them!’

Additional insight regarding Deuteronomy 33:27: Moses’ song declares that God is our refuge, our only true security. How often we entrust our lives to other things – perhaps money, career, a noble cause, or a lifelong dream. But our only true refuge is the eternal God, who always holds out his arms to catch us when the shaky supports that we trust collapse and we fall. No storm can destroy us when we take refuge in him. Those without God, however, must forever be cautious. One mistake may wipe them out. Living for God in this world may look like risky business. But it is the godless who are on shaky ground. Because God is our refuge, we can dare to be bold.

Monastics should diligently cultivate silence at all times. 
—St. Benedict, Rule, chapter 42 

For Richard Rohr, silence is a foundation upon which we can build our lives: 

Silence is not just that which happens around words and underneath images and events. It has a life of its own. It’s a phenomenon with an almost physical identity. It is a being in itself to which we can relate. Philosophically, we would say being is that foundational quality which precedes all other attributes. When we relate to the naked being of a thing, we learn to know it at its core. Silence is somehow at the very foundation of all reality. It is that out of which all being comes and to which all things return.  

Silence precedes, undergirds, and grounds everything. We cannot just think of it as an accident, or as something unnecessary. Unless we learn how to live there, go there, abide in this different phenomenon, the rest of things—words, events, relationships, identities—become rather superficial, without depth or context. They lose meaning, so we end up searching for more events and situations which must increasingly contain ever-higher stimulation, more excitement, and more color to add vital signs to our inherently bored and boring existence. Really, the simplest and most stripped-down things ironically have the power to give us the greatest happiness—if we respect them as such. Silence is the essence of simple and stripped down.   

We need to experience silence as a living presence which is primordial and primal in itself, and then see all other things—now experienced deeply—inside of that container. Silence is not just an absence, but also a presence. Silence surrounds every “I know” event with a humble and patient “I don’t know.” It protects the autonomy and dignity of events, persons, animals, and all things.  

We must find a way to return to this place, to live in this place, to abide in this place of inner silence. Outer silence means very little if there is not a deeper inner silence. Everything else appears much clearer when it appears or emerges out of a previous silence. When I use the word appear, I mean that silence takes on reality, substance, significance, or meaning. Without silence around a thing, which is a mystery, it can be difficult to find a meaning that lasts. It’s just another event in a sequence of ever-quicker events, which we call our lives.  

Without silence, we do not really experience our experiences. We have many experiences, but they do not have the power to change us, to awaken us, to give us that joy or “peace that the world cannot give,” as Jesus says (John 14:27).

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A Foundational Practice 
  
I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit. —Thomas Merton 

Father Richard emphasizes the beautiful freedom that arises when we place contemplation at the center of our lives: 

I believe that the combination of human action from a contemplative center is the greatest art form. When action and contemplation are united, we have greater beauty, symmetry, and transformation—lives and actions that inherently sparkle and heal, though the shadow is still present.  

Contemplation waits for the moments, creates the moments, where all can be a silent prayer. It refuses the very distinction between action and stillness. Contemplation is essentially nondual consciousness that overcomes the gaps between me and God, outer and inner, either and or, me and you.  

The reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most of us, even and most especially in religion, are experts in dualistic thinking. And then we try to use this limited thinking tool for prayer, problems, and relationships. It cannot get us very far. The irony of ego “consciousness” is that it always excludes and eliminates the unconscious—which means it is actually not conscious at all! Ego insists on knowing and being certain; it refuses all unknowing. Most people who think they are fully conscious (read, “smart”) have a leaden manhole cover over their unconscious. It gives them control but seldom compassion or wisdom.  

We are led forward by brightness, a “larger force field” that includes the negative, the problematic, the difficult, the unknown—that which we do not yet understand, the Mysteriousness that God always Is. Brightness does not exclude or deny anything. 

We cannot grow in the great art form, the integrative dance of action and contemplation, without a strong tolerance for ambiguity, an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a willingness to not know—and not even need to know. This is how we allow and encounter Mystery. 

Of course, we can only do this if Someone Else is holding us as a great Lover, taking away our fear, doing the knowing, and satisfying our desire. If we can allow that Someone Else to embrace us, we will go back to our life of action with new vitality, but it will now be smooth, One Flow. It will be “no longer you” who acts or contemplates but the Life of One who lives in you now acting for you and with you and as you (see Galatians 2:20)! 

Henceforth, it does not even matter whether we act or contemplate, contemplate or act, because both will be inside the One Flow, which is still and forever loving and healing the world. Christians would call it the very flow of life that is the Trinity. We “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) inside of this one eternal life and love that never stops giving and receiving. This is how we “die by brightness and the Holy Spirit.” [1] This is the greatest art form.  

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Sarah Young

Let My Love seep into the inner recesses of your being. Do not close off any part of yourself from Me. I know you inside and out, so do not try to present a “cleaned-up” self to Me. Wounds that you shut away from the Light of My Love will fester and become wormy. Secret sins that you “hide” from Me can split off and develop lives of their own, controlling you without your realizing it.
     Open yourself fully to My transforming Presence. Let My brilliant Love-Light search out and destroy hidden fears. This process requires time alone with Me, as My Love soaks into your innermost being. Enjoy My perfect Love, which expels every trace of fear.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 139:1-4 (NLT)
Psalm 139
For the choir director: A psalm of David.
1 O Lord, you have examined my heart
    and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up.
    You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
3 You see me when I travel
    and when I rest at home.
    You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say
    even before I say it, Lord.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 139:1-5: Sometimes we don’t let people get to know us completely because we are afraid they will discover something about us they won’t like. But God already knows everything about us, even the number of hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30), and still he accepts and loves us. God is with us through every situation, in every trial – protecting, loving, guiding. He knows and loves us completely.

Psalm 139:23-24 (NLT)
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 139:23-24: David asked God to search for sin and point it out, even to the level of testing his thoughts. This is exploratory surgery for sin. How are we to recognize sin unless God points it out? Then, when God shows us, we can repent and be forgiven. Make this verse your prayer. If you ask the Lord to search your heart and your thoughts to reveal your sin, you will be continuing on “the path of everlasting life.”

1st John 4:18 (NLT)
18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.

Additional insight regarding 1st John 4:18: If we ever are afraid of the future, eternity, or God’s judgement, we can remind ourselves of God’s love. We know that he loves us perfectly (Romans 8:38,39 – “38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”) We can resolve our fears first by focusing on his immeasurable love for us, and then by allowing him to love others through us. His love will quiet your fears and give you confidence.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. —Matthew 5:4 

Father Richard dedicated many years of his ministry to working with men, emphasizing the importance of grieving.   

On men’s retreats, we always emphasize grief work. There’s a therapeutic, healing meaning to tears. Undoubtedly that’s true, even as we study what’s in tears. We speak of salt in tears but now there’s evidence of washed-out toxins. Is not weeping, in fact, necessary? Beyond that, of course, Jesus is describing the state of those who weep, who have something to mourn about. They feel the pain of the world. Jesus is saying that those who can grieve, those who can cry, are those who will understand.  

Many Christians think we know God through our minds. Yet corporeal theology, body theology, indicates that perhaps weeping will allow us to know God much better than through ideas. In this Beatitude, Jesus praises the weeping class, those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to extract themselves from it. Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an entirely different mode than self-hatred or hatred of others. The “weeping mode” allows us to carry the tragic side, to bear the pain of the world without looking for perpetrators or victims. Instead, we recognize the sad reality in which both sides are trapped. Tears from God are always for everybody, for our universal exile from home. “It is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted” (Jeremiah 31:15).  

That might seem ridiculous, and it is especially a stumbling block for many men in our culture. Young men have often been told not to cry because it will make us look vulnerable. So, we men—and many women too—stuff our tears. We must teach all young people how to cry. In the second half of my life, I understand why Saints Francis and Clare cried so much, and why the saints spoke of “the gift of tears.” [1]  

Essayist Ross Gay describes the gift he experienced when his father opened to this “weeping mode” later in life:  

My father … started crying on the regular right about the time he got to be my age. Who knows exactly why: his much younger brother died about this time. As did his beloved uncle. He developed diabetes. He was getting older. Who knows what else. Either way, he was changing, and he would weep at TV shows or bad movies, my brother’s wedding, the right song. Lifting his glasses to wipe his tears, as he did at the end there. I can almost picture it. His soft face kind of shining, the freckles like seeds on the surface of the soil. He might have even smiled a little bit when he cried sometimes, my father. He was falling apart, becoming his most radiant, his most needful. And little did I know, he was showing me how to do the same. [2]  

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Skye Jethani 5 For Friday

1.
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

• Leonard Cohen, Canadian Poet and Songwriter
   
  This is cruel, ironic, and true.  I do not understand the alchemy or the mathematics of why.  The best artists are always tortured artists in some capacity.  Perhaps it is because they are most willing and honest to the experience they are having.

Cohen reminds me of something comedian Pete Holmes says about artists: “The artists are simply reporting back to the rest of us how they see reality.”

Of course, we can always disagree with the artist and how they see the world, but that is exactly why the appreciation of art is such a subjective experience.

2.
“Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.”

• James Baldwin, American Author and Civil Rights Activist
   
  Lawrence Kohlberg, the psychologist who studied the stages of moral development, broke the stages into three larger units…

Pre-Conventional, Conventional, and Post-Conventional Ethics.

Pre-Conventional Ethics are selfish and oriented completely around the individual and their needs.  It is only held in check by or critiqued by the Conventional.

Conventional Ethics rely upon obedience to a set of rules defined by a community and its needs.  The Conventional is only held in check by or critiqued by the Post-Conventional.

Post-Conventional Ethics are more universal and timeless and deal with the ramifications or consequences that affect everyone and everything, not only the self and the community.

I think that what James Baldwin is talking about here is the shift from Conventional to Post-Conventional.  It is always the prophets of a society who shift to Post-Conventional and can critique the community and its ethics (hopefully) from a place of love.  It takes serious courage to speak out against one’s society, but at the same time, one feels a sense of responsibility to the whole world to speak out against a sick and unhealthy society.

3.
“In this (Sixth Dwelling) the soul discovers how all things are seen in God, and how He contains all things within Himself.  This is of great benefit because, even though it only lasts a moment, it remains engraved upon the soul.  And it also causes great confusion in showing us more clearly the wrongness of offending God, because it’s in God Himself-I mean, while dwelling within Him-that we do all this wrong.”

• St. Teresa de Jesus (St. Teresa of Avila) in Interior Castle
   
  This week I finished my fourth reread of Interior Castle.  My first time was somewhere around 2011, then again in 2014 (when it actually “clicked” for me), then during Covid in 2020, and just now over the past month and a half.  I am starting to have such a familiarity with the text that I can see the benefit of knowing a text so well and across multiple translations.

This time, though, the second half of the book stood out in a way that it did not before.  The first half is heavily focused on humility and self-awareness, while the second half is more focused on types of prayerful experiences and the insights gleaned from them.

Toward the end of the book, Teresa talks about the insight of “seeing all things in God and God in all things” and how that radically should change the way that we understand sin and grace.

Essentially, we all do “wrong” within God, and God with “grace” continues to carry, sustain, and hold us.  The intimacy and the deliberate love of God, even amid our self-harm and destructive behaviors, should give us pause.

4.
“It is Christ whom we follow, who led no armies, founded no empires, killed no one, and called peacemakers the blessed children of God.’ The cross is a symbol of self-giving love, not of military conquest.”

• Jim Forest, American Writer and Peace Activist
   
  If the cross is picked up and made into a symbol of conquest, if it is painted on tanks, drones, and atomic bombs, that does not mean it has “Christianized” war or sanctified the violence.  What it means is that it has been hijacked and made into propaganda for the sake of some new Babylon.

I remember the story of a pastor who was brought up on stage to pray for literal tanks and to bless F16s.  It caused him to have a radical shift in his consciousness and awareness of God’s perspective toward instruments of war.  The pastor was Brian Zahnd, who in many ways I confess I look up to.

5.
“What labels me, negates me.”

• Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher
   
  Soren Kierkegaard must have been an Enneagram 4.

Kierkegaard saw through the human tendency to label others to dismiss them.  You and I are not conservatives, or liberals, or patriots, or rebels, or rich, or poor, or what-have-you.  We are far more complex than any singular identifier or title.

However, we must admit, that it is easy to broadstroke and try to sum up one another with a label that helps us to group people as either “with us” or “against us.”

Perhaps this is why St. Paul says, “There is neither male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free.  For all are one in Christ.”  The Christian religion is not another title, label, or adjective to set people apart from others.  Rather, the Christian religion is supposed to be the great unifier, it is supposed to help us all to find solidarity and connection with everyone else (even our enemies).

So let us be mindful of labels that separate and discredit others, and pay more careful attention to the Spirit which unites.

CAC friend Mirabai Starr founded the online grief community, Holy Lament: The Transformative Path of Loss and Longing. It is a space for people to experience grief together:  

What I often say about my work with grieving and bereaved people is that it’s much more about transformation than about consolation. There are other places you can go to feel better, but to me grief is not a problem to be solved or a malady to be cured. It’s a sacred reality to be entered. For so many of us, there’s an opening to our soul’s innate birthright, I would even say, of our longing for God that often gets covered over by everyday life…. When we experience a profound loss, it strips us of those coverings … granting us special access to a profound loving intimacy with the divine…. 

Death is complicated and powerful. It’s that threshold space that we get to experience sometimes between this world and a larger reality that we’ve always intuited to be true…. It brings us into sacred space whether we like it or not. But there are many other losses besides the death of a loved one: that breakup of a relationship, … a serious health diagnosis that changes everything, an injury that reweaves the way life used to be. I guess any kind of loss that involves the death of who we used to be is a powerful catalyst for this kind of encounter with the sacred that I’m speaking of.… 

We’re an extremely grief-phobic culture, and it doesn’t help to have the religions on top of it saying, “Go this way. There lies transcendence. You can meditate your way out of your pain. You can pray your way through to relief from suffering. In fact, you can bypass it all together if you buy into this set of beliefs or practices or faith claims.” The combination of grief illiteracy in the culture, and the emphasis of the patriarchal religious structures to get us to rise above the messy realities of our humanity, is a recipe for avoiding grief.  

Starr experienced how individual loss allowed her to enter into collective belonging: 

What I experienced when my daughter died was two things. One was that nobody could possibly know what I’m going through right now. But quickly on the heels of that was, “Oh, every person ever who has experienced the death of a child knows.” I was realizing in the bones of my own body … that there had been mothers throughout time whose children had died and mothers right now [whose children are dying]…. We all belong to each other. In some ways that was the first time I ever took my seat in the web of interbeing—when I realized that I belong here and we belong to each other. Even if right now it was my turn to be held by that web, I couldn’t imagine it yet, but I knew somehow, someday I would be able to do some of that holding of the other mothers to come. And I have and I do.  

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Rest with Me a while. You have journeyed up a steep, rugged path in recent days. The way ahead is shrouded in uncertainty. Look neither behind you nor before you. Instead, focus your attention on Me, your constant Companion. Trust that I will equip you fully for whatever awaits you on your journey.
     I designed time to be a protection for you. You couldn’t bear to see all your life at once. Though I am unlimited by time, it is in the present moment that I meet you. Refresh yourself in My company, breathing deep draughts of My Presence. The highest level of trust is to enjoy Me moment by moment. I am with you, watching over you wherever you go.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Psalm 143:8 (NLT)
8 Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning,
    for I am trusting you.
Show me where to walk,
    for I give myself to you.

Genesis 28:15 (NLT)
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.”

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.).

Collective Lament and Confession

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill call on Christians to embrace the path of lament, which includes confession. 

In his book Mirror to the Church, Emmanuel Katongole reflects on the Rwandan genocide…. Before the Rwandan genocide, the majority of Rwandans were Christians. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Easter weekend, [Katongole writes,] “Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together…. The most Christianized country in Africa became the site of its worst genocide.” [1] ….   

Reflecting on the Rwandan genocide, Katongole says, “The resurrection of the church begins with lament.” [2] This is difficult for many Americans and others living in Western countries to grasp. Our culture teaches us to embrace a triumphalistic and success-oriented posture. Thus we avoid lament. Americans are prone to move quickly to try to fix things, and often we need to lament, mourn, and grieve first to fully experience and understand what has taken place. In cases of injustice and atrocities such as genocide, the only real response we can have at first is to lament. Scripture teaches us that we can’t move toward hope, peace, transformation, and reconciliation without going through sorrow, mourning, regret, and lament…. 

Lament is a demonstrative, strong, and corporate expression of deep grief, pain, sorrow, and regret. Lament and repentance deal with issues of the heart. They pave the way for outer change. Lament is a personal and corporate response to many things: evil, sin, death, harm, discrimination, inequality, racism, sexism, colonization, oppression, and injustice. It is about mourning the painful, shameful, or sorrowful situation, about confessing sin and complicity and sorrow, about calling God to intervene and to change the situation. Finally, lament is about offering thanksgiving and praise to God, knowing that God will intervene and bring change, hope, and restoration. 

These laments by Kim and Hill offer ways for Christians in the United States to acknowledge and grieve injustice:  

We lament the exploitation and destruction of black lives and communities; the abuse of basic human rights; and systemic injustice, expressed in policing, judicial, educational, economic, social, and other systems and structures…. 

We lament corruption among politicians, police forces, and bankers; military interventions and the militarization of society and police forces; uncaring government agencies and big business; and urban poverty and homelessness….

We lament the nature, extent, and effects of white privilege, nationalism, xenophobia, and racism; the unwelcome shown to refugees and asylum seekers; and the fear, anxiety, and suffering experienced by undocumented migrants.  

We lament the treatment of women in society and church…. We lament gender inequalities, the discrimination and harassment women suffer, the sexualization of women and girls, and the domestic violence many women suffer daily.… 

We lament the colonization, devastation, and assimilation of First Nations and indigenous peoples, and the role Christianity has played…. 

We lament the silence of the people of God about many of these things. We lament the complicity of the church in many of these things.  

This practice of lament is necessary if we are to experience healing and hope and transformation.  

The Unexpected Hero

Jesus’ parables were usually marked by a surprise; a twist that forced his audience to rethink a basic assumption they held about God, the world, or themselves. In his story about a man beaten and robbed on the road, the first character to pass by is the most respected in Jewish culture—a priest. The second character, a Levite, is also admired but slightly below the priest on the social hierarchy. With these two characters, Jesus had primed his audience to expect the hero of the story to be someone below the Levite. Perhaps an ordinary Jew without much religious training. That would have been surprising enough, but Jesus’ introduction of a Samaritan as the hero was downright offensive.Jews hated Samaritans. They were viewed as apostates who had abandoned the true faith of Israel for heretical teachings. This made them even worse than gentiles whom the Jews commonly regarded as “dogs.” The hatred between Jews and Samaritans, which had smoldered for nearly 1,000 years, was still burning in Jesus’ time. Jews had destroyed the Samaritan temple, and around 6 A.D. the Samaritans retaliated by scattering human bones in the Jewish temple during Passover, defiling it so that worship was prevented. Remember, Jesus told this story because of a question asked by an expert in Jewish religious law. He wanted to know what it meant to obey the command to “love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18). In the minds of most Jews, a Samaritan was automatically disqualified from being considered law-abiding because they did not share the Jew’s theology and view of the Old Testament law. For Jesus, therefore, to make a Samaritan the hero of his story was simply unthinkable. It’s difficult for us to understand how offensive and shocking Jesus’ story would have been to his audience. Imagine asking your pastor what it means to be a good Christian and having him respond with a story about a merciful Muslim. Or, imagine the repercussions if a politician was asked what it means to be a true patriot and she pointed to an undocumented immigrant. In a way, that’s what Jesus was doing. He wasn’t just affirming a Samaritan, as scandalous as that would have been. He was also attacking the pride and self-righteousness of his fellow Jews.The parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t just about religious law. It’s not simply about answering the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ story was also about deconstructing assumptions and the cultural categories we use to elevate ourselves and devalue others. Likewise, we must ask how we have allowed our culture’s categories and labels to influence how we see ourselves and others. A follower of Christ is not identified by a label, social rank, or religious position, but by the love she shows others. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:29-37 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-3 ROMANS 2:25-29 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) Lord, we pray this day mindful of the sorry confusion of our world. Look with mercy upon this generation of your children so steeped in misery of their own contriving, so far strayed from your ways and so blinded by passions. We pray for the victims of tyranny, that they may resist oppression with courage. We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit.We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue, or rest content to have our ease at the price of other men’s sorrow and tribulation.We pray for all who have some vision of your will, despite the confusions and betrayals of human sin, that they may humbly and resolutely plan for and fashion the foundations of a just peace between men, even while they seek to preserve what is fair and just among us against the threat of malignant powers.Amen.

In her book Liberation and the Cosmos, CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes constructs imagined conversations between varied ancestors and activists in faith. Here she envisions a conversation between educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) on the healing power of tears: 

Bethune: Lament is needed as a ritual of cleansing and preparation for what is yet to come. It is a step in the process of liberation that was never completed…. The generations that have followed slavery have been crying throughout their lifetimes; they have just chosen to do it on the inside. Their spirits are riddled with the salt of unreleased tears. 

King: The whispered hope that echoes through every wail and cry of anguish is that the troubles of this world are not the end of the story. Now we see through a glass darkly and not face to face [1 Corinthians 13:12]. This generation is inundated with twenty-four-hour news stations that bring the pain of the world into your living rooms. Yet, your lives in Western societies seem to go on unchanged. You are inundated with news of disaster and death, yet even in your compassion, you seem distanced and detached from the grit and horror going on in the world.… We have forgotten the gift that lament can be.… 

Bethune: That is why my call to the next generation is to reclaim the possibility of real joy through the healing practice of lament. I am suggesting that we weep with those who weep, that we moan over the harm done on our behalf and by our hands…. We are urging the next generation to allow lament to act as a release valve for pent-up rage and generational frustration, to use lament as a teaching device for the children, and to allow the time of comfort that follows lament to knit the community together despite its differences…. I promise you that tears can be revolutionary.…   

King: It is the lament of the community that leads to healing. It may seem that you are few in number, that you don’t have the strength or means to overcome systems of oppression and death. All you have are prayers, faith, and courage. Yet, with this alone and the God who never leaves us alone, you must act.  

Communal lament opens the possibility for healing stories to be told. Through Bethune’s voice, Holmes points to contemporary versions of “griots,” traveling oral historians and storytellers from West Africa:  

Bethune: The call for lament is not an invitation to moping or sadness. It is a call for ritual reorientation. With or without tears, lament is a communal act of cosmological engagement. Ancestors on the continent of Africa knew this…. There are griots among you in this new generation. They are poets, drummers, preachers, and singers. They are found in every walk of life, and they are waiting to write and share the stories that defy the conspiracy of silence that pervades this present age.  

A Failure of Compassion

Sometimes Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan is taught in a manner that frames compassion over and against devotion to the Old Testament Law. This view holds that the priest and the Levite who passed by the man in the ditch were prevented from helping him, even if their hearts were filled with empathy because religious law forbids it. This understanding of Jesus’s story would make the Old Testament Law the problem—a reading some traditions are eager to accept. But is this accurate?Priests and Levites served at the temple in Jerusalem on rotating shifts. In Jesus’ story, it is clear they had just completed their time at the temple because they were “going down the road” indicating the declining elevation away from Jerusalem. Some speculate that the priest passed the man on the road because he appeared dead, and priests who touched a corpse were ritually unclean and could not perform their duties at the temple. However, because he had already completed his temple service this should not have prevented him from helping. The Levite faced a similar decision. While also bound by laws of cleanliness while serving at the temple, there was nothing preventing the Levite from helping the man now that his rotation in Jerusalem was complete. Like the priest, however, he also ignored the man in need. For both men, it was not devotion to religious law, but a lack of compassion, that prevented them from helping the man. The problem in Jesus’ story is not God’s Law, but the cold hearts of religious leaders who ought to know better. We should not read Jesus’ story without thinking about the modern-day priests and Levites in our own culture—religious people who use the appearance of devotion to God as an excuse for not showing compassion to those in need. I was disheartened by a conversation with a pastor a few years ago who reported his church members objected to the church’s plan to send relief funds and supplies to Syrian refugees. Such aid, they said, was the first step toward the resettlement of Muslim refugees in their community. In other words, a desire to protect their faith was their excuse for not practicing their faith.This same tendency is now evident as the United States is being rocked by protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Although more Christians of all backgrounds are engaging in the call for reform than ever before, some are still reluctant and using their faith as the reason. Rather than recognizing the ongoing reality of racial injustice and assisting their neighbors of color in need, some white Christians are quick to dismiss the movement as “political” and therefore a distraction from their commitment to the gospel. In other words, they are using their devotion to God as a reason for not helping their neighbors who are suffering. Jesus did not affirm religious devotion as an excuse for apathy, and neither should we. Like the priest and Levite, God’s law is not what prevents us from helping our neighbors. Our problem is not our faith, but a tragic failure of compassion. Here’s a simple truth: If you believe your Christian faith prevents you from helping those in need, you’re doing it wrong. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:29-37 JAMES 4:17 1 JOHN 4:18-21 WEEKLY PRAYER From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Father Richard shares the universal need to express our grief: 

The human instinct is to block suffering and pain. This is especially true in the West where we have been influenced by the “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. As anyone who has experienced grief can attest, it isn’t rational. We really don’t know how to hurt! We simply don’t know what to do with our pain. 

The great wisdom traditions are trying to teach us that grief isn’t something from which to run. It’s a liminal space, a time of transformation. In fact, we can’t risk getting rid of our pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach us, and it—grief, suffering, loss, pain—always has something to teach us! Unfortunately, many of us have been taught that grief and sadness are something to repress, deny, or avoid. We would much rather be angry than sad. 

Perhaps the simplest and most inclusive definition of grief is “unfinished hurt.” It feels like a demon spinning around inside of us and it hurts too much, so we immediately look for someone else to blame. We have to learn to remain open to our grief, to wait in patient expectation for what it has to teach us. When we close in too tightly around our sadness or grief, when we try to fix it, control it, or understand it, we only deny ourselves its lessons. 

Saint Ephrem the Syrian (303–373) considered tears to be sacramental signs of divine mercy. He instructs: “Give God weeping, and increase the tears in your eyes: through your tears and [God’s] goodness the soul which has been dead will be restored.” [1] What a different kind of human being than most of us! In the charismatic circles in which I participated during my early years of ministry, holy tears were a common experience. Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi reportedly wept all the time—for days on end! 

The “weeping mode” is a different way of being in the world. It’s different than the fixing, explaining, or controlling mode. We’re finally free to feel the tragedy of things, the sadness of things. Tears cleanse our eyes both physically and spiritually so we can begin to see more clearly. Sometimes we have to cry for a very long time because we’re not seeing truthfully or well at all. Tears only come when we realize we can’t fix and we can’t change reality. The situation is absurd, it’s unjust, it’s wrong, it’s impossible. She should not have died; he should not have died. How could this happen? Only when we are led to the edges of our own resources are we finally free to move to the weeping mode. 

The way we can tell our tears have cleansed us is that afterwards we don’t need to blame anybody, even ourselves. It’s an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul, and we know it came from God. It is what it is, and somehow God is in it. 

Job’s Emotional Courage

Richard Rohr notes the lessons on grief and lament we can learn from Job: 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we find Job experiencing some of the common emotions of grief, including denial and anger. The first seven days of Job’s time on the “dung heap” (Job 2:8) of pain are spent in silence, what we might call shock or denial. Then he taps into anger; in verse after verse Job shouts and curses at God. He says, in effect, “This so-called life I have is not really life, God, it’s death. So why should I be happy about being born?”  

Perhaps some of us have been there—so hurt and betrayed, so devastated by our losses that we echo Job’s cry about the day he was born, “May that day be darkness. May God on high have no thought for it, may no light shine on it. May murk and deep shadow claim it for their own” (Job 3:4–5). It’s beautiful, poetic imagery. He’s saying: “Uncreate that day. Make it not a day of light, but darkness. Let clouds hang over it, eclipse swoop down on it.” Where God in Genesis speaks “Let there be light,” Job insists “Let there be darkness.” A day of uncreation, of anti-creation. We probably have to have experienced true depression, betrayal, or injustice to understand such a feeling. 

There’s a part of each of us that feels and speaks that sadness. Not every day, thank goodness. But if we’re willing to feel and participate in the pain of the world, part of us will suffer that kind of despair. If we want to walk with Job, with Jesus, and in solidarity with much of the world, we must allow grace to lead us there as the events of life show themselves. I believe this is exactly what we mean by conformity to Christ (Romans 8:29).  

We must go through the stages of feeling, not only the last death but all the earlier little (and not-so-little) deaths. If we bypass these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. Many people learn that the hard way—through depression, addictions, irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course or to find some appropriate place to share them. Job is unafraid to feel his feelings. He acts and speaks them out. Emotions ought to be allowed to run their course. They are not right or wrong; they are merely indicators of what is happening. 

I am convinced that people who do not feel deeply finally do not know deeply either. It is only because Job is willing to feel his emotions that he is able to come to grips with the mystery in his head and heart and gut. He understands holistically and therefore his experience of grief becomes both whole and holy. 

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Whom Must We Love?

An expert in Jewish religious law came to Jesus with a simple but important question: “What must I do to live with God forever?” In response, Jesus asked him, “What do the Scriptures say?” The man gave a wonderful answer that Jesus affirmed: Love the Lord with all of your heart…and love your neighbor as yourself. But that was not the end of his questions. He wanted to know the minimum requirement to fulfill these commands. What is a passing grade to graduate into God’s kingdom? So he asked Jesus, who qualifies as his neighbor?He was not the first person to wrestle with this question. Since being subjugated first by Greeks and then Romans, many Jews debated the extent of the command in Leviticus 19:18 to love one’s neighbor. At the time, popular teaching excluded any non-Jews from the category of “neighbor,” and another school of thought said any personal enemy (Jew or non-Jew) was to be hated and not loved. In the first century, many Pharisees did not consider non-Pharisees their neighbors, and another rabbinical teaching said “heretics, informers, and renegades” should be left to die in ditches. Given this diversity of opinion over who qualified as one’s neighbor, the man wanted to know where Jesus drew the line. Who exactly are we called to love?We will explore Jesus’ response over the coming days, but to begin I want to share a story told by former president Jimmy Carter that captures the spirit of Jesus’ answer.Before his political career, Carter served on an evangelistic mission trip to share the gospel with poor, Spanish-speaking families in Springfield, Massachusetts. His partner was a Cuban-American pastor from Brooklyn named Eloy Cruz. Carter was amazed by Cruz’s gentle spirit and ability to connect with everyone they met. At the end of their week together, Carter asked Cruz what made him so effective as a Christian witness. Cruz replied that he tried to live by a simple rule: “You only have to have two loves in your life—for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.”In his autobiography, Carter said, “I still refer on occasion to the books on my shelves by Karl Barth, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Kung, and other theologians, but Eloy Cruz’s simple words express a profound and challenging theology that has meant more to me than those of all the great scholars.”Like the religious expert who questioned Jesus, sometimes we can become so enamored with understanding deep theological truths that we lose sight of what’s most important. When we stand before God someday, our theology will come to nothing if we have failed to love those created in his image who stand before us today. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:25-29 MATTHEW 5:43-48 LEVITICUS 19:17-18 WEEKLY PRAYER From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you.
—Romans 15:24 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the disappointment faced by individuals and communities when reckoning with unrealized dreams. Inspired by the apostle Paul’s imprisonment, King calls for radical hope and determination:   

What, then, is the answer? The answer lies in our willing acceptance of unwanted and unfortunate circumstances even as we still cling to a radiant hope…. This is not the grim, bitter acceptance of the fatalist but the achievement found in Jeremiah’s words, “This is a grief, and I must bear it” [Jeremiah 10:19]. 

You must honestly confront your shattered dream. To follow the escapist method of attempting to put the disappointment out of your mind will lead to a psychologically injurious repression. Place your failure at the forefront of your mind and stare daringly at it. Ask yourself, “How may I transform this liability into an asset? How may I, confined in some narrow Roman cell and unable to reach life’s Spain, transmute this dungeon of shame into a haven of redemptive suffering?” Almost anything that happens to us may be woven into the purposes of God. It may lengthen our cords of sympathy. It may break our self-centered pride. The cross, which was willed by wicked men, was woven by God into the tapestry of world redemption.   

Many of the world’s most influential personalities have exchanged their thorns for crowns. Charles Darwin, suffering from a recurrent physical illness; Robert Louis Stevenson, plagued with tuberculosis; and Hellen Keller, inflicted with blindness and deafness, responded not with bitterness or fatalism, but rather by the exercise of a dynamic will transformed negative circumstances into positive assets.… 

How familiar is the experience of longing for Spain and settling for a Roman prison, and how less familiar the transforming of the broken remains of a disappointed expectation into opportunities to serve God’s purpose! Yet powerful living always involves such victories over one’s own soul and one’s situation.   

King’s hope is tied to God’s faithfulness and the transforming power of nonviolence: 

We Negroes have long dreamed of freedom, but still we are confined in an oppressive prison of segregation and discrimination. Must we respond with bitterness and cynicism? Certainly not, for this will destroy and poison our personalities. Must we … resign ourselves to oppression? Of course not, for this blasphemously attributes to God that which is of the devil. To cooperate passively with an unjust system makes the oppressed as evil as the oppressor. Our most fruitful course is to stand firm with courageous determination, move forward nonviolently amid obstacles and setbacks, accept disappointments, and cling to hope. Our determined refusal not to be stopped will eventually open the door to fulfillment.…  

Some of us, of course, will die without having received the realization of freedom, but we must continue to sail on our charted course. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.   

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John Chaffee 5 For Friday

1.
“We are utterly helpless to be anything other than infinitely loved by God.”

• Dr. Jim Finley, Former Monk and Psychotherapist
   
  Utterly helpless.  I love that.  The truth of that statement is so obvious to me, and it sparks joy within me to allow that truth to hold me.

Now, just for fun…

Let’s flip the statement and see how the comparison hits us.

“We can make God infinitely revile us.”

Yikes.

In the words of an old seminary professor, Dr. Timothy Wengert, “That ain’t no Gospel.”

I’ll stick with an interpretation of Christianity more in line with Jim Finley’s interpretation.

2.
“We’re going to have to let truth scream louder to our souls than the lies that have infected us.”

• Beth Moore, Anglican Preacher and Author
   
  Beth is one of those people who seem to flip the right tables, ruffle the right feathers, and challenge the conventional status quo.  Somehow, she navigates doing it all in a more winsome way than I ever could be.  I have not engaged with her work as much as I could have by now, but everything I have come across seems spot-on.

3.
“The call to follow the crucified Messiah was, in the long run much more effective in changing the unjust political, economic, and familial structures than direct exhortations to revolutionize them would ever have been.
 
For an allegiance to the crucified Messiah— indeed, worship of a crucified God-is an eminently political act that subverts a politics of dominion at its very core.”

• Miroslav Volf in “Soft Difference”
   
  No comment.  This quote is dang good on its own.

4.
“God does nothing as a judge that he wouldn’t do as a father. And I will accept nothing in the description of God that I would find
abhorrent in a man.”

• George MacDonald, Scottish Preacher
   
  I was attending a small group meeting this past week, and this quote popped into my mind during our conversation.  The group is full of lovely people, and we were talking about the idea of God as a Loving Father.

Unsurprisingly, it is difficult for us to conceptualize God as a Loving Father.  Most of our models or archetypes for God are that of a Retributive Judge, Divine Debt Collector, or some Cosmic Mafia Don who demands fealty.  In response to this, MacDonald would likely say that many people consider themselves Christians and yet have pagan theologies or views of God.

All this reminds me of Jesus’ words, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven  give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11)

5.
“In souls, there is no illness caused by evilness [ἀπὸ κακίας] that is impossible to cure [ἀδύνατον θεραπευθῆναι] for God the Logos, who is superior to all.”

• Origen, Early Church Father
   
  Over the years, there were names I was told to beware of: Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Karl Barth, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Walter Brueggemann, and others.  Each of these people was considered movers and shakers, who were somehow revered and reviled at the same time.

Surprisingly, it was during seminary that I was told about these figures and yet we never studied them closely.  Not that I think I was given a poor education, but I have come to see that some gaps needed to be filled on my own time.

The more I engage with church history for myself and take up responsibility for reading the original sources, the more I wonder if we have lost the plot of Christianity in the West.  And yes, Origen is one of the more controversial since he was called a heretic long after he passed away (and likely a result of people misunderstanding his followers), but his writings and his systematic theology seem to make more sense of more of the New Testament than I expected.

Case in point, God is more able to heal than sin is able to destroy.