https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4dmG9DU_io

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Estelle Frankel, a teacher of Jewish mysticism, describes how the story of Exodus reveals our human preference for what is known, even if something new may be better for us: 

All freedom journeys require an open mind—a mind that is not conditioned by past knowledge and experience, but open to possibility. Questioning opens the doors of our imagination, enabling us to consider alternatives to the status quo. Unless one is capable of imagining another possible reality, one cannot free oneself from bondage.…

We humans are creatures of habit. Our daily routines comfort us and make us feel secure for they allow us to know and predict what is going to happen. (OUTCOMES) Resistance to change is actually built into our evolutionary writing…. 

The compulsion to repeat the past is apparent in the biblical myth of the Exodus. When Moses led the Israelites to freedom, they often yearned to return to Egypt. Though they were miraculously provided for throughout their forty years of wandering in the desert, the Israelites were often nostalgic for the “good old (bad) days” in Egypt: “We remember the fish we ate free in Mitzrayim—also the cucumber, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” (Numbers 11:5)…. They missed the predictability and sense of control they felt in Egypt—where everything was known. Though in actuality they were oppressed and enslaved by the Egyptians, the Israelites looked back on their time in Egypt with nostalgia because they could not bear the uncertainty they faced as a free people.

Freedom is, ultimately, uncertain and unpredictable. One of the first lessons we all must learn in order to be free is how to “bear” uncertainty and trust in the unknown. In the biblical myth of the Exodus, the manna was a vehicle for learning this lesson. Each day for forty years, the Israelites would have to go out and gather their daily supply of manna—just enough for that day….

The manna provided the necessary preparation for becoming a free people, for freedom requires an ability to bear uncertainty, to not know what is going to happen next, and to trust in the unfolding journey.

The “manna” of our daily lives is an opportunity for us to practice this same beginner’s mind. 

The manna challenged the Israelites to develop beginner’s mind—to experience something new and fresh while eating the very same thing each day. Instead of seeking the answers that might put their questions to rest, the manna taught the Israelites to continually live the questions, to understand that the journey to freedom is about remaining awake and curious and not going into sleep mode…. 

Beginner’s mind is a way of life. Each day we are challenged to see the same familiar people and landscapes with new eyes. Just as the cosmos is created and sustained anew each moment, everything is alive and changing, ourselves included, if we are spiritually awake and paying attention…. When we see existence as alive with possibility, we come out of Egypt, our personal places of bondage and constriction. 

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Something better than what you’re asking for

A powerful story about an experience with my son…

TYSON BRADLEYFEB 23

I was gone the past three days at a conference where I got to listen to and interact with Paul Young, the author of The Shack. On the way to the airport on Friday, my wife was driving me, and my 3-year-old son Luca fell asleep in the car. I didn’t want to wake him up, so I just left. Didn’t say goodbye. Just slipped out.

My wife told me later that when he woke up, the first thing he said was, “Where’s Daddy?”

Now, you need to know something about Luca. I have three kids, and my older daughters never really preferred one parent over the other, but Luca… he likes me. He asks for me, wants to play games with me, wants to be around me. So knowing that he woke up asking for me and I wasn’t there… that was a little sad.

Fast forward three days. I get picked up from the airport, and Luca is asleep again. He kinda stirred when we got home, enough for me to carry him inside and put him to bed, but it wasn’t this full awareness that I was back. He didn’t really know I was there.

Then this morning, I woke up to crying.

I go into his room and hush his cries, which is usually all I need to do for him to be okay and get back to sleep. But after I left, the crying started again. This time he wanted water. So I got him some water, he took a drink, I left… and heard more crying shortly after.

I go back in and say, “What’s up, buddy?”

He mumbles something I can’t understand.

I ask again. “What did you say?”

More mumbling.

After a few more tries, I’m finally able to make out what he’s saying:

“I want to sleep in Daddy’s bed.”

And here’s the thing… I told him, “You can’t sleep in Daddy’s bed right now.” And he just cried even more. It felt like it broke his heart. Here I’ve been gone all this time, and all he wants is just to be close to me. Just to sleep in my bed.

It was already time for me to get up and do my morning call, so I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. And I knew he needed more sleep, so having him come to my bed wasn’t going to work either. But I said, “I’m going to do something even better.”

I picked him up and just held him. Sat in the rocking chair in his room, and just held him.

I felt such love for him in that moment. And he calmed down. After about 10 minutes, I put him back in his bed, and he was fine. He was good.

So here’s where this gets bigger than a cute story about my kid.

I can come and go. And Luca can feel the reality of that, the weight of my absence. He woke up and I wasn’t there. He came home and didn’t fully know I was back. That separation was real for him.

But with God, we’re not separate. He doesn’t leave for three days. He doesn’t slip out while we’re sleeping. He’s not at a conference somewhere. He’s with us… always.

Now, I know that doesn’t always feel true. Sometimes it feels like God is gone. Sometimes it feels like you’re waking up in a dark room calling out, “Where’s Daddy?” And the silence can be heavy.

But here’s what I’ve found… even when we feel like we’re separate from God, even when we call out and it seems like nobody’s answering, the moment we say, “I just want to be close to You, Father. I just want to sleep in Your bed,” something happens.

And maybe God’s response is similar to mine with Luca. Maybe it’s, “It’s not time for that yet.” It’s not time to come and live with Him fully, to end this human life and go dwell with Him forever. That’s not what this moment is for.

But He wants to do something even better than what you’re asking for.

He wants to hold you. Right here. Right now. Not in some future heaven, not after you’ve earned it or figured it out, but in this moment, in the middle of your crying, in the middle of your dark room, in the middle of whatever you’re going through.

And in that holding, in that closeness, you can rest. Just like Luca resting in my arms in the rocking chair, you can rest in God’s presence and find that everything is okay.

And if you’re willing to allow that… if you’re willing to just let yourself be held instead of striving and reaching for something you think you need… you’ll find that there’s not just peace, but a freedom. A freedom from fear. A freedom from doubt. A freedom from shame. A freedom that allows you to act in the truth of who you are.

So I just want to invite you into something simple today. Whatever you’re carrying, whatever room you’re crying in, whatever absence you’re feeling… just tell God what Luca told me.

“I just want to be close to You.”

And then let Him pick you up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIZitK6_IMQ

Discussion Questions

Opening/Observation: What word, image, or moment from either reading stayed with you?

Moving inward: Frankel says the Israelites were nostalgic for Egypt — a place of oppression — because at least it was known. Where in your own life do you notice yourself reaching back for something familiar, even if it wasn’t actually good for you?

The Luca moment: Tyson’s son asked for one thing, and his father gave him something better. Is there something you’ve been asking God for that might be less about the specific request and more about just wanting to be close? What would it feel like to name it that way?

Pastoral sensitivity option (for those carrying grief or heaviness): Tyson acknowledges that sometimes the silence feels real and heavy. Where are you with that today — does this feel like good news, or does the idea of “just let Him hold you” feel complicated right now?

Silence prompt (2-3 min): Sit with this question: What do I need to stop reaching for in order to be held?

Exodus: A Journey for Freedom

Leaving for the Promised Land

Sunday, February 22, 2026

Father Richard Rohr describes how the Exodus story models a growing trust in God through times of unknowing:

The journey of Exodus, the journey that ancient Israel walked, is an image of the journey made by every person who sets out to seek the Divine Presence. In the Bible, Israel is humanity personified, and so what happens to Israel is what happens to everyone who sets out on a journey of faith. Christianity must recognize itself as an inclusive religion from the very beginning and honor its roots in Judaism.

In the book of Exodus, Egypt is the place of slavery, and the Promised Land is the place of freedom. The journey from Egypt to the Promised Land—through the Red Sea to Sinai and across the desert—is a saga which symbolizes our own struggle towards ever greater inner freedom, empowered by grace. The story of Israel symbolically describes the experience of our own liberation by God—and toward a universal love.

Until we look at Exodus as a symbolic story of spiritual truth, much of it seems distant and unreal. The events are either downright incredible, or we have to believe that things were different then: God worked wonders for the Israelites but doesn’t work that way anymore.

The fact is, however, that God has not changed; it’s people who have changed. The Israelites saw Yahweh acting in their lives. Their insight was really a product of hindsight: They reflected on their experience and interpreted it in a new way. We have that same opportunity. When hindsight becomes foresight—when it becomes a hope and expectation that God still cares and still acts on our behalf—we call that the vision of faith.

The stories of Exodus make inner sense to us only as we ourselves walk a journey of faith. If we listen to the Spirit, we can rather easily relate these stories to our own life.

We have to turn to God and allow ourselves to be led on this faith journey. We have to be willing to experience the Exodus in our own lives and enter into our own desert wanderings. We have to let God liberate us from captivity to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan, not fully knowing how to cross the desert between the two.

The prophet Moses takes the risk of faith. All that God gives him is a promise, and yet he acts on that promise. People of faith expect the promises of their deepest soul to be fulfilled; for them, life becomes a time between promise and fulfillment. It’s never a straight line, but always three steps forward and two backward—and the backward creates much of the knowledge and impetus for the forward.

Can we trust, like the Israelites, that the way to the Promised Land is through the desert? When we least expect it, there is an oasis. As the Scriptures promise, God will make the desert bloom (Isaiah 35:1). 

Learning to Choose Freedom

Monday, February 23, 2026

Father Richard describes how Moses gradually learned to trust in God’s love:

According to the book of Exodus, “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a person speaks to a friend” (33:11). And yet the Exodus text also demonstrates how coming to the point of full interface is a gradual process of veiling and unveiling. God takes the initiative in this respectful relationship with Moses, inviting him into a greater intimacy and ongoing conversation, which allows mutual self-disclosure, the pattern for all love affairs.

Moses describes this initial experience as “a blazing bush that does not burn up” (Exodus 3:2). He is caught between running forward to meet the blaze and coming no nearer, taking off his shoes (Exodus 3:4–5)—the classic response to mysterium tremendum. It is common for mystics, from Moses to Bonaventure, from Hildegard of Bingen to the Quaker Thomas Kelly, to describe the experience of God as fire, a furnace, or pure light. But during this early experience, “Moses covered his face, afraid to look back at God” (Exodus 3:6). He has to be slowly taught how to look at God. At first Moses continues to live like most of us, in his shame, insecurity, and doubt.  

God gradually convinces Moses of God’s respect, which Moses calls “favor,” but not without some serious objections from Moses’s side: 1) “Who am I?” 2) “Who are you?” 3) “What if they do not believe me?” 4) “I stutter.” 5) “Why not send someone else?” In each case, God stays in the dialogue, answering Moses respectfully and even intimately, offering a promise of personal Presence and an ever-sustaining glimpse into who God is—Being Itself, Existence Itself, a nameless God beyond all names, a formless God previous to all forms, a liberator God who is utterly liberated. God asserts God’s ultimate freedom from human attempts to capture God in concepts and words by saying, “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be” (Exodus 3:14). Over the course of his story, we see that Moses slowly absorbs this same daring freedom.

But for Moses to learn foundational freedom in his true self, God has to assign Moses a specific task: create freedom for people who don’t want it very badly and freedom from an oppressor who thinks he is totally in control. It’s often in working for outer freedom, peace, and justice in the world that we discover an even deeper inner freedom. We must discover this freedom to survive in the presence of so much death. Otherwise, we can become cynical and angry and retreat from God and from other people over time.

In Moses, we see the inherent connection between action and contemplation, the dialogue between the outer journey and the inner journey. Contemplation is the link to the Source of Love that allows activists to stay engaged for the long haul without burning out. Moses shows us that this marriage of action and contemplation is essential and possible.

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For Individual Contemplation:

Moses brought five objections before he said yes. Which of his — “Who am I?”, “Who are you?”, “What if they don’t believe me?”, “I’m not eloquent”, “Send someone else” — sounds most like your own inner voice right now? Sit with that one.

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For Group Discussion:

Rohr says it’s often through working for outer freedom that we discover a deeper inner freedom — and that contemplation is what keeps activists from burning out. Where have you experienced that connection in your own life — action deepening inner freedom, or contemplative practice sustaining you through difficult outer work?

A Living Tradition

Friday, February 20, 2026

Author Lisa Colón DeLay reflects on the purpose behind the ascetism that is commonly found in the teachings and stories of the early desert spirituality:

This early period of Christian history, 300-600 CE generally, became a full-blown historical movement as communities of Christians lived as religious ascetics. The word ascetic comes from the Greek word for strenuous athletic training that involves discipline and deprivation: askesis. In a similar sense, these desert dwellers were athletes, training not for sports or games but for the spiritual contests of life: challenges that involved the totality of themselves. They purged their lives of everything superfluous and turned toward obtaining spiritual victories, which don’t come easily.…

Those with a passing knowledge of the desert ascetics may suppose they were some sort of super saints or perfected hermits: pious followers of strict religious rules who had purged themselves of all fleshly desire and pleasure. That is incorrect. [1]

In the lineage of the desert ammas and abbas, we too are invited to a lifetime of practice and a commitment to intimacy with God.

While it’s true that desert hermits and monastics had lives far removed from what we experience in a typical day, the human vulnerabilities that plagued them plague us too. The real test of spiritual maturity isn’t whether it works on an isolated mountaintop cabin or a refreshing retreat center; it’s whether we have been transformed so that our maturity plays out in regular life. Untold numbers of Christians, most of whom remain forgotten by history, found stillness and peace right in the middle of the stress and chaos of ordinary life, and many still do. They are the innumerable and unnamed ordinary saints—a grand cloud of witnesses who also cheer us on from just beyond the veil….

All the desert abbas and ammas show us that one-off special insights are not what bring us spiritual maturity or peace. Through the layering of situations, struggles, and seasons, we grow more devoted, mature, and wise. The inheritance in the kingdom of heaven means possessing Christlikeness; this inheritance comes in slow disbursements that take diligence and attention to learn and receive. We accomplish this not over weeks or months but over decades—over our lifetime and even into and throughout generations. The place is slow. Let’s get accustomed to that and settle in for the long haul.

The spiritual seeds the ammas and abbas once planted in the fertile soil of seekers can still beautifully bloom now in the soil of you, more than 1,500 years later. This is how the glory of God works. You are the glory of God made manifest. [2]

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Sarah Young: Jesus Calling: February 20
    Learn to live from your true Center in Me. I reside in the deepest depths of your being, in eternal union with your spirit. It is at this deep level that My Peace reigns continually. You will not find lasting peace in the world around you, in circumstances, or in human relationships. The external world is always in flux–under the curse of death and decay. But there is a gold mine of Peace deep within you, waiting to be tapped. Take time to delve into the riches of My residing Presence. I want you to live increasingly from your real Center, where My Love has an eternal grip on you. I am Christ in you, the hope of Glory. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Colossians 3:15 NLT

15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.

Colossians 1:27

27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.

Philippians 4:6-7

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Experience Over Knowledge

Thursday, February 19, 2026

Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915–1968) did much to recover the contemplative tradition within the Christian religion. Translating a collection of the sayings of the desert fathers, Merton embraced their style of teaching through short stories or sayings, emphasizing the importance of experiencing their wisdom for ourselves:

Our time is in desperate need of this kind of simplicity. It needs to recapture something of the experience reflected in these lines. The word to emphasize is experience. The few short phrases collected in this volume have little or no value merely as information. It would be futile to skip through these [aphorisms] and lightly take note of the fact that the Fathers said this and this. What good will it do us to know merely that such things were once said? The important thing is that they were lived. That they flow from an experience of the deeper levels of life. [1]

Benedicta Ward, a scholar of the desert mystics, describes how the simple language of the desert abbas and ammas can mask the deep wisdom they contain:

These sayings preserve the unstructured wisdom of the desert in simple language…. They are not always consistent with one another and they always need to be read within the context in which they were given. They are not abstract ideas to be applied indiscriminately, but instances of what was said in particular situations.

The essence of the spirituality of the desert is that it was not taught but caught; it was a whole way of life. It was not an esoteric doctrine or a predetermined plan of ascetic practice that would be learned and applied. The Father, or ‘abba,’ was not the equivalent of the Zen Buddhist ‘Master.’ It is important to understand this, because there really is no way of talking about the way of prayer or the spiritual teaching of the Desert Fathers. They did not have a systematic way; they had the hard work and experience of a lifetime of striving to re-direct every aspect of body, mind, and soul to God, and that is what they talked about. That, also, is what they meant by prayer: prayer was not an activity undertaken for a few hours each day, it was a life continually turned towards God.

Abba Agathon said, “Prayer is hard work and a great struggle to one’s last breath” and there is the story told about Abba Lot:

Abba Joseph came to Abba Lot and said to him: “Father, according to my strength I keep a moderate rule of prayer and fasting, quiet and meditation, and as far as I can I control my imagination; what more must I do?” And the old man rose and held his hands toward the sky so that his fingers became like flames of fire and he said, “If you will, you shall become all flame.” [2]

____________________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: February 19th, 2026

Jesus Calling: February 19

    You are feeling weighed down by a plethora of problems, both big and small. They seem to require more and more of your attention, but you must not give in to those demands. When the difficulties in your life feel as if they’re closing in on you, break free by spending quality time with Me. You need to remember who I AM in all My Power and Glory. Then, humbly bring Me your prayers and petitions. Your problems will pale when you view them in the Light of My Presence. You can learn to be joyful in Me, your Savior, even in the midst of adverse circumstances. Rely on Me, your Strength; I make your feet like the feet of a deer, enabling you to go on the heights. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Exodus 3:14 NLT

14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel: I am has sent me to you.”

Habakkuk 3:17-19 NLT

17 Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,

    and there are no grapes on the vines;

even though the olive crop fails,

    and the fields lie empty and barren;

even though the flocks die in the fields,

    and the cattle barns are empty,

18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord!

    I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!

19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength!

    He makes me as surefooted as a deer,

    able to tread upon the heights.

Healing in the Desert

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Ash Wednesday

CAC guest faculty member Belden Lane recalls a recent experience of finding healing in the desert: 

My latest, most difficult path of descent, or journey into fierce landscapes, in these closing years of my life has had to do with the death of my son. Three years ago, John died of acute myeloid leukemia, one of the deadliest forms of cancer. He was 41, leaving behind his wife and a four-year-old daughter. After months and months of chemo, we had been assured that he was cancer-free. He’d rung the bell at the hospital, returned home, gone back to work, but two months later, the cancer returned and he was dead within a week.

Lane went to the desert, hoping to connect with John and in some way relieve the suffering he imagined John was experiencing at having his life cut short. 

A year and a half into my grieving, I worried a lot about John. Putting myself in his place, I knew that I’d be angry as hell….

I undertook a six-day vision quest in the red rock canyons near Ghost Ranch with a few brothers from Illuman, hoping I could finally set John free from his anguish. But on the first night there, I fell apart sobbing against a canyon wall. I realized it wasn’t John who was arguing and cursing his way through some kind of purgatory; it was me. I hadn’t come to release John. John would have to come to release me….

By the time I got to the fourth and last night of fasting, I was expecting or at least hoping for some big encounter. That’s what you expect to get at the end of a vision quest. But as I waited for the long night, nothing came. I gave up hope of anything dramatic, which is perfect, of course. As I sat there, my mind wandered back to the hospital room on the night of John’s death. The end had come at three o’clock in the morning when he finally stopped breathing. I’d wanted to stay with him for the rest of the night. I hated the thought of strangers putting my son on a tray and wheeling him away into the morgue alone. I knew I should have stayed there until dawn, but … we were all exhausted. We went home.

And then it struck me.… On the ridge I could still do this. I might be over a year late, but I could still be faithful, waiting alongside John’s body, not turning away from his death. So that’s what I did, staying awake through the rest of the night, keeping vigil with John. Within an hour or so, I noticed … a full moon was rising over the ridge behind me, casting a soft slate gray light on the mesa’s rim, going down the mesa as the moon rose behind me. It was cold and death-like but beautiful, like the paleness of my son’s body drained of life as I was able to sit with him. It was also for me, at the time, the body of Christ, as it were. John, Jesus had come to assure me with [the mystic] Julian of Norwich, was fine. He was more than fine….

I was blown away that night. The desert had come for me again, been there for me, the place where God has come so often in my life. I struggle with John’s loss to this day, but in the deepest place of my soul, I’m at peace knowing that this most recent path of descent in the desert has only carried me deeper once again into love. Amen.

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INSPIRATION

It is my Lent to break my Lent,
To eat when I would fast,
To know when slender strength is spent,
Take shelter from the blast
When I would run with wind and rain,
To sleep when I would watch.
It is my Lent to smile at pain
But not ignore its touch.

It is my Lent to listen well
When I would be alone,
To talk when I would rather dwell
In silence, turn from none
Who call on me, to try to see
That what is truly meant
Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be
It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.
— Madeleine L’Engle, “For Lent, 1966”

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Individual Contemplation Question:

Where in your own grief or struggle have you been more focused on releasing someone else — or fixing someone else’s pain — only to discover that you were the one who needed to be released? What does that reversal feel like?

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Group Contemplation Question:

L’Engle says “It is my Lent to break my Lent” — to surrender the spiritual practice you would choose for the one that love actually requires. Where is your community, your relationships, or this season asking you to stay present in a way that costs you something? What would it mean to call that your Lent?

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Writer Stephen Copeland recounts how the stories of the desert fathers and mothers have inspired modern Christians to take contemplative practice more seriously: 

The ancient path of the desert mystics invites us to disrupt the patterns of ego and empire through the courageous pursuit of inner liberation. Throughout Christian history, mystics and spiritual seekers have led radical movements of departure, leaving behind the ways of the world for the desert in search of union with God…. 

One thread woven through such movements is the search for inner liberation and the cultivation of this freedom through contemplative spiritual practices. The search itself (and the practices that help to heighten one’s awareness of their oneness with God) interrupts patterns of the heart and mind formed in the ways of the world, like the tantalizing forces of greed and power. Desert contemplation helps us to see things as they are, unclouded by what Thomas Merton called “unreality.” [1]

Twentieth-century authors like Merton and Henri Nouwen helped to reclaim the importance of this desert form of Christianity, forging a path for laypeople to experience the transforming way of contemplation, which had long been reserved for monastics and religious. Richard Rohr writes about why this ancient tradition still matters: “It is a unique window into how Jesus was first understood, before the church became an imperial, highly organized, competitive religion.” [2]

Practicing “letting go” in contemplation allowed the desert mystics—and allows us—to access our spiritual selves: 

A core principle of the desert—and something worth considering while cultivating our own inner freedom—was the notion of apatheia. Author Laura Swan explains: “Apatheia is purity of heart. The ammas [desert mothers] teach us to intentionally let go of all that keeps us from the single-minded pursuit of God: feelings and thoughts that bind us, cravings and addictions that diminish our sense of worth, and attachments to self-imposed perfectionism. Apatheia is nourished by simplicity grounded in abundance of the soul.” [3]

Such letting go can feel like emptiness. It can feel disorienting, crazy, nonlinear—terrifying even—as if we are like the desert fathers and mothers, leaving behind the comforts of the city for the vast emptiness of the desert. This powerful metaphor invites the disruption of our own unhealthy patterns, as we interrupt the ways that we are being controlled (sometimes unconsciously) by the ways of the world and our false selves to make room for something deeper to be born within us: For aspects of the true self to be discovered. For our awareness of the divine within us to grow. For love to expand. For the same spiritual truths that arose in the desert centuries before to dwell and deepen within our souls.

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Leonard Sweet Jan 26

There is a difference between “Jesus, I want you to become part of my story” and “Jesus, I want to become part of your story.”

Jesus doesn’t come to improve your storyline. 

Jesus comes to make you a line in His eternal Story.

When Jesus becomes part of your story, He’s a character. 

When you become part of His story, He’s Lord.

“My story + Jesus” is self-help.

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For individual contemplation:

Where in your life are you holding on to your own story — trying to get Jesus to improve your chapter — rather than releasing it into His?

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For group discussion:

The desert mystics left literal cities for literal deserts. What would it look like for you to practice that kind of departure right now — not as escape, but as the kind of letting go that makes room for something deeper? What are you being invited to lay down?

Desert and Transformation

Sunday, February 15, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

CAC Dean of Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher takes inspiration from the desert Christians of the fourth century. These men and women fled to the deserts of Northern Africa and elsewhere to practice their faith apart from the Christianity of empire.  

Around 313 CE and the Edict of Milan, Christianity became yoked with empire. [1] A lot of people who wanted to have a genuine experience of living out the promises of Christ left the empire, so to speak. They went out into the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Arabia. There were women and men, rich and poor. Some of them had been working in royal courts, and some had been murderers. Some were people of high esteem in society while others were viewed by society as scoundrels.

The Christians who went to the desert sought an interior martyrdom. That’s how they thought about it, at least. They wanted to learn how to die to aspects of themselves that were preventing them from experiencing an intimate relationship with Jesus in a mystical dimension. The seekers would go out into the desert, and they would say, “Abba, father or Amma, mother—give me a word,” because they really wanted their souls to be awakened.

The desert elders have meant so much to me, and the really great thing is that even before I quite understood them, I loved their stories. My favorite story is about Abba Moses of Egypt. Somebody sent a message to him and said, “We need you to come to the elders’ gathering because there’s someone who has committed a sin, and we need you to help us make a judgment about his behavior.” He just said, “I don’t want to go.” Then, a priest sent word to him and said, “Moses, we need you here. They’re asking for you. You’ve got to come.” So reluctantly, Moses got up. He went over to the old basket he had. It was full of holes, and he filled it with sand. Then, he put it on his back and walked to this meeting where someone was accused of a sin and was awaiting the judgment of the group. People came out to him and said, “Moses, what are you up to? What are you doing?” He said, “Well, here I am going to judge someone for a sin they say he has committed, and yet here my sins are running out behind me, and I don’t even see them.” [2]

The accusers just fell away. They went back to the gathering and told the man, “We don’t have anything to say to you.” It disbanded because of Moses’s humility. It’s very much like the woman accused of adultery by the men in John’s Gospel, where Jesus comes up and says, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).

For me, the main message of the desert elders is one of love, and that is what keeps me coming back to them.

Desert Magic 

Monday, February 16, 2026

Professor Rachel Wheeler describes how the desert offers a sacred invitation to people of all faiths and times: 

The desert occupies a powerful place at the heart of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic spiritual traditions. Simultaneously, the desert is a place of resistance, refuge, and revelation. In the early centuries of Christianity, the desert was home for those seeking countercultural withdrawal. Many men and women, who came to be known as desert fathers and mothers, experienced the wilderness as a refuge from an empire increasingly inhospitable to them…. Its association with the powerful and wealthy was inconsistent with how many desert mothers and fathers believed they ought to live out their Christian calling.

The ways these desert Christians navigated the difficulties of their own time and place may seem irredeemably remote to most of us, but I find their stories strangely compelling, like stones yielding different veins of mineral and precious metals whichever way you turn them. Their stories and teachings are brief, sometimes cryptic, sometimes profound, as these gruff desert patriots rubbed shoulders with each other and uncovered uncomfortable knowledge of themselves and their habits of thought, fallibilities, and limitations.

Early desert Christians can serve as a model for how to wrestle with paradox: 

The desert offered a particular kind of formation. It could be harsh, offering unwelcome discipline as a parent might. It required the desert dwellers to grow up and fend for themselves, to play well with others, and to share—all guidance we may have received from our own parents at one time! The desert would have offered a strange kind of consolation, as well, when loneliness or the particular boredom called acedia kicked in. Wild animals might have offered companionship, as they did for Abba Theon, who made his solitary home in the desert, sharing food and water with the wild animals who visited his dwelling. [1]

The prototypical desert father, Antony of Egypt (251–356), is said to have fallen in love with the place he lived, deep in the desert, where a few palm trees, water, and arable soil made an oasis. [2] This was the desert’s magic: that within what appeared scarce, there might emerge surprising abundance. What could be harsh might offer a warm welcome. The landscape’s paradox offered space for theological paradox: The incarnation! The virgin birth! The Trinity! The Apostle Paul’s simultaneous willing and not-willing to do good! Even: the subtle interplay of the body’s, mind’s, and spirit’s needs! The desert helped these Christians lean more deeply into undermining their assumptions and cravings for what is and what should be….

For me, these stories shimmer with the heat of desert light and sun.

==============

Three discussion questions:

1. Butcher says the desert elders sought “interior martyrdom” — dying to the parts of themselves blocking an intimate experience of God. What’s one thing in you right now that you sense might need to die, even if you’re not eager for it?
2. The Abba Moses story is striking because his humility didn’t just change the mood — it dissolved the whole accusation. When have you witnessed (or experienced) humility doing something that argument or judgment simply couldn’t?
3. Wheeler says the desert’s paradox — harshness offering warmth, scarcity yielding abundance — created space for theological paradox too. Where in your own life are you being asked to hold two things in tension that don’t seem to belong together?

A Return to the Garden

Friday, February 13, 2026

Father Richard Rohr identifies in Revelation, the last book in the Bible, a “return to the garden” for all of creation:

The whole Bible is trying to return us to the garden. By the end, in the book of Revelation (21–22), the garden becomes the New Jerusalem, where there is no temple, but only the river of life and the trees of life, where even “the leaves are for the cure of the pagans” (22:2) and where “God lives among humans” (21:3).

The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 37:27) has been fulfilled: Humanity has become God’s people, and God has become their God. There is no need for a religious building because the garden itself is the temple. Life is now one sacred reality.

Eden is a symbol of unitive consciousness. We cannot objectively be separate from God. We all walk in the garden whether we know it or not. We came from God and we will return to God. Everything in between is a school of conscious loving.

Authentic spiritual cognition always has the character of re-cognition! We return to where we started and, as T.S. Eliot stated, “know the place for the first time.” [1] As Jacob put it when he awoke from his sleep: “Truly, Yahweh was in this place all the time, and I never knew it” (Genesis 28:16). That is, without doubt, the common knowing of mystics, saints, and all recovered sinners.

Many of the journeys before that point are journeys away from the center, where we literally become “ec-centric.” These are the recurring biblical texts of fall and recovery, hiddenness and discovery, loss and renewal, failure and forgiveness, exile and return.

Fortunately, we are always being led back to the real Center to find who we really are: to find ourselves in God. God seems both very patient and very productive with the journeys back and forth. Such is the pattern of the soul, of history, and of the Bible, a progress of sorts: two steps backward and three forward.

That humble productivity and slow efficiency on God’s part is called “the economy of grace” or the good news. Here, God fills in all the gaps, everything is used, and nothing is wasted, not even sin. It leads to a worldview of abundance and enoughness. Buying and selling is a cheap substitute and always leads to a worldview of scarcity, judgmentalism, fear, and stinginess. Why would anyone want to live there? And yet many, if not most, of us do.

The full biblical revelation has given us the history within the history, the coherence inside of the seeming incoherence. If we don’t get this inner pattern, then religion becomes simply aimless anecdotes—just little stories here and there, with no pattern or direction. They come from no place and there is no place they are going. We have to know where the text is heading or we do not know how to look through the appropriate lenses.

_______________________________________________

1.

“Let us make them in our image.”

– Genesis 1:26

This passage is the main text from which we derive the doctrine that human beings are made in the “imago Dei,” or “in the image of God.”

This passage grounds the way many of us view human beings as inherently dignified, valuable, and purposeful.

That said, many people focus on the “us” and see that as a nod toward the Christian conception of God as a Trinity (Three-in-One and One-in-Three).  However, I have been focusing on the “our” part of the passage.

We are not in the image of God alone; we are in the image of God when we are in loving community… because God is a loving community.  In Western culture, we are so individualistic that we do not value the community as we ought.  If God, in God’s own self, is a co-suffering, infinitely outpouring, self-sacrificial community, then we should probably let the Trinity inform more of how we think about ourselves and what it means to be part of the “Beloved Community.”

2.

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

– Carl Jung, Swiss Psychotherapist

In full honesty and transparency, many years ago, I was in burnout/fallout from working in an incredibly unhealthy church culture.

I distinctly remember one day when I had not showered for 2-3 days and walked into the church office with a black hoodie on and with the hoodie up over my head.  Walking straight into the interim pastor’s office, I collapsed into a chair and asked, “What does it look like when someone is in crisis?”

His reply?

“I think I am looking at it right now.  You have an immediate two weeks off.  Get out of town for a bit and go stay with your parents.”

It was during that time that I came to the experience of, “Oh, I get it.  I understand why people would drink or do drugs or what have you.  I would do anything to get away from this feeling.”

Fortunately, I did not fully bottom out on any of those things (but not due to my own strength), and instead regrouped and chose to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2015.

Hitting that type of rock bottom broke me of whatever judgmentalism, condescension, or elitism that I felt toward addiction.  I still maintain that since then, I have been a better pastor.  I can better connect with people and have greater compassion for others’ internal experiences.

Jung is absolutely right.  Know your own darkness, and you will be better able to deal with the darkness in others.

3.

“Modern man is not in agreement with himself. He has no one voice to listen to but a thousand voices, a thousand ideologies, all competing for his attention in a Babel of tongues.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

We are all walking contradictions.

Sometimes, we do not even consciously know or admit our own contradictions, and it shows in how cranky, disappointed, or frustrated we can be with our own lives.

I am starting to understand that the process of holy-making (sanctification) is in some sense a process of integration, of “whole-making.”  Every one of us must learn to integrate the fragmented parts of our lives, the parts that are tugged and yanked in competing and opposite directions by the “thousand voices, thousand ideologies, the Babel of tongues” that confuse and disorient.

It is likely a lifelong process, but I can attest that my life has been improved by limiting the voices I allow to speak into my life and by making certain that those same voices are of the best quality I can find.

4.

“Everyone has to pick a path through the stickers and briars and come out the other side in his own way.”

– Paul Quenon, Monk and Photographer

Paul Quenon is a Trappist Monk who had Thomas Merton as his spiritual director in the monastery.   He has become a well-known poet, photographer, and author in his own right.    His book, In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk’s Memoir, is a delightful read.

5.

“Life is to be lived as play.”

– Plato, Greek Philosopher

Seeing life as “playful” does not come easily to me.  It is not my automatic response or reflex to think that every day is a new day to “play.”

I am often too serious.  I am also distracted by my own frustrations, resentments, to-do lists, projects, commute, and so on.  It is probably similar for you.  Life piles up with new responsibilities, and often it feels as though every minute of the day is claimed for… and often not for the purpose of play.

Which leads me to wonder: Is life a matter of running away from things in order to play, or of finding a way to play in the midst of all those things?

It is probably the latter, although I admit that I do not know how to do it very well.

There is a line in Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation when he talks about throwing our “awful solemnity” to the wind.  We are just so dang serious all the time, perhaps thinking that it glorifies God for us to be so serious, but what if God most wants us to be playful?  You know, to trust that things can be good even if they are frivolous or prodigal?  In the economy of God’s grace, there is no such thing as “wasted time” because in some sense everything is unnecessary.  Everything is a frivolous overture of the infinite grace of God being poured out on all of us.

Contemplation and Paradise

Thursday, February 12, 2026

In the writings of contemplative writer and monk Thomas Merton, psychotherapist Fiona Gardner discovers how we might once again experience paradise:

The nostalgia for what has been lost remains long after childhood can impel seekers to search both within themselves and out in the world for this lost place, time and state of mind. For Thomas Merton it is the nostalgia for, or intuition of, paradise, and is a longing for a return or restoration to an original state of being which is Eden. For him it is about a reversal of the fall and the separation from God. It is the journey forward to the beginning, “the restoration of that primordial unity and harmony of all creation in God,” and it is part of what it means to be authentic.

For him the journey begins within the self as the false self … that leads to division and alienation from reality, and so the paradise life becomes impossible. It is only through surrendering the false self … that paradise can be regained. To be in paradise, Merton writes, is to recover one’s true self….

For Merton, wishing for paradise involved a devotion to the recovery of innocence. He writes:

The innocence and purity of heart which belong to paradise are a complete emptiness of self in which all is the work of God, the free and unpredictable expression of [God’s] love, the work of grace. In the purity of original innocence, all is done in us but without us. [1]

… The recovery of paradise takes place for the adult in humility and in spiritual nakedness. In other words not self-consciously but as the small child who just is present and just is vulnerable. Merton realized that the recovery of paradise is always hidden in us as a possibility, and is a difficult struggle involving repeated cycles of deaths and resurrections within the psyche, so that the Christian on their journey is both in the wilderness of the desert and in the garden at the same time. [2]

Contemplative practice creates opportunities to return to the ‘enchantment’ of the garden:

Present-moment awareness is about creating a gap in the constant busyness of the mind…. It is through such a clear space that new and creative possibilities are born…. There may be an inner prompting in the midst of a busy life to take stock, perhaps to stop and consider…. The focus is then on the inner desire for that thirst-quenching water of life. In other words to move to a place of renewal and rebirth, where there may be glimpses in adulthood of life beyond the shadow and disguise, and experiences, even if fleeting, of the spirit of the child. One way to start to shift out of the obscured false self way of living is to begin to develop awareness, to awaken the senses, to look, listen, feel, and touch as the small child does—to return to one’s senses. [3]

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: February 12

    I am ever so near you, hovering over your shoulder, reading every thought. People think that thoughts are fleeting and worthless, but yours are precious to Me. I smile when you think lovingly of Me. My Spirit, who lives within you, helps you to think My Thoughts. As your thinking goes, so goes your entire being. 
    Let Me be your positive Focus. When you look to Me, knowing Me as God with you, you experience Joy. This is according to My ancient design, when I first crafted man. Modern man seeks his positive focus elsewhere: in sports, sensations, acquiring new possessions. Advertising capitalizes on the longing of people for a positive focus in their lives. I planted that longing in human souls, knowing that only I could fully satisfy it. Delight yourself in Me; let Me become the Desire of your heart. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Matthew 1:23

23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child!

    She will give birth to a son,

and they will call him Immanuel,

    which means ‘God is with us.’”

Psalm 37:4 NLT

4 Take delight in the Lord,

    and he will give you your heart’s desires.

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 

READ ON CAC.ORG

Rev. Dr. Ruth Patterson has worked for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. In CAC’s journal ONEING, she characterizes our life’s journey as a return to a knowledge of God’s love and acceptance: 

The mythical wisdom of the ancients reminds us of the sense of wonder at the beginning of time when all was innocence, nothing yet wounded. The garden was tended by the woman and the man. They lived in harmony with each other and with creation. And every day they walked with God in the cool of evening, the time of intimacy and communion. Adam and Eve had no idea what they would lose when they decided to do it their own way.

It’s the journey of each of us, isn’t it? I do believe that we come from God and are returning to God, but we need a softening of the heart in order to see again and find our way home. I know of no way for hearts to be softened other than by a combination of love and suffering. Somewhere along the way, because of life experience, we get cracked or broken. We often lose our way, but in the mystery of the grace and mercy of God, it is that very cracking that becomes our salvation, our way to discover again what we once “knew” but have “forgotten.” We become aware of an aching for Eden, a homesickness that knows that the only way back is through, by the way of dispossession, of no ecstasy, of ignorance. A bit like the treasure hidden in the field or the priceless pearl.…

This longing inevitably leads to an expulsion from the false Eden and a pilgrimage that goes by the way of dispossession. Such a journey is not for the faint-hearted but for those who, in the words of Leonard Cohen, are willing to forget their perfect offering. They begin to see that the cracks are gift. The wounds of the journey allow the light to shine through. The softening of the heart welcomes the diversity that its Creator proclaims is good. Out of uncertainty, not knowing, vulnerability, and openness, they become the mercy-givers, the peacemakers, the light-bearers. With them, there is always more….

The way back to Eden, the space between “paradise lost” and “paradise regained,” the place where we live our lives, can be one of great love and great suffering, of newfound humility and awe. It can also be a return to wonder … to the movement or the dance of belonging and becoming. It is the place where we laugh and cry and sing. It is the place where we risk taking off our shoes. It is the place of ever-increasing awareness. This is the way in which we “are not” and along which we, and even I, may dance with joy. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Amen.

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From Courtney Ellis, author of  Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions 

Change is so hard. Yet it’s also inevitable.

There’s no avoiding it, ignoring it, or getting around it. Change comes for us all.

And strangely, although change is difficult and often painful, we sometimes find ourselves longing for it, even seeking it. It is one of the fascinating truths about being human. As Margaret Renkl writes in her beautiful book The Comfort of Crows, “I am learning that it is possible to want two contrary things at once. I want nothing to change. I want everything to change.”

When my husband Daryl and I drove away from our wedding reception 19 years ago, we both had tears in our eyes. Then I glanced at him and he glanced at me and we both erupted into laughter. We both realized in that moment that if only one of us was crying, the other may have viewed the tears as signs of regret.

Neither one of us had any doubt about our marriage. We’d been through the holy rigors of premarital counseling. We trusted that God had drawn and called us together. Our personalities and values meshed well and there were no cold feet.

Yet driving away from the people we loved most in the world (besides one another, of course) felt so final. In an instant, our primary relationships changed from daughter and son, sister and brother, longtime friends, to wife and husband.

As the January snow swirled and we drove away from the frosted forests of Wisconsin, we both sensed this seismic shift. There are few decisions as path-altering as getting married. Becoming yoked to Daryl would affect everysubsequent angle of my life.

Rare is the change that comes to us wrapped purely in joy or solely in heartbreak. Each one will bring us joy and sorrow.

And we live among people for whom this is also true. Our friends, our colleagues, our neighbors. The strangers we encounter are facing change. How might we love them well in the changes they face, even as we work to weather our own? It is so very hard to be a human.

One of the trickier aspects of change is that even good change arrives with a level of grief: the new job is amazing, but we miss our old coworkers; the new baby brings delight, but we would also love to sleep through the night; moving across the country provides better opportunities, but now we are far from the family we love.

Heck, I get grumpy when my iPhone updates because now I can’t find that thing that I used to be able to find.

In Weathering Change I write of four patterns we see over and over in the natural world when it comes to how creation copes with change. They are preparation, curiosity, adaptation, and resilience. Take just one migratory bird, for example:

The Arctic Tern travels farther than any species on earth, regularly doing figure-8s from the north of the globe to the south, following food and weather patterns. But before the bird takes off on these astonishingly lengthy flights, it prepares. The Terns feed on fish and krill and insects, fueling themselves for the journey ahead. They approach the weather currents and wind patterns with curiosity, for these will determine the trajectory of their flight. They adapt as conditions change. They are resilient in the face of storms or long stretches without food.

For a migrating bird, change is everywhere. They cope through preparation, curiosity, adaptation, and resilience, but they also cope by having their direction set. If it’s winter, they’re headed south. In summer, they go north. This is one of the chief ways we can weather change well.

And when we are able to walk faithfully through change—not perfectly or cheerfully or even with full acceptance, but faithfully, trusting that God is with us in the swirling wind—we are better equipped and freed to rejoice and mourn with others, too.

When we know which direction we’re going—the kind of people we want to be, for example, and the type of society we wish to inhabit—we can face all types of change with greater courage.

Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage, says the Presbyterian Confession of 1967. The same may be said of change.

In the Gospels, Jesus encounters near-constant obstacles: angry crowds, divisive religious leaders, confused disciples, hunger and thirst and tiredness. Yet he keeps banging the same drum, telling his followers, “I am going to Jerusalem.”

Christ’s earthly purpose is to take our sins upon him, to conquer death and rise again to new life. All the rest—teaching, preaching, healing—is not unimportant, but it is done in service of his singular goal.

We cannot solve the pain of change for anyone, but we can be present to them within it. I think of what Anne Lamott wrote back in Traveling Mercies, that the world is basically one big hospital waiting room where we who are “more or less okay for the moment” tend to the injured and the ill while waiting for the Healer to come. “We give them crackers and juice,” she writes.

I long for the day when all the loose ends of my life are neatly tied up. When the changes stop coming and I can finally rest. And yet I know it is in these frayed edges that the Holy Spirit loves to work. We worship the God of the margins, of the in-between times, of the journey.

Change is hard.

It will bring us to our knees.

And perhaps that is part of its goodness, too

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Discussion Questions

1. Patterson describes a moment when the heart cracks open — not as disaster, but as the very thing that begins the journey home. Where in your own story have you recognized, looking back, that a wound or loss was actually an opening rather than just an ending?
2. Ellis says we worship the God of the margins, of the in-between times, of the journey — and Patterson calls that space between paradise lost and paradise regained the place where we laugh, cry, sing, and risk taking off our shoes. What would it look like for you to be more fully present in your current in-between, rather than waiting to arrive somewhere?