Dissolving into Love

CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher speaks of how we can become agents of transformation and healing by giving of ourselves like salt and light:

We human beings are forgetful. We need reminders of important things, including the gospel that feeds the soul and illuminates the divine loving self within. Mindful of the world’s beauty and violence, let’s steep for a moment in these encouraging and inspiring words:

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has become insipid, how will it be made salt again? It’s no longer good for anything then, except being thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill can’t be hidden and people don’t hide an oil lamp under a two-gallon basket. They put it on a lampstand where it gives light for everybody in the house. Give light for other people. Live so they see your compassionate acts and praise your divine Father (Matthew 5:13–16).

We all need the nourishment of the gospel’s good news so that a dire news overload of despotism, division, and moral outrage doesn’t glut and dictate our inner lives and our outer kind actions. In our screen-heavy days, it’s so easy to forget how potent salt and light are. So let’s remember together.

Salt ultimately comes from the ocean by the action of light. So, in this Gospel, Jesus is saying poetically, you all are, in essence, the ocean, one made by and of love. May we remember our shared, stable, divine center and that, when by deep listening, we honor the sacred worth of our own and of another’s life, our empathy dissolves into transformative compassion. Salt has power to disinfect wounds. May we remember that accepting ourselves and each other—both—as imperfect and “unshakably good,” as Father Greg Boyle reminds, is strong medicine that creates a community of cherished belonging. Small kind acts are never small. Salt can also melt snow and ice from roads and walkways, making clear passage. May we remember our kind divine parent, and may this awareness melt the iciness of perfectionism, the illusion of separation and anxiety, steadying our steps together.

Obviously salt and light look different on the surface, but they both fulfill their powerful natures by giving away or losing themselves. “You are salt and light” is a counter-cultural revolutionary statement, rich with psychological and embodied, empowering wisdom. May we remember that like the wise self-emptying of kenosis, being salt and light reminds us that no matter how broken or broken-hearted by the world’s suffering, we are love and are most ourselves when giving ourselves away, embracing grief’s salty tears.

May we remember we are God’s children. As Howard Thurman writes: “[Whoever] knows this is able to transcend the vicissitudes of life, however terrifying and look out on the world with quiet eyes.” [1]

May you and I see the world and everyone in it with quiet eyes and may we act in the world with kind hearts, being salt and light. Amen.

DEC 30, 2025. Skye Jethani Many Shepherds, One Lord

There are many challenges facing the modern church, but some of these are self-inflicted. A case could be made that a fair number are the result of church leaders taking upon themselves responsibilities that rightfully belong to Christ alone. This tendency for leaders to overstep their calling is nothing new. In fact, we see it with the very first leader of the church, Peter. After the resurrection, Jesus restores Peter and calls him to shepherd his flock. Three times, Jesus calls him to “feed” or “tend” his sheep and concludes with an allusion to Peter’s eventual martyrdom. Perhaps Peter was less than thrilled with this assignment, because he immediately noticed another disciple, John, and asked Jesus about his calling. The Lord swiftly rebukes him, “If is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22).In this story, we see Peter’s temptation to overstep his role. He wants to know, and perhaps influence John’s calling. But Jesus makes it clear that calling is not one of Peter’s responsibilities. Essentially, Jesus says, “You feed. You tend. You do not call. That is my prerogative. You are the servant; I am the Master.”This has always been the temptation for the church’s shepherds. Knowing how helpless and stupid sheep can be, some shepherds come to believe that without their guidance, Christ’s people can do nothing. So beyond feeding and tending, they assume it is also their responsibility to call—to tell Christ’s sheep what they are to do. It’s an easy mistake to make because it is partially true. Feeding and tending include teaching. Church leaders are called to instruct God’s flock from Scripture and teach them to obey all he has commanded. The general commands from the Bible that apply to all disciples are sometimes known as our corporate or common callings.Church leaders overstep as shepherds when they assume the responsibility for our specific callings. This is what Peter attempted to do with John, and it’s a tendency often encouraged by our culture’s understanding of leadership. In corporate America, the leader is the person with the vision. She then calls others to a single task and sets forth to accomplish it. We’ve accepted this view of leadership within the church too. We often believe the pastor’s role is to articulate a vision from God and then call all people to that single work without any thought to the possibility that Christ might call his sheep to works outside the church or apart from the pastor’s involvement.In some communities, church leaders spend an incredible amount of energy calling people to their mission, to advance their church, to be evangelists, or even better to be missionaries, and they do this with the best of intentions. They want to see God’s work accomplished. What pastors can sometimes forget, however, is that Christ has called them to be shepherds who feed and tend, not masters who call. That is his job; they are, after all, his sheep.Even in Matthew 9 when Jesus recognizes “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” he does not tell his disciples to find, call, and send out more laborers. He instructs them to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.” Jesus never outsources his authority to call his people to the work he has for them. Remembering that would not only encourage church members to foster their own, unmediated communion with Christ, it would also keep pastors from overstepping their roles by reminding them that God’s sheep need shepherds, but they already have a Lord. DAILY SCRIPTURE JOHN 21:15-22 MATTHEW 9:35-37 WEEKLY PRAYER. From John Knox (1513 – 1572) O God of all power, you called from death the great pastor of the sheep, our Lord Jesus: comfort and defend the flock which he has redeemed through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Increase the number of true preachers; enlighten the hearts of the ignorant; relieve the pain of the afflicted, especially of those who suffer for the testimony of the truth; by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We close our 2025 Daily Meditations reflecting on what “being salt and light” means for Christians and all people of good will. Father Richard Rohr writes: 

Have you ever noticed that the expression “the light of the world” is used to describe the Christ (John 8:12), while Jesus also applies the same phrase to us? (Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world.”)

Apparently, light is less something we see directly, and more something by which we see all other things. In other words, we have faith in Christ so we can have the faith of Christ. That is the goal. Jesus Christ seems quite happy to serve as a conduit, rather than a provable conclusion. (If the latter was the case, the incarnation of Jesus would have happened after the invention of the camera and the video recorder!) We need to look at Jesus until we can look out at the world with his kind of eyes. The world no longer trusts Christians who “love Jesus” but do not seem to love anything else. In Jesus Christ, God’s own broad, deep, and all-inclusive worldview is made available to us. 

That might just be the whole point of the Gospels. We have to trust the messenger before we can trust the message, and that seems to be Jesus’s strategy. Too often, we have substituted the messenger for the message. As a result, we spent a great deal of time worshiping the messenger and trying to get other people to do the same. Too often this obsession became a pious substitute for actually following what Jesus taught—he asked us several times to follow him, and never once to worship him. 

If we pay attention to the text, we’ll see that John’s Gospel offers a very evolutionary notion of the Christ message. Note the active verb that is used here: “The true light that enlightens every person was coming (erxomenon) into the world” (John 1:9). In other words, we’re not talking about a one-time Big Bang in nature or a one-time incarnation in Jesus, but an ongoing, progressive movement continuing in the ever-unfolding creation. Incarnation did not just happen two thousand years ago. It has been working throughout the entire arc of time and will continue. This is expressed in the common phrase the “second coming of Christ,” which was unfortunately read as a threat (“Wait till your dad gets home!”), whereas it should more accurately be spoken of as the “forever coming of Christ,” which is anything but a threat. In fact, it is the ongoing promise of eternal resurrection. 

Christ is the light that allows people to see things in their fullness. The precise and intended effect of such a light is to see Christ everywhere else. In fact, that is my definition of a true Christian. A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail us, always demand more of us, and give us no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.

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Living in the Light of God’s Love

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. 
—John 8:12

CAC faculty member James Finley poetically envisions how Jesus is the light of the world: 

Jesus reveals himself to us as the light of the world and lets us know that anyone who follows him will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

This is what I think this light is: Jesus said, “Fear not; I’m with you always” (see Matthew 28:20). He didn’t say, “Don’t be afraid because I’ll personally see to it that nothing unfair or cruel or traumatizing happens to you.” Look what happened to him. He was crucified. God is a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. Salvation is experientially dropping down into the intimate realization of that in this way.

We live on and on in the ongoing fragility and brokenness of ourselves, but we don’t walk in the darkness that surrounds us. Rather, we live in the light that transcends, permeates, and unexplainably shines through that darkness. We walk in the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not grasp it. Although the darkness cannot grasp it, even the darkness can realize it’s being unexplainably illumined by light.

Likewise, sometimes we can get disheartened about ourselves, like Paul’s thorn in the flesh. While we need to do our best to get past the things that are hurtful to myself and others, can I place my faith in the love that’s infinitely in love with me and my inability to get past the stumbling place? As a matter of fact, the thorn in the flesh, the stumbling place, may be my teacher where I depend on the mercy of God that is oceanic and endless in all directions.

In a similar way, sometimes when we look at the world, we can get disheartened by the outcome of the world because the intensity and density closes off experiential access to this love that utterly transcends and unexplainably permeates the very suffering of the world itself, unexplainably and forever this way.

This then is our walk: How can I learn to be healed from what hinders me from being ever more habitually established in the divine light that shines, transcends, and utterly permeates the broken edges of my life? The very ragged edges of my heart are the configurations of the light that shines through the broken places as mercy, as amazement, and as gratitude.

Although I can’t experience it all the time, I know the importance of the daily rendezvous with God, the quiet space in which I become ever more receptively vulnerable to being instilled by this light that permeates and guides me through my days. Hopefully, this poetic expression then will be a way of helping us to sit with and be present to this light, shining into our own lives in the midst of the unresolved matters of our hearts.

A Universal Christ

Friday, December 26, 2025

Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio focuses on the theology of the incarnation and the universal nature of the Christ mystery:

The Christian message is that God has become flesh [sarx in Greek or “matter”]—not a part of God or one aspect of God but the whole infinite, eternal God Creator has become matter. The claim—God has become flesh—is so radical that it is virtually unthinkable and illogical. Christianity is the most radical of all world religions because it takes matter seriously as the home of divinity. [1]

So does everyone have to become Christian to know the Christ? Absolutely not. Christ is more than Jesus. Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality—every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit, and human person. Everything is christified because everything expresses divine love incarnate. However, Jesus Christ is the “thisness” of God, so what Jesus is by nature everything else is by grace (divine love). We are not God, but every single person is born out of the love of God, expresses this love in [their] unique personal form, and has the capacity to be united with God…. Because Jesus is the Christ, every human is already reconciled with every other human in the mystery of the divine, so that Christ is more than Jesus alone. Christ is the whole reality bound in a union of love.

We are transformed by experiencing the presence Christ in all things.

We cannot know this mystery of Christ as a doctrine or an idea; it is the root reality of all existence. Hence, we must travel inward, into the interior depth of the soul where the field of divine love is expressed in the “thisness” of our own, particular life. Each of us is a little word of the Word of God, a mini-incarnation of divine love. The journey inward requires surrender to this mystery in our lives, and this means letting go of our “control buttons.” It means dying to the untethered selves that occupy us daily; it means embracing the sufferings of our lives, from the little sufferings to the big ones; it means allowing God’s grace to heal us, hold us, and empower us for life; it means entering into darkness, the unknowns of our lives, and learning to trust the darkness, for the tenderness of divine love is already there; it means being willing to surrender all that we have for all that we can become in God’s love; and finally, it means to let God’s love heal us of the opposing tensions within us. When we can say with full voice, “You are the God of my heart, my God and my portion forever” [Psalm 73:26], then we can open our eyes to see that the God I seek is already in me … and in you. We are already One. [2]

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.”

– CS Lewis, British Author

The Incarnation, the Infinite becoming Finite, is something that we cannot fully comprehend…

But we can apprehend it!

They say that you cannot pour the sea into a thimble, but you can pour through a thimble into the sea.

Well, the Christmas story subverts that by saying that the sea can be poured into a thimble and that we then catch all of the overflow.

2.

“It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

– Charles Dickens, English Novelist

Kids are great.

You know what?  I would love to read a book about Charles Dickens’ magnum opus, A Christmas Carol.  I would bet there were plenty of influences that converged to help him write that story.

What was his religious upbringing?  How did he think about the rich and the poor?  How were children valued in his personal life?  What did he believe about spirits or angels/messengers?

I cannot imagine writing a piece that would eventually become almost synonymous with the Christmas story.

3.

“To work for a just world where there is not servitude, oppression, or alienation is to work for the advent of the Messiah.”

– Gustavo Gutierrez, Peruvian Priest and Theologian

I admit that I have not read much of Gustavo Gutierrez; however, he has shaped much of my thinking.

Gutierrez was important because he wrote some of the most influential works on liberation theology, which brought to the forefront the idea that God cares about the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, and those at the bottom of society.

In some ways, his theological conservativism led him to be more “progressive” in his political values.  While working as a priest in Peru, his own Catholicism led him to side with the country’s poor, which angered many who wanted him to uphold conventional religious wisdom and not ruffle feathers.

4.

“God became man that man might become God.”

– St. Athanasius of Alexandria, 4th Century Church Father

This is known as theosis, the process of becoming gods.

This may sound revolutionary or potentially even heretical, but it was a central doctrine of the early church.  In fact, when the Pharisees are interrogating Jesus, he even quotes Psalms, as it calls all human beings “gods.”

Some early church theologians believe that Adam and Eve were always supposed to become like God;QA the problem is that they chose to achieve it through their own means instead.  As a result, God had to intervene and provide a way for us to become like God on God’s terms.

In Western Christianity, this idea is nearly non-existent.  This is, in part, due to our overemphasis on sin and forgiveness as the culmination of the Gospel; however, forgiveness occurs along the way to restoration and theosis.

If you are interested in how the early church taught about becoming like God on God’s terms, I invite you to read more of Athanasius or to examine some of the core teachings of Eastern Orthodoxy, which preserved this doctrine better than the West did.

Specifically, check out the work of Sergius Bulgakov.

5.

“It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you.”

– Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Albanian Catholic Nun

At best, we are either working with or against the flow of the Love of God in the world.

This quote made me think of a video I made 5 years ago when we were all in the thick of Covid and I was just starting to make videos from my apartment.  I hope you enjoy it!

To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to kneel at the manger and gaze upon that little baby who is radiant with so much promise for our world today.
—Brian McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking

Brian McLaren invites us to see the birth of Jesus as the dawning of divine life and aliveness in creation: 

Do you remember how the whole biblical story begins? “In the…” And do you remember the first creation that is spoken into being? “Let there be…”

On Christmas Eve, we celebrate a new beginning. We welcome the dawning of a new light. 

A new day begins with sunrise. A new year begins with lengthening days. A new life begins with infant eyes taking in their first view of a world bathed in light. And a new era in human history began when God’s light came shining into our world through Jesus.

The Fourth Gospel tells us that what came into being through Jesus was not merely a new religion, a new theology, or a new set of principles or teachings—although all of these things did indeed happen. The real point of it all, according to John, was life, vitality, aliveness—and now that Jesus has come, that radiant aliveness is here to enlighten all people everywhere.

Some people don’t see it yet. Some don’t want to see it. They’ve got some shady plans that they want to preserve undercover, in darkness…. They don’t welcome the light, because transparency exposes their plans and deeds for what they are: evil. So they prefer darkness.

But others welcome the light. They receive it as a gift, and in that receiving, they let God’s holy, radiant aliveness stream into their lives. They become portals of light in our world….

What do we mean when we say Jesus is the light? Just as a glow on the eastern horizon tells us that a long night is almost over, Jesus’ birth signals the beginning of the end for the dark night of fear, hostility, violence, and greed that has descended on our world. Jesus’ birth signals the start of a new day, a new way, a new understanding of what it means to be alive.

Aliveness, he will teach, is a gift available to all by God’s grace. It flows not from taking, but giving, not from fear but from faith, not from conflict but from reconciliation, not from domination but from service. It isn’t found in the outward trappings of religion—rules and rituals, controversies and scruples, temples and traditions. No, it springs up from our innermost being like a fountain of living water. It intoxicates us like the best wine ever and so turns life from a disappointment into a banquet. This new light of aliveness and love opens us up to rethink everything—to go back and become like little children again. Then we can rediscover the world with a fresh, childlike wonder—seeing the world in a new light, the light of Christ.

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DEC 24, 2025 Ps 22: Never Abandoned by God

In Jesus’ final moments of suffering on the cross, he quoted Psalm 22. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Although the gospels only record Jesus saying the opening verse, it is fair to read the entire psalm as messianic, as it captures both the agony (vs. 1-21) and glory (vs. 22-31) of the Christ. If we only see Psalm 22 as referring to the messiah, however, we may miss how it applies to each one of us. The fact that Jesus speaks these words as his own simultaneously emphasizes their divine meaning as well as Jesus’ profound humanity because moments of feeling abandoned by God are an undeniable part of every person’s experience in our fallen world.The struggle articulated in Psalm 22 is not a doubt about God’s presence or existence, but a questioning of his goodness. When Jesus prays, “Why have you forsaken me?” it’s not because he thinks God isn’t present. It’s precisely the opposite. He prays knowing God can hear his cry. As John Goldingay says, “God’s abandonment lies not in going away but in being present and yet doing nothing.”Why would God not intervene to help an innocent victim? Why does God allow terrible evil to rampage through his world when he has the power to stop it? Why would he watch passively as his people suffer? These are the honest questions that every person of faith must wrestle with, and Psalm 22 is not afraid to acknowledge them. The fact that Jesus himself felt the pain of these questions—and felt it more acutely than we can ever imagine—validates their legitimacy. And yet Psalm 22 lifts our eyes beyond our momentary suffering and reaffirms the goodness of the Lord. “For he has not despised or abhorred the afflictions of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard… The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord!” This Psalm, perhaps more than any other, articulates the weariness of God’s people at the time of Jesus’ birth. For hundreds of years, they had lived under foreign oppression, and with no word from the Lord or his prophets. They felt abandoned and forgotten. Some had given up hope and turned from God’s covenant. Others turned to violence and trusted in their own power for deliverance.But the birth of Jesus proved God had not abandoned them, and he was not silent. At Christmas, we remember and celebrate our Lord, who is the opposite of indifferent. So many today are wondering if God hears them. Does he see their pain? Does he care enough to intervene in his world and in our lives? The message of Psalm 22 and the message of this night is this—God has not hidden his face from the afflicted. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 22:1-31 LUKE 2:25-35 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Robert Lewis Stevenson (1850 – 1894) O God, our loving Father, help us rightly to remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds and the worship of the wise men. May Christmas morning make us happy to be your children and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts, forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus’s sake. Amen.

For Teilhard, the seeing of Christ in all things was the most powerful source for Christian renewal, for the transformation of humanity, and for the responsible, reverential care of our planet. —Ursula King, Christ in All Things

Theologian Ursula King considers the wisdom of the Jesuit priest, scientist, and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), who considered Christ’s incarnation in the physical world: 

God’s word to humanity is not primarily the word spoken in a book, in sacred literature, but it is a word that is incarnate, not only as a human being, but present as an element in all beings, in all created reality, all of which needs completion, fulfillment and redemption. God is incarnate in matter, in flesh, in all of creation, in the cosmos. The incarnation of Christ becomes extended to the dimensions of the cosmos; it is an event and mystery of cosmic extension. As [Teilhard] writes in “The Mass on the World”: “Through your own incarnation, my God, all matter is henceforth incarnate.” God is “incarnate in the world.” We are all together “carried in the one world-womb; yet each of us is our own little microcosm in which the Incarnation is wrought independently with degrees of intensity, and shades that are incommunicable.” Teilhard firmly believed that everything around him “is the body and blood of the Word.” [1]

Teilhard writes: 

That is why it is impossible for me, Lord—impossible for any [one] who has acquired even the smallest understanding of you—to look on your face without seeing in it the radiance of every reality and every goodness. In the mystery of your mystical body—your cosmic body—you sought to feel the echo of every joy and every fear that moves each single one of all the countless cells that make up [humankind].… Every affection, every desire, every possession, every light, every depth, every harmony, and every ardour glitters with equal brilliance, at one and the same time, in the inexpressible Relationship that is being set up between me and you: Jesus! [2]

King summarizes Teilhard’s contribution to an expansive understanding of Christ’s Incarnation: 

In one sense Teilhard’s vision was a uniquely personal one…. Yet he also knew that the importance and strength of this vision transcended the limits of his own life, that it could fire people’s imagination, inspire their efforts, and give them hope…. His vision of the dignity of human life embedded in the larger web of cosmic life, his emphasis on global responsibility, action and choice in shaping the future of humanity on our planet, and the need for life-affirming spiritual goals can inspire people of all beliefs and none. For Christians Teilhard de Chardin is a remarkable, shining example of creative Christian renewal that believes in life, affirms life as a task to be done, a work to be achieved, and celebrates life as a most precious and wonderful gift to be loved and experienced as a sign of the Spirit who sustains us all.

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Dear friend, (From Kurt Thompson, an author recommended to me by Keith) Beauty reveals itself on its terms, not ours. We humans often live as if beauty is something we assess and determine. But we are not the origin of beauty. We recognize it; we mirror our creator when we fashion it. But we do not own it, nor are we its master, any more than we own God.

Moreover, and speaking of God, as Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us, beauty is not an attribute “of” God, something “about” him. Rather, he is beauty, and any and all that we “discover” that is beautiful is merely one more way in which God is revealing himself. Not that God is ever reducible to that revealed aspect of beauty—but we can never encounter true beauty without encountering the God that is its essence and from whom it emanates. How mysteriously beyond words is it then when in Jesus, God becomes as we are in order to draw us forth as the living, pulsating beauty that he also is?

We, who are his mirrors. His images. His likenesses. In this Advent season, may we look to gaze upon each other as the beauty the Spirit is revealing, one to another, that we may reflect the incarnation of the God who is Immanuel. Warmly, Curt

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.
—John 1:1, 3 

Drawing on the wisdom of Franciscan theology, Father Richard Rohr writes that the Incarnation begins first with the birth of the cosmos, long before the birth of Jesus: 

What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began? Is there even such a thing as “before”? Why did God create at all? What was God’s purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal, or is the universe a creation in time as we know it—like Jesus himself? 

Let’s admit that we will probably never know the “how” or even the “when” of creation. But the question that religion tries to answer is mostly the “why.” Is there any evidence for why God created the heavens and the earth? What was God up to? Was there any divine intention or goal, or do we even need a creator “God” to explain the universe? 

Most of the perennial wisdom traditions have offered explanations, and they usually go something like this: Everything that exists in material form is the offspring of some Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit. This Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and humans. This self-disclosure of whomever we call God into physical creation was the first Incarnation (the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus. 

When Christians hear the word “incarnation,” most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God’s radical unity with humanity. But I want to suggest that the first Incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. This, I believe, is why light is the subject of the first day of creation. 

The Incarnation, then, is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). John is speaking of the ubiquitous Christ we continue to encounter in other human beings, a mountain, a blade of grass, or a starling. 

“Christ” is a word for the Primordial Template (Logos or Word) through whom “all things came into being, and not one thing had its being except through him” (John 1:3). Seeing in this way has reframed, reenergized, and broadened my own religious belief, and I believe it could be Christianity’s unique contribution among the world religions.

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Christ in Every Thing

Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
— Colossians 1:15–17  

Father Richard describes how early Christians understood Christ to be a transcendent Presence dwelling in and with them, transforming all things. 

The Christ Mystery is the indwelling of the Divine Presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time.

As the twentieth-century English mystic Caryll Houselander said, “Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life.” [1]   

If this seems to us today somehow exotic, it certainly wouldn’t have to early Christians. The revelation of the Risen Christ as ubiquitous and eternal was clearly affirmed in the Scriptures (Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1) and in the early church, when the euphoria of the Christian faith was still creative and expanding. In our time, however, this deep mode of seeing must be approached as something of a reclamation project. After the Western and Eastern Churches separated in the Great Schism of 1054, we in the West gradually lost this profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is. Instead, we gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus, when perhaps it is as ubiquitous as light itself—and uncircumscribable by human boundaries.   

If my own experience is any indication, discovering Christ as the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe can transform the way we perceive and the way we live in our everyday world. It can offer us the deep and universal meaning that Western civilization seems to lack and long for today. It has the potential to reground Christianity as a natural religion and not one based on a special revelation, available only to a few lucky enlightened people.   

As G. K. Chesterton expressed, our religion is not the church we belong to, but the cosmos we live inside of. [2] Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.”   

Religion’s essential function is to radically connect us with everything (re-ligio= to re-ligament or reconnect). A cosmic notion of the Christ competes with and excludes no one, but includes everyone and everything (Acts 10:15, 34) and allows Jesus Christ to finally be a God figure worthy of the entire universe. In this understanding of the Christian message, the Creator’s love and presence are grounded in the created world, and the mental distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” falls apart. 

Rightful and Radical Amazement

Friday, December 19, 2025

Richard Rohr insists we thrive when we understand our rightful place in the cosmic order:

Our ordinary lives are given extraordinary significance when we accept that our lives are about something much larger. Our pain is a participation in God’s redemptive suffering, and our creativity is God’s passion for the world. I don’t need to be the whole play or even understand the full script. It’s enough to know that I have been chosen to be one actor on the stage, playing my part as well as I can.

The word disaster comes from a Latin word meaning “to be disconnected from the stars.” The stars represented the great and universal story. Our lives are usually a disaster unless we live under these stars. When we sense that our little story is part of the great story, we are basically content. No amount of psychology and therapy can offer us such a cosmology; I believe only good religion can. [1]

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), known for his prophetic work for justice, also modeled a commitment to “radical amazement”:

The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime….

We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.

All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it….

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. 

Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery. 

Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. 

Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God. [2]

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“Your accumulated offenses do not surpass the multitude of God’s mercies; your wounds do not surpass the great physician’s skill.”

– Cyril of Jerusalem, 4th Century Early Church Father

The second sentence here is what gets me.

There is hope.

There is always hope.

No matter how bad or terrible, how broken or wounded we feel, there is always the opportunity for things to heal.

My lovely wife once said, “You know, some people’s understanding of God can’t live up to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.”

She’s right.  (She is often right.)

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

2.

“Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion really means.”

– Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Activist

The intersection of religion and politics is a tricky one today. 

Even I admit that I do not like the way that I see politics and religion mixing in the public discourse of America.  However, I think this is born out of a simplistic and impoverished understanding of religion.

For many, religion is a means of identifying what “tribe” or “group” you are a part of.

However…

Healthy and mature religion does not draw tribal lines of Us vs Them.  Healthy and mature religion says to “love thy neighbor as yourself.”  This means that a healthy and mature understanding of religion will want to call out and challenge abusive or oppressive laws that trample on the “least of these” and remind those at the top of political hierarchies to live with wisdom, patience, integrity, and humility.

Religion is not supposed to be an endorser of whatever the government does, religion is supposed to remind us that we are all connected and need one another.

3.

“To be born again is not to become someone else, but to become ourselves.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

In the modern world, we are often being told who to be.  We are told what is lovable and desirable.  We are told how to be, what to do, how to dress, how to talk, and how to walk.

No wonder that when people convert to a new value system (preferably one built on unconditional love), there is a massive sense of freedom and becoming.

In the New Testament, the phrase “born again” can also be translated as “born from above.”

Imagine that…

Being born into another value system, another framework, another mode of living than that of our modern culture?  What does it look like for us to be born of the virtues of God rather than the vices of a culture? 

4.

“The people who know God well, the mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God always meet a lover, not a dictator.”

– Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Friar

No one comes back from an authentic experience of God and reports that we are all in trouble. 

5.

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

– Maya Angelou, American Poet and Activist

Now that’s just funny.

I have also heard it said that you can know a person rather well by how they respond to whether the Wi-Fi is working.

That said, the tangled knot that is Christmas lights is a good gauge of whether they are patient, methodical problem-solvers, or have latent anger issues. 

 

Reverence for Reality

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
—Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

Barbara Brown Taylor writes of the humility necessary to experience reverence for the world around us:

According to the classical philosopher Paul Woodruff, reverence is the virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods. “To forget that you are only human,” he says, “to think you can act like a god—this is the opposite of reverence.” [1] While most of us live in a culture that reveres money, reveres power, reveres education and religion, Woodruff argues that true reverence cannot be for anything that human beings can make or manage by ourselves.

By definition, he says, reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self—something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding. God certainly meets those criteria, but so do birth, death, sex, nature, truth, justice, and wisdom….

Reverence stands in awe of something—something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits—so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well. An irreverent soul who is unable to feel awe in the presence of things higher than the self is also unable to feel respect in the presence of things it sees as lower than the self. [2]

Author Victoria Loorz describes how a slower pace allows us to experience reverence for the natural world and others:

Reverence is slow and intentional. It allows awe to fill your lungs and bring tears to your eyes, and it floods your bloodstream with extra oxygen and energy. Wandering with reverence means you’re looking at the world with softened eyes that no longer see others as objects of beauty or utility. Reverence allows you to behold the trees and waters and tiny ants as separate beings…. You acknowledge them as individuals who are as concerned about their own survival and enjoyment of life as you are about yours. They are as important to their relations as you are to yours. John O’Donohue, a Celtic poet, philosopher, and priest, wrote the book (in both senses of that phrase) on Anam Cara, or “soul friends.”… He says, “Reverence bestows dignity and it is only in the light of dignity that the beauty and mystery of a person will become visible.” [3] The same applies to seeing the dignity of a tree or a place or even yourself….

Even if you can’t initially conjure this deferential respect for beings who are not human, just intending the posture of reverence makes room for relationship. This, in turn, makes room for the presence of the holy. According to O’Donohue, “What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach…. When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us.” [4]

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Jesus Calling – December 18th, 2025

Jesus Calling: December 18

When you are plagued by a persistent problem–one that goes on and on–view it as a rich opportunity. An ongoing problem is like a tutor who is always by your side. The learning possibilities are limited only by your willingness to be teachable. In faith, thank Me for your problem. Ask Me to open your eyes and your heart to all that I am accomplishing through this difficulty. Once you have become grateful for a problem, it loses its power to drag you down. On the contrary, your thankful attitude will lift you up into heavenly places with Me. From this perspective, your difficulty can be seen as a slight, temporary distress that is producing for you a transcendent Glory never to cease!

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Isaiah 30:20-21 (NLT)
20 Though the Lord gave you adversity for food
    and suffering for drink,
he will still be with you to teach you.
    You will see your teacher with your own eyes.
21 Your own ears will hear him.
    Right behind you a voice will say,
“This is the way you should go,”
    whether to the right or to the left.

Additional insight regarding Isaiah 30:21: When the people of Jerusalem left God’s path, he would correct them. He will do the same for us. But when we hear his voice of correction, we must be willing to follow it!

2nd Corinthians 4:17 (NLT)
17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!

Additional insight regarding 2nd Corinthians 4:17: Our troubles should not diminish our faith or disillusion us. We should realize that there is a purpose in our suffering. Problems and human limitations have several benefits: 1) they remind us of Christ’s suffering for us; 2) they keep us from pride; 3) they cause us to look beyond this brief life; 4) they give us opportunities to prove our faith to others; and 5) they allow God to demonstrate his power. See your troubles as opportunities!

God is the wisdom of every lifetime, a deep plunge into a clear pool, the sinew and muscle of ethical responsibility, a community of goodness, but always more. Descriptions reach out as far as they can toward the God of the universe, and then, like a rubber band stretched too far, they snap back and we are left with the silence of mystery and awe.
—Barbara Holmes, Liberation and the Cosmos

Father Richard considers how contemplative practice deepens our capacity to experience awe and wonder: 

Moments of awe and wonder are the only solid foundation for the entire religious instinct and journey. Look, for example, at the Exodus narrative: It all begins with a murderer (Moses) on the run from the law, encountering a paradoxical bush that “burns without being consumed.” Struck by awe, Moses takes off his shoes and the very earth beneath his feet becomes “holy ground” (see Exodus 3:2–6) because he has met “Being Itself” (Exodus 3:14). This narrative reveals the classic pattern, repeated in different forms in the varied lives and vocabulary of all the world’s mystics. 

We’re usually blocked against being awestruck, just as we are blocked against great love and great suffering. Early-stage contemplation is largely about identifying and releasing ourselves from these blockages by recognizing the unconscious reservoir of expectations, assumptions, and beliefs in which we are already immersed.  If we don’t see what’s in our reservoir, we will process all new encounters and experiences in the same old-patterned way—and nothing new will ever happen. A new idea held by the old self is never really a new idea, whereas even an old idea held by a new self will soon become fresh and refreshing. Contemplation fills our reservoir with clear, clean water that allows us to encounter experience free of our old patterns. 

Here’s the mistake we all make in our encounters with reality—both good and bad. We don’t realize that it wasn’t the person or event right in front of us that made us angry or fearful—or excited and energized. At best, that is only partly true. If we allowed a beautiful hot air balloon in the sky to make us happy, it was because we were already predisposed to happiness. The hot air balloon just occasioned it. How we see will largely determine what we see and whether it gives us joy or makes us pull back with an emotionally stingy and resistant response. Without denying an objective outer reality, what we are able to see and are predisposed to see in the outer world is a mirror reflection of our own inner world and state of consciousness at that time. Most of the time, we just do not see at all but rather operate on cruise control.

It seems that we humans are two-way mirrors, reflecting both inner and outer worlds. We project ourselves onto outer things and these very things also reflect back to us our own unfolding identity. Mirroring is the way that contemplatives see, subject to subject rather than subject to object.

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DEC 17, 2025. Skye Jethani How Big is God’s Mission?

“I want what breaks God’s heart to break my heart.” You’ve probably heard this well-intentioned cliche in your religious community. It’s a sincere way of expressing a desire to be more like Christ, and that should be affirmed. But have you ever asked, “What doesn’t break God’s heart?” Is there a degree of pain, suffering, or injustice that doesn’t rise to our Lord’s attention? Are there broken things in this world over which the Creator does not grieve? The impulse to label certain things as “breaking God’s heart” implies a category of things beyond his concern. That doesn’t sound like the one Jesus said counts every hair on our head and notices every sparrow that falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29-30). Still, the instinct to prioritize is a part of every religion. It’s a way of ordering the world into what matters and what does not, and then validating those who focus on the “right” things. It’s why so many churches, whether explicitly or implicitly, function with a bifurcated and disintegrated vision of the world. They instinctually label certain things and activities as “sacred” and therefore within the scope of God’s concern, and a far larger group of things and activities as “secular” which exist beyond God’s care if not his sight. Sadly, this tendency has severely reduced our understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and the scope of his redemption.The New Testament repeatedly emphasizes the cosmic scale of Jesus’ sacrifice. Paul said through the cross, God has “reconciled to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Colossians 1:20). And in his most extensive articulation of the gospel (found in 1 Corinthians 15), the Apostle reiterates Jesus’ intent to rule over “all things” no less than eight times! The cosmic scope of Paul’s gospel fits with the Jewish vision of God he inherited from the Hebrew scriptures, which declare, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The next verse does not say God then retired into full-time ministry.And yet, that is how many of us function. We assume that God cares about redeeming souls but not bodies. We think he wants a thriving church but cares nothing about a flourishing school. We believe God wants the gospel preached, but is indifferent to whether a hospital is built. When the church narrowly defines “what breaks God’s heart,” it ends up producing narrow disciples who do not recognize the reign of Christ over every part of their lives and every atom of creation.This error, according to Ed Stetzer, was on display on January 6, 2021, when thousands of rioters—many displaying Christian symbols—violently attacked the U.S. Capitol. Writing about American evangelicalism’s complicity in what unfolded, Stetzer, an evangelical pastor himself, said: “Committed to reaching the world, the evangelical movement has emphasized the evangelistic and pietistic elements of the mission. However, it has failed to connect this mission to justice and politics. The result of this discipleship failure has led us to a place where not only our people, but many of our leaders, were easily fooled and co-opted by a movement that ended with the storming of the Capitol building.” In other words, the problem is not that the church failed to accomplish its mission, but that it defined it too narrowly. When huge parts of our lives and world are seen as beyond Christ’s concern, we shouldn’t be surprised to discover false gods defiling those domains. DAILY SCRIPTURE 1 CORINTHIANS 15:20-28 COLOSSIANS 1:15-20 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Mother Teresa (1910 – 1998) Dear Jesus, Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go. Flood our souls with your Spirit and life. Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through us and be so in us that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us but only Jesus. Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be light to others. Amen.

 

Allow Your Wonder to Wander

Elder and retired pastor Wes Granberg-Michaelson views awe and wonder as resources to inspire us when we come to the end of our own knowing:

When your rational certainty breaks down—as of course it will—give attention to where your soul, the integrated center of your being, wanders. Where are you drawn? What do you long for? What gives you joy? What captures your curiosity? My guess is that you will be drawn to beckoning experiences of connection…. These will likely include connections not only to people, but to the created world where experiences of awe and transcendence intersect with you in worship, music, art, and practices that unlock a fresh spiritual encounter opening your inner self to God’s presence.

Those who are called mystics nearly always display an intimate sense of connection to the created world. Often this comes with striking particularity, like a reflection on a stone, or Julian of Norwich’s vision of a hazelnut. Because mystics grasp the interconnection of all things, they perceive God’s presence as comingled with all creation. Contemplation radicalizes the sense of God’s presence in the world….

But you don’t have to be Julian of Norwich or Thomas Merton to participate in this understanding of interconnectedness. The doorways that open the pathway of this experience will vary according to your life’s setting and history. But in the shroud of intellectual uncertainty and doubt, you are likely to be drawn to experiences with nature that inspire transcendent awe…. You discover instances of inspiration and wonder that move beyond and beneath mere cognition.

Maybe your wandering time leads you on a wilderness hike when you cross a ridge and are awestruck by a shimmering alpine lake reflecting a snow-covered mountain peak like a mirror. Or maybe you happen upon a firefly at nightfall in your backyard, where that tiny, sudden light blinks up, rises, and settles on your arm. In simple and unexpected moments of epiphany, you will sense that you are connected to creation in ways that bypass your self-protective, preoccupied, rational mind. Your task? Be attentive. Allow your wonder to wander.

Granberg-Michaelson shares in a journal entry from his twenties how he was moved by the beauty of creation:

Whenever one is moved to awe by the beauty of creation, one is moved by God. God, the Creator of both the beauty, and of the inner feelings that excite the soul.

The inspiration we feel in the presence of beauty causes us to transcend ourselves, and in so doing, this is the testimony to the presence of God in the world. Regardless of one’s intellectual view of God, when one is moved beyond him or herself, beyond a preoccupation with one’s own being to the recognition of the greatness that is other than him or her, then the inward urge to worship and adore such beauty means one is being moved by God toward God.

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Wrestling Before God. from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest Take up the whole armor of God…praying always… Ephesians 6:13,18 You must learn to wrestle against the things that hinder your communication with God, and wrestle in prayer for other people; but to wrestle with God in prayer is unscriptural. If you ever do wrestle with God, you will be crippled for the rest of your life. If you grab hold of God and wrestle with Him, as Jacob did, simply because He is working in a way that doesn’t meet with your approval, you force Him to put you out of joint (see Genesis 32:24–25). Don’t become a cripple by wrestling with the ways of God, but be someone who wrestles before God with the things of this world, because “we are more than conquerors through Him…” (Romans 8:37 ). Wrestling before God makes an impact in His kingdom. If you ask me to pray for you, and I am not complete in Christ, my prayer accomplishes nothing. But if I am complete in Christ, my prayer brings victory all the time. Prayer is effective only when there is completeness— “take up the whole armor of God….” Always make a distinction between God’s perfect will and His permissive will, which He uses to accomplish His divine purpose for our lives. God’s perfect will is unchangeable. It is with His permissive will, or the various things that He allows into our lives, that we must wrestle before Him. It is our reaction to these things allowed by His permissive will that enables us to come to the point of seeing His perfect will for us. “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God…” (Romans 8:28 )— to those who remain true to God’s perfect will— His calling in Christ Jesus. God’s permissive will is the testing He uses to reveal His true sons and daughters. We should not be spineless and automatically say, “Yes, it is the Lord’s will.” We don’t have to fight or wrestle with God, but we must wrestle before God with things. Beware of lazily giving up. Instead, put up a glorious fight and you will find yourself empowered with His strength.