Richard Rohr connects the spiritual journey to how we respond to our suffering.

I believe that only people who have suffered in some way can save one another—exactly as Twelve Step programs have discovered. Deep communion and dear compassion are formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure. I do not know why that is true. We’re not saved by any formulas or theologies or any priesthood extraneous to the human journey itself. Jesus says to Peter, “You must be ground like wheat, and once you have recovered, then you can turn and help the brothers” (Luke 22:31–32). [1]

Pixie Lighthorse describes the healing process at work in our wounds:

Your wounds are hard at work making their sacred medicine in the hidden spaces below the scars. With loss, there may be nothing satisfying for you to reclaim. If a special person has died, or love went away, what we yearn for most is an impossible return. The sacred task at hand is to let yourself be reclaimed by something deeper than the immediacy of struggle and pain. This something need not be identified or fixated upon, but surrendered to. [2]

Richard continues:

Only those who have tried to breathe under water know how important breathing really is, and will never take it for granted again. They are the ones who do not take shipwreck or drowning lightly. They’re the ones who can name “healing” correctly, the ones who know what they have been saved from, and the only ones who develop the patience and humility to ask the right questions of God and of themselves.

Only the survivors know the full terror of the passage, the arms that held them through it all, and the power of the obstacles that were overcome. All they can do is thank God they made it through! For the rest of us it is mere speculation, salvation theories, and “theology.”

Theirs are no longer the premature requests for mere physical healing, or purely medical cures, as the lepers and the blind in the Gospels first imagined. Those who have passed over are now inside a much bigger picture. People in Twelve Step programs know they are still and forever alcoholics or addicts, but something better has been revealed—and given to them—in the very process of passing over, which they can only know from the other side.

Those who have passed over eventually find a much bigger world of endurance, meaning, hope, self-esteem, deeper and true desire, and, most especially, a bottomless pool of love both within and without. Their treasure hunt is over; they are home, and home free! This deep transformation isn’t achieved by magic or miracles or priestcraft but by a vital spiritual experience that is available to all human beings. It leads to an emotional sobriety, an immense freedom, a natural compassion, and a sense of divine union that is the deepest and most universal meaning of that much-used word salvation. [3]

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

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.

The Hero’s Journey

Richard Rohr uses the framework of the “hero’s journey” to describe the path of spiritual transformation. He points to The Odyssey as a powerful metaphor: 

The universe story and the human story are a play of forces rational and nonrational, conscious and unconscious, involving fate and fortune, nature and nurture. Forces of good and evil play out their tragedies and their graces—leading us to catastrophes, backtracking, mutations, transgressions, regroupings, enmities, failures, mistakes, and impossible dilemmas. The Greek word for tragedy means “goat story.” The Odyssey is a primal goat story, where poor Odysseus keeps going forward and backward, up and down—but mostly down—all the way home to Ithaca.  [1]

The hero’s journey is a key myth that keeps repeating in different cultures. I learned about it from mythologist Joseph Campbell. The hero or heroine—the gender really doesn’t matter—must leave home or business as usual. They have to leave what feels like sufficiency or enoughness. There is a sense of necessity in discovering the bigger world. We’ve got to know there’s a bigger world than my home state of Kansas, or wherever we’re from. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy has to leave Kansas—and she’s taken away by a tornado. We usually don’t leave home willingly. More often than not, we’re taken there by some circumstance, shipwreck, accident, death, or suffering of some sort. That’s called theDEPARTURE The hero has to lose or walk away from their sense of order and enter some kind of disorder. 

Then there’s the ENCOUNTER. After the hero leaves their castle or their stable home, they have to experience something bigger, something better, something that is more real and more demanding of their real energies. Of course, that takes different forms. In the Gospels, after his baptism, Jesus goes into the desert for forty days.

Surprisingly, the third stage of the hero’s journey is the RETURN. The hero’s journey is not to just keep going to new places, making the trip a vacation or travelogue. We have to return to where we started and know it in a new way and do life in a new way. We are not somehow “beyond” the order and disorder of our lives; we’ve learned how to integrate both of them. This stage of return is so rarely taught. What is good about the order, what is good about the disorder, and how do we put them together? That is the “reorder” or the return.

We have the departure, then we have the encounter, which will always lead to some kind of descent away from status, away from security, away from ascent. Eventually something happens, something gets transformed, and then there’s the return. [2]

Falling Down and Moving Up

Father Richard identifies the heroic journey as a type of “falling upward” into a new way of being: 

A down-and-then-up perspective doesn’t fit into our Western philosophy of progress, nor into our desire for upward mobility, nor into our religious notions of perfection or holiness. “Let’s hope it is not true, at least for me,” we all say. Yet the Perennial Tradition, sometimes called the wisdom tradition, says it is and will always be true. St. Augustine called it the passing-over mystery (or the “paschal mystery,” from the Hebrew word for Passover, Pesach).

Today we might use a variety of metaphors: reversing engines, a change in game plan, a falling off the very wagon that we constructed. No one would choose such upheaval consciously. We must somehow “fall” into it. Those who are too carefully engineering their own superiority systems will usually not allow it at all. It is much more done to us than anything we do ourselves, and sometimes nonreligious people are more open to this change in strategy than are religious folks who have their private salvation project all worked out. This is how I interpret Jesus’ enigmatic words, “The children of this world are wiser in their ways than the children of light” (Luke 16:8). I’ve met too many rigid and angry Christians and clergy to deny this sad truth, but it seems to be true in all religions until and unless they lead persons to the actual journey of spiritual transformation.

Falling down and moving up is the most counter-intuitive message in most of the world’s religions, including Christianity. We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That just might be the central message of how spiritual growth happens, yet nothing in us wants to believe it. I actually think it’s the only workable meaning of any remaining notion of “original sin.” There seems to have been a fly in the ointment from the beginning, but the key is recognizing and dealing with the fly rather than throwing out the whole ointment!

By denying their pain and avoiding the necessary falling, many have kept themselves from their own spiritual journeys and depths—and therefore have been kept from their own spiritual heights. Because none of us desire, seek, or even suspect a downward path to growth, we have to get the message with the authority of a “divine revelation.” So, Jesus makes it into a central axiom: The “last” really do have a head start in moving toward “first,” and those who spend too much time trying to be “first” will never get there (Matthew 19:30). Jesus says this clearly in several places and in numerous parables, although those of us still on the first journey just cannot hear this. It has been considered mere religious fluff, as much of Western history has made rather clear. Our resistance to the message is so great that it could be called outright denial, even among sincere Christians.

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Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing

Click Here for Audio Van Gogh’s painting of olive trees was intended to represent Jesus’ suffering in Gethsemane. He gave the trees a vaguely human form in order to “make people think” more than if he had depicted Jesus explicitly. Another noticeable difference from traditional depictions of Gethsemane is the brightness of Vincent’s painting. He did not paint the shadows of a garden at night, which would fit what the gospel writers tell us. Instead, his garden of olive trees is under a blazing golden sun. Like so many of his paintings, this one is dominated by yellow, van Gogh’s color for divine love. The trees writhing in pain appear to be stretching upward toward the infinite joy of God.The simultaneous mixing of joy and sorrow is a common theme in Vincent’s paintings and in his life. He said, “It is true that I am often in the greatest misery, but still there is a calm pure harmony and music inside me.” This paradox should be familiar to anyone who belongs to Christ. The Apostle Paul described himself as a common jar of clay that nonetheless contained a priceless treasure. He said he is afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and wasting away—and yet, he saw these momentary troubles as nothing compared to the eternal glory that awaits him. Later, he described himself as “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). This paradox captured van Gogh’s imagination as a young man. In 1876, he preached an English sermon on the topic. He said:“Sorrow is better than joy…for by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. Our nature is sorrowful, but for those who have learnt and are learning to look at Jesus Christ, there is always reason to rejoice. It is a good word, that of St. Paul: as being sorrowful yet always rejoicing. For those who believe in Jesus Christ, there is no death or sorrow that is not mixed with hope—no despair—there is only a constant being born again, a constantly going from darkness into light.”Perhaps this explains why he painted his version of Gethsemane in bright sunlight. The terrible suffering of Jesus in the garden was not the full story. Through his suffering, there would also be resurrection, new birth, the defeat of evil, and the reconciliation of all things to God. This is what Vincent tried to capture with his painting. The contorted olive trees reaching up to the sun represent Jesus’ journey and ours from darkness to light. There is pain, but there is also hope. There is sorrow, but there is also joy. Good Friday contains the mystery of our faith. The cross is a paradox we are invited to embrace even as we fail to comprehend it. It is a moment of unimaginable sorrow and pain; of injustice and cruelty. It represents, as Jesus said when he was arrested, the “hour when darkness reigns” (Luke 22:53). And yet, it is simultaneously the moment when darkness is defeated, when injustice is disarmed, and when our sorrow turns to joy. In these uncertain times, when there is so much fear and suffering, the cross reminds us as van Gogh preached, “there is no death or sorrow that is not mixed with hope. ”DAILY SCRIPTURE ISAIAH 61:1-4  2 CORINTHIANS 4:7-18  MARK 15:33-39 WEEKLY PRAYER From Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153) You taught us, Lord, that the greatest love a man can show is to lay down his life for his friends. But your love was greater still, because you laid down your life for your enemies. It was while we were still enemies that you reconciled us to yourself by your death. What other love has ever been, or could ever be, like yours? You suffered unjustly for the sake of the unjust. You died at the hands of sinners for the sake of the sinful. You became a slave to tyrants, to set the oppressed free. Amen. The post Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing first appeared on With God Daily.

Mystics and sages of all traditions speak of the inner fire, the divine spark hidden in our very cells and in all that lives. This flame of love is the pure presence of God.
—Paula D’Arcy, “A Surrender to Love,” Oneing, Spring 2017

Richard Rohr points to the inner authority and universal wisdom that characterize the writings of the mystics:

What characterizes the mystics is an amazing, calm clarity because their own agenda, fear, smallness, pettiness, and false self are out of the way. They are able to exist calmly inside of a larger connectivity, and from that place they speak with a kind of authority. That’s part of the reason they’ve always been kept at arm’s length by organized religion. Often, they’re only canonized centuries after they die—if they’re canonized at all. They weren’t quoting our familiar sources, the Scriptures, or systematic theology that make our coherent religious system fit together. Their vocabulary is often very creative, and even idiosyncratic. It’s their own experience, but their experience has become so grounded in an inner certitude that they don’t feel the need to justify it by using the language that the rest of us use. Yet, if we sit with their words and allow them to work upon us, we often find a kind of supreme orthodoxy. [1]

Father Richard praises the inherent humility of the mystics and others who have encountered God:

All the truly great persons I have ever met are characterized by what I would call “radical humility.” They are deeply convinced that they are drawing from another source; they are instruments. Their genius is not their own; it is borrowed. They understand that we are moons, not suns, except in our ability to pass on the light. Our life is not our own, yet, at some level, enlightened people know their life has been given to them as a sacred trust. They live in gratitude and confidence, and they try to let the flow continue through them. They know that love is repaid by love alone, as both St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thérèse of Lisieux taught.

God’s desire and our destinies are already written in our genes, our upbringing, and our natural gifts. To accept that each of us is just ourself is probably the most courageous thing we will ever do. Only the original manufacturer can declare what the product—each one of us—should be; nobody else. “Even every hair of your head has been counted,” as Jesus states (Matthew 10:30). God chooses us into existence, and continues that choice of us every successive moment, or we would fall into non-being. We are interrelated with Essential Being, participating in the very life of God, while living out one little part of that life in our own exquisite form.

Paradoxically, we can say our life is precisely about us, but once we know who we really are, we can hold this exquisite fire without burning up and burning out. [2]

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Five for Friday John Chaffee

“Hope for the best.  Expect the worst.  Life is a play.  We are unrehearsed.”

• Mel Brooks, Comedian and Director
   
  You almost wonder if Mel Brooks recently had in mind Shakespeare’s, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Either way, the comment about all of us being “unrehearsed” grabs my attention most.

2.
“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”

• Allen Ginsberg, Poet
   
  One thing that I have learned in self-publishing 3 books (so far) is that a writer/creator must be detached from any expectation of how it is received.  The instant that we begin to care about the outcome is the very instant that a creative endeavor begins to lose its vitality/edge/honesty.

It is almost as if to say that we speak from our own unique voice when we believe no one is listening.  You know, “dance as if no one is watching”?  Say something truthfully, even if you doubt anyone will pay it any attention.

I can’t help but also think about this within the context of preaching.  How many times have I given a sermon that was not fully from my own voice but rather from a false one that was expecting or hoping for how it would be heard?

How often do we avoid speaking from our own voice because we know who might be listening?  Just a thought.

3.
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”

• Frederick Douglass, African-American Abolitionist
   
  Christianity has a complicated history in America, to say the least.

In the same vein as Frederick Douglass, theologian David Bentley Hart jokingly asks, “When will Christianity finally make it to America?”  Can we even say that what presents itself as Christianity is authentic Christianity?

In all my years of ministry, I found myself becoming fascinated by the early Church and its rich theology, ethics, and sense of community.  And, surprisingly, I was sometimes reprimanded for talking about how the early Church took stances against racism, classism, sexism.

For me, and I believe for the early Church, the faith does not affirm or celebrate the status quo, it critiques it and challenges it to be better.

Frederick Douglass was correct to denounce a corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical “Christianity” and his prophetic critique is something that we should emulate.

4.
“The Gospel is a very dangerous idea. We have to see how much of that idea we can perform in our own lives. There is nothing innocuous or safe about the Gospel. Jesus did not get crucified because he was a nice man.”

• Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Scholar
   
  I have nothing to add to this.  Brueggemann has been on my mind since finishing his biography this week.  You can check it out here.

5.
“He must increase; I must decrease.”

• John 3:30
   
  John the Baptist has been capturing my imagination for a few months now.  A while back I read a paragraph or two about him from Richard Rohr in From Wild Man to Wise Man that struck me.

In the Gospels, John the Baptist is Jesus’ cousin and is called the Forerunner and the Friend of the Bridegroom.  He was a wild prophetic voice on the edge of society and likely a member of the Essenes (a mystical Jewish sect that critiqued the Temple of its day).

But what stands out about John the Baptist is how he is a summation or the embodiment of the Prophets from the Hebrew Scriptures.  In his person, he is something of a bridge between the Old and the New.  He is so deeply grounded in his tradition that he can look forward to the future without any ego.

I will have to explore this further in my journals, but something about John the Baptist calls to me, archetypically.  He is, in some manner or another, a mold to follow or an example to learn from.

There is some magic to the fact that John the Baptist existed outside the Temple, stood deeply within his tradition, and yet was not accepted by the formal institutions of his day…

I guess that is some of how I feel.  Unwanted by the formal institutions and yet continuing to exist outside of them, a little bit like a free spirit saying, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”  Maybe that’s why John the Baptist resonates with me.

Over the past two years, some of you have taken the time to send an email reply of encouragement, to which I try to always express appreciation.

So, to all of you who took the time to read this…  Thank you.

I hope that through these newsletters I connect you to the best of the tradition, perhaps that you did not know existed, and that it helps to level the way for you to have some kind of Divine encounter.

Author and educator Belden Lane recounts backpacking in the Ozark Mountains and finding inspiration in the work of Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273).

I’ve brought along an intriguing companion on this trip, the thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi. One couldn’t ask for a more down-to-earth, exuberant, God-intoxicated hiking partner. Conversations with him under the stars at night can be …  peppered with earthy imagery and raucous laughter. He talks of God in relation to chickpeas cooking on an open fire, the moon reflected on a pond’s surface, the scent of willow trees, or the longing of Potiphar’s wife for Joseph’s striking beauty. For Rumi, the encounter with the holy is always anchored in earthy human experience. Knowing the Great Mystery—discerning the will of Allah—is, for him, more like falling in love than like receiving instruction from a written text.…

The heart of Rumi’s teaching lies in the Sufi concept of tawhid (or “oneness”). This is a longing for mystical union with the Beloved, with the divine lover from whom one has been separated. In the opening lines of his most famous work, the Masnavi (his “flute songs”), Rumi portrays the soul as a reed cut from the damp reed-bed of God’s own heart. It yearns to return to its source, finding a transient joy in becoming a reed flute through which the divine breath of love’s fire passes. [1] Like a drunken fool, Rumi is smitten by love. He can think of nothing else.

The core of discernment for him, therefore, isn’t a question of “What should I do?” or “What is expected of me?” It is rather “What do I love? What arises now most naturally from my heart?” For this thirteenth-century Persian poet, religion isn’t primarily what you think, or even the actions you perform. It is what you desire.

Belden mentions “the shepherd,” a frequent stand-in for a regular person in Rumi’s poetry:

To borrow another of Rumi’s metaphors, the shepherd has been “cooked” and softened—roasted over a fire so as to be transformed at last into the shape of love. This radical change can be excruciating. The chickpea screams when the cook throws it into the boiling water: “Why are you doing this to me?” But when he understands that the cooking is meant to give him flavor, vitality, and an altogether new life, the bean stops resisting and welcomes the process of conversion. “Boil me some more,” he cries. “Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can’t do this by myself.” [2]

Discipline is necessary to transition from the raw to the cooked. Only over time is the lover transformed into the image of the beloved…. Love is a school of fire, Rumi teaches. You embrace its mystery only in losing yourself, in finally becoming what you love. In the process, you discover that what you had thought to be entirely outside had been within you all along.

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: February 15th, 2024

Jesus Calling: February 15

    Come to Me with all your weaknesses: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Rest in the comfort of My Presence, remembering that nothing is impossible with Me. 

    Pry your mind away from your problems so you can focus your attention on Me. Recall that I am able to do immeasurably more than all you ask or imagine. Instead of trying to direct Me to do this and that, seek to attune yourself to what I am already doing.

    When anxiety attempts to wedge its way into your thoughts, remind yourself that I am your Shepherd. The bottom line is that I am taking care of you; therefore, you needn’t be afraid of anything. Rather than trying to maintain control over your life, abandon yourself to My will. Though this may feel frightening–even dangerous, the safest place to be is in My will.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Luke 1:37 NLT

37 For the word of God will never fail.”

Ephesians 3:20-21 (NLT)

20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

Additional insight regarding Ephesians 3:20-21: This doxology – prayer of praise to God – ends Part 1 of Ephesians. In the first section, Paul describes the timeless role of the church. In Part 2 (chapters 4-6), he will explain how church members should live in order to bring about the unity God wants. As in most of his books, Paul first lays a doctrinal foundation and then makes practical applications of the truths he has presented.

Psalm 23:1-4 NLT

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my shepherd;

    I have all that I need.

2 He lets me rest in green meadows;

    he leads me beside peaceful streams.

3     He renews my strength.

He guides me along right paths,

    bringing honor to his name.

4 Even when I walk

    through the darkest valley,

I will not be afraid,

    for you are close beside me.

Your rod and your staff

    protect and comfort me.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 23:1: In describing the Lord as a shepherd, David wrote out of his own experience because he had spent his early years caring for sheep (1st Samuel 16:11,11). Sheep are completely dependent on the shepherd for provision, guidance, and protection. The New Testament calls Jesus the good shepherd (John 10:11), the great Shepherd (Hebrews 13:20), and the Great Shepherd (1st Peter 5:4). As the Lord is the good shepherd, so we are his sheep – not frightened, passive animals, but obedient followers, wise enough to follow one who will lead us in the right places and in the right ways. This psalm does not focus on the animal-like qualities of sheep but on the discipleship qualities of those who follow. When you recognize the good shepherd, follow him!

Additional insight regarding Psalm 23:2-3: When we allow God, our shepherd, to guide us, we have contentment. When we choose to sin and go on our own way, however, we cannot blame God for the environment we create for ourselves. Our shepherd knows the “green meadows” and “peaceful streams” that will restore us. We will reach these places only by following him obediently. Rebelling against the shepherd’s leading is actually rebelling against our own best interests. We must remember this the next time we are tempted to go our own way rather than the shepherd’s way.

A Sacred Heart of Fire

Throughout my life, through my life, the world has little by little caught fire in my sight until, aflame all around me, it has become almost completely luminous from within.
—Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu

Mystic and scientist Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) found cosmic meaning in the image of the fiery Sacred Heart of Jesus. David Richo writes:

The fire image of the mystics was expanded and enriched by Teilhard within his new cosmology.… There are indeed many precedents for this metaphor. The [apocryphal] Gospel of St. Thomas presents Jesus as saying: “He who nears me nears the heart of the fire.” [1] In the Litany of the Sacred Heart is the invocation “Glowing furnace of love.” Images of the Sacred Heart show a perpetual flame arising from its center. Fire burns away the selfish ego so that our basic goodness, our true nature as love, can shine through…. The fire in the heart of God is the same fire that burns in us once we have the interior vision that lets us acknowledge divinity within ourselves….

When St. Paul says that “our God is a consuming fire” [Hebrews 12:29], we see again a metaphor for the dismantling of ego-centeredness. Christ’s heart can become the fiery center of ourselves, and in that alchemical blaze the ego is transformed to the gold of humility and generosity. Our spiritual practice is thus to turn our ego energy into compassion for others, not at the cost of personal esteem, but as a fruit of it.… Fire is associated with hell but in the context of mystical revelations, fire is about love. The Sacred Heart is a divine pledge that the world will not end by fire but be reborn in it.

For the ancient Greeks and Egyptians healing was caused by light and fire. This may best resemble Teilhard’s mystical sense of the fire of the Sacred Heart that brings light and healing to the world. [2]

Theologian Wendy Wright identifies love as the essence of the Sacred Heart:

There is something in God and something in us that correspond. We come from, have our being in, and return to God. In the tradition of the heart, that correspondence is love. Love, not merely as sentiment or feeling, but love as the inner dynamism of God in God’s triune self. Love as the generative power that overcomes death. Love as self-donation. Love as the welcome of the “other” as another self. Love as the gravitational force that binds all disparate things together. Love as the fire that burns clean and as the balm that heals. Love as the vision that sees the integrity of both parts and whole. Love as source and end and the path between.

The tradition of the heart does not say merely that God loves us “because,” or that God’s love can be seen “in,” but that God is Love. And that God’s very essence truly in some small way might be encountered here and now. [3]

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In her poem “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver wrote perhaps her most famous line:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

If you’ve ever heard this quoted by someone before, I invite you to think back to the context of that moment.

For me, I’ve mostly heard this quote used by others to be inspirational – something akin to Robin Williams’ carpe diem monologue from Dead Poets Society. And this is great: when used at the right moment, it can be extremely hopeful and lead us to envision the future we want for ourselves. It can embolden us to “seize the day.”

But it’s worth noting Mary Oliver’s own answer to this question wasn’t to “seize the day” – at least in the way we usually think of.

It wasn’t to achieve more, produce more, take control, or create some big and elaborate strategic plan for fixing the world. Her answer to what she would do with her one wild and precious life was, as Jessica Kantrowitz says, to “stroll idly through the fields noticing things.”

Here’s Mary Oliver’s famous quote in fuller context:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. 

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

2. Questions

1. How has your answer to this question changed over the course of your life? What might it have been when you were 16; 28; 35; 50; now?
2. When you think of your life, how has “wildness” been present? What has your posture been toward that wildness?

Love: The Fire of Transformation

Scientist and theologian Ilia Delio presents images of fire to describe God’s presence in her life: 

As a Franciscan on the edge of religious life, my experience of human love and divine love revealed to me a deep passion of life at the heart of life, a passion that enkindled my heart; in truth, I wanted to love God without measure.

Love is a fire of transformation that constantly needs wood to keep the fire alive. Real fire is destructive; throw yourself into a fire and you will be destroyed. God’s fire is destructive too because it can swiftly eliminate all self-illusions, grandiose ideas, ego-inflation, and self-centeredness. Throw yourself into the spiritual fire of divine love and everything you grasp for yourself will be destroyed until there is nothing left but the pure truth of yourself. [1] …

Deep within the cave of my heart, a depth that belongs to me alone, I recognize a fire that burns brilliantly and glows with warmth. Through that glowing fire I see the outline of a face, the face of Christ, but I also see my face, and then I begin to see Christ’s face as my face. Sometimes I cannot tell Christ’s face from my own face, and all at once I recognize a single face whose eyes are looking inward and outward. The word “God” simply doesn’t capture this infinite depth of my soul that stretches toward an endless horizon. By its sheer unlimited being I know it must be divine life, because it is life other than my own and yet entangled with my own life. [2]

Delio witnesses the fire in her heart as a universal invitation for each of us to be transformed: 

Every human life is the cosmos winding its way into the future. Every life makes a difference to the life of the whole. I have come to know that the fire in my heart is the fire in the heart of the universe and that its flames will not be extinguished. This fire will destroy that which is not God and forge what is God into an ever-radiant new presence of God because God is forever being born within us. In this life, at this moment, I allow all that has shaped my life to be summed up in this seamless mysterious breath of life. I let go over and over again and jump into the lap of God’s loving embrace. Every moment I am falling in love with God. For God knows me in a deep way, a way that I still hardly know myself; and it is this endless inscrutable depth where love burns brightly that I learn to trust my thoughts, my words, my actions…. I have a mission because every person has a mission—to be the truth of who they are so that God can be God in them. The path to truth demands patience and trust, and this path is an open road within every human heart. [3]

FEB 13, 2024
Loss & Laughter
Van Gogh’s painting of a large Bible open to Isaiah 53, the prophetic chapter about the Messiah’s suffering, and a small French novel by Emile Zola, The Joy of Living, appears to be a contrast between tradition and modernity. In fact, Vincent saw Zola’s novel about the sacrificial love of a mistreated servant girl as a contemporary retelling of Jesus’ self-sacrifice. Far from a rejection of faith, the painting was van Gogh’s way of showing how the example of Christ’s love can still be found in the world today.But the painting also celebrates a central paradox of Christian faith—that through experiencing loss the servant of God actually discovers a greater joy. The final sentence in The Joy of Living reads, “She had stripped herself of everything but happiness rang out in her clear laugh.” Likewise, Isaiah 53 vividly describes the sorrow and suffering of Jesus, but van Gogh understood that on the other side of his suffering was elation. This, according to the writer of Hebrews, is why Jesus accepted his destiny. He endured the cross, despising the shame, “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). Even as Jesus was betrayed, humiliated, and tortured, somehow he remained focused on the glory that awaited him. He knew he would be exalted to the right hand of the Father and given the name above all names.

During Holy Week we rightly focus on the suffering and humiliation of Jesus, but we must not overlook what the Bible clearly says motivated Jesus. He persevered through it all because he knew a greater delight awaited him. Jesus accepted suffering not because he suppressed his desires but because he sought to maximize them. This week is about sorrow, yes, but it is a sorrow pregnant with joy. That’s a paradox Vincent learned from studying Scripture, recognized in French literature, and one he would hold to throughout his life.After being dismissed as a missionary and losing his dream of becoming a pastor, van Gogh described the painful season to his brother in a letter: “As molting time—when they change their feathers—is for birds, so adversity or misfortune is the difficult time for us human beings. One can stay in it—in that time of molting—one can also emerge renewed.” Vincent recognized that suffering was not an abnormality to be avoided, but a part of God’s grace to be accepted. It’s how transformation happens and new life is created. Like Jesus, it’s when we surrender our immediate desires for comfort, safety, or acceptance that we discover the secret to attaining our ultimate desire—union with God himself.

The Wisdom of the Mystics

Richard Rohr shares how studying the mystics can transform us and help us meet the needs of our times:  

We live in a time of both crisis and opportunity. While there are many reasons to be anxious, I still have hope. Westerners, including Christians, are rediscovering the value of nonduality: a way of thinking, acting, reconciling, boundary-crossing, and bridge-building based on inner experience of God and God’s Spirit moving in the world. We’re not throwing out our rational mind, but we’re adding nondual, mystical, contemplative consciousness. When we have both, we’re able to see more broadly, deeply, wisely, and lovingly. We can collaborate on creative solutions to today’s injustices. [1]

Can seeing with the eyes of mystics really have relevance in our busy modern world? I think it is not only relevant but absolutely necessary to change our levels of consciousness, which many religious traditions might have also called growth in holiness or divine union. As Einstein said (though now in my own words), we have tried to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s software—which often caused the problem in the first place. Through a regular practice of contemplation we can awaken to the profound presence of the unitive Spirit, which then gives us the courage and capacity to face the paradox that everything is—ourselves included. Higher levels of consciousness always allow us to include and understand more. Deeper levels of divine union allow us to forgive and show compassion toward more and more, even those we are not naturally attracted to, and even our enemies.

Mystics have plumbed the depths of both suffering and love, and emerged with depths of compassion for the world, and a learned capacity to recognize God within themselves, in others, and in all things. If we can read the mystics with an attitude of simple mindfulness, the insights and practices they share can equip us with a deep and embracing peace, even in the presence of the many kinds of limitation and suffering that life offers us. From such contact with the deep rivers of grace, we can live our lives from a place of nonjudgment, forgiveness, love, and a quiet contentment with the ordinariness of our lives—knowing now that it is not ordinary at all!

By applying the wisdom of the mystics to our daily and even momentary outlooks, we will be able to bring open-heartedness into the lives we lead and the work we do. Then we might just be able to recognize that the ordinary path can also be the way of the mystic. It is all a matter of the eyes and the heart.

Studying the mystics, and hopefully identifying with them in at least some small way, allows us into the seemingly simple yet always profound realm of those who have found their way close to God and all of creation. The path of the mystic is within our reach. [2]

A Single Flame

In his talk Hell, No!, Father Richard considers the image of fire in the Scriptures:

God heals people by making them into what they are really meant to be. The prophet Ezekiel proclaims that when Israel sins, all God does is love them more. Their image for that love was a purifying fire. Often when the word fire is used in the Bible, it’s not a torturing fire, it’s a purifying fire. That’s a metaphor that mystics and poets still use to this day. We describe times of suffering that offer us greater strength, insight, or resilience by saying, “I was tried by fire.”

In one chapter, Ezekiel repeats the word restore. God says to the people, “I will restore them … I will restore them … I will restore you” (see Ezekiel 16:53–56, Jerusalem Bible). The prophet has spent chapters scolding them for their unfaithfulness to their covenant with God, and then he changes course. Ezekiel says that God’s love, forgiveness, and commitment to restorative justice are so complete that Israel’s conscience will awaken. They will understand what they have done and be reduced to silence and confusion (see Ezekiel 16:63). That’s what we Catholics understood as purgatory. Here’s an example: Have you ever spoken ill of somebody, actively disliked somebody, or put someone down in the presence of others? Then they approach you, and it turns out they’re not only nice, but they’re really nice. They wish you well. That feeling is called remorse; we used to call it compunction. We are reduced to silence and confusion. Let’s be honest, grace is always a humiliation for the ego.

Of course, we clergy overplayed the notion of purgatory, making it some kind of retributive justice instead of restorative love. We couldn’t deny the mercy of God, and we knew that the love of God was going to win, but we still made it necessary to burn there for some number of years. We had a deeper intuition of love’s flame, but we settled instead for the literal fire. [1]

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), the mystic and Carmelite reformer, used metaphorical images of fire, water, candle, and wax to describe the soul’s union with God. Author Mirabai Starr writes:

The Beloved (as you teach us, Saint Teresa) longs for union with us as fervently as we long for union with him. God’s desire for the soul is no less than the soul’s desire for God. It is a matter of perfect reciprocity (you assure us). Believe it.  

The only difference is that when the soul unites with the Holy One, she disappears and he grows. She is the raindrop falling into the river. He is the river calling her home. She is the candle flame burning in the daytime. He is the sun absorbing her. They are a single sea. They are one fire. [2] 

Since my Beloved is for me and I for my Beloved, who will be able to separate and extinguish two fires so enkindled? It would amount to laboring in vain, for the two fires have become one. [3]

The Suffering Servants of Today

Shortly after van Gogh’s father died in March 1885, Vincent painted a still life featuring his father’s open Bible. Behind the massive book stand an extinguished candle, an obvious reference to his father’s death. In the foreground is a small French novel. It seems to cower before the grandeur of the holy book. Many art historians have seen the painting as Vincent’s attempt to illustrate the difference between himself and his father, between the old way of religion and the new way ways of modernity. At first, this view makes sense. After all, Van Gogh’s father was a very traditional pastor, highly suspicious of new thought, and critical of his son’s affection for French novels.But this interpretation misses the nuances of the painting, and it forgets the high view Vincent retained for the Bible despite his growing skepticism toward the institutional church. (Years later, one of van Gogh’s friends even said that “his Dutch brain was afire with the Bible.”) A closer look at the painting reveals the Bible is open to Isaiah 53, the passage describing the mission of the Suffering Servant. The text is a prophecy written centuries before Jesus foreshadowing his sacrificial death for the sins of others.Vincent also ensured the title of the novel was visible—The Joy of Living by Emile Zola. On the surface, the suffering of Jesus prophesied in Isaiah 53 and a modern novel called The Joy of Living appear to contradict each other. This explains why many have seen the painting as Vincent’s rejection of religion in favor of modern thought. But the plot of Zola’s novel reveals van Gogh’s true intent. The story is about an orphan girl who is abused, betrayed, and rejected by those she served. Still, she lavishly loved others at a great personal sacrifice and even saves the life of her enemy’s child. Rather than a contrast, Vincent saw the French novel as a modern retelling of Isaiah 53—a contemporary example of a suffering servant who was rejected but chose to love her enemies nonetheless.Far from rejecting Christian faith, Van Gogh was showing how the way of Jesus is still alive and relevant in the modern world. The painting, like the best sermons, is a bridge between the world of the Bible and the world we inhabit. Vincent was affirming those who still choose to walk in the steps of Jesus by serving, suffering, and sacrificing for the sake of others. For him, the cross wasn’t merely something that happened 2,000 years ago to be remembered, but the ongoing call of all those who worship the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 as their Lord.

For Father Richard, our stories are found within God and the story of creation. He looks to the generative love of the Trinity as our origin story that begins in Divine Love instead of fear, punishment, isolation, or domination.

Let me share an astounding bit of poetry from Meister Eckhart (1260–1327), the wonderful German Dominican mystic:

Do you want to know
what goes on in the core of the Trinity?
I will tell you.
In the core of the Trinity
the Father laughs
and gives birth to the Son.
The Son laughs back at the Father
and gives birth to the Spirit.
The whole Trinity laughs
and gives birth to us. [1]

God has done only one constant thing since the beginning of time: God has always, forever, and without hesitation loved “the Son” (we can equally and fittingly use “the Daughter” or “the Child”), understood in this sense as creation, the material universe, you and me. The quality of the relationship toward and between each Person is the point, not gender or anything else. This flow of love goes full circle. The divine Child also creates the “Father” precisely as Father—as any parent can attest. A mother or father is not truly a parent until their child returns the flow. Watch the joy and tears on a parent’s face when their little one first says “Mama!” or “Dada!”

The Trinity has tremendous practical, pastoral, and political implications. We don’t have time for anything less than loving! Fear will never build a “new creation” (Galatians 6:15); threat is an entirely bankrupt and false storyline. The lowest level of motivation is guilt, shame, reward, and punishment; it has not moved us anywhere close to a civilization of love. [2]

When we—as individuals, a family, a church, or nation—find ourselves drawing any negative or fearful conclusions about God, we need only look deeply inside ourselves and we will probably find that we are angry and projecting our anger onto God. This very human pattern is illustrated throughout the Bible. [3]

Our sacred stories reflect both the growth and resistance of the human soul. I call it three steps forward, two steps backward. References to the “wrath” of God are examples of two-steps-backward storytelling. Yet the whole story moves slowly and inexorably toward inclusivity, mercy, unconditional love, and forgiveness.

The Trinity beautifully undoes all negativity by a totally positive movement that never reverses its direction. God is always giving, even in those moments when we experience the inaccessibility of love as if it were divine anger. I do not believe there is any wrath in God whatsoever—it’s theologically impossible when God is Trinity. [4]

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John Chaffee Five for Friday

1.
“Oh Humility, that bashful dame, flees the moment you whisper her name.”

• Unknown
   
  Humility is core to what it means to be human.  We run into incredible danger as soon as we treat ourselves as more (or less) than being simply human.

2.
“Insofar as man ‘loses his soul for My sake,’ he becomes Christ, is united with him.”

• Sergius Bulgakov, Orthodox Theologian and Priest
   
  Sergius Bulgakov has been an interesting figure for me to learn from.  Having been raised in Protestantism, I know the works of the Western Church rather well.  Figures such as Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar come to mind.

However, Eastern Orthodoxy has been a more recent exploration and is the home of Sergius Bulkagov.  It has been fascinating to hear what is Eastern Orthodoxy’s starting points, and therefore what conclusions it arrives at…

Conclusions which, in my mind, are refreshingly different than that of Western Christianity.

If you are interested in his work, I suggest starting with his work called The Lamb of God.

3.
“A person who seeks God with true devotion should not be dominated by the literal text, lest he unintentionally and unknowingly receives not God but the things that refer to God; that is, lest he feel a dangerous affection for the words of Scripture instead of for the Word.”

• Maximus the Confessor, 7th Century Christian Monk
   
  This is a tricky one from Maximus.

It tackles head-on our tendency to overvalue the words of the Bible, to the exclusion of who and what they are actually about.  To overvalue the Bible is commonly known as “bibliolatry” and is a mix of the words “Bible” and “idolatry.”

Jesus actually spoke to this tendency in John 5:39-40 (MSG). “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.”

4.
“Don’t preach to people you don’t love. If you don’t love, you have nothing to say that is worth hearing.”

• Vladika Lazar
   
  Love is the only reason we should have to speak comfort or challenge to one another.

5.
“When the Church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”

• Oscar Romero, Priest and Martyr
   
  Oscar Romero was assassinated/martyred immediately after giving a sermon while standing in the front of the church service and right next to the altar.

There are many reports and conflicting stories, but there is a fair amount of evidence that both the organized crime of the area and the government of El Salvador might have wanted Romero killed.

He has since been canonized as a saint by the Catholic church and is known as a Christian example of care for social justice.

On the CAC podcast Love Period., Sikh activist Valarie Kaur describes what happens when Love becomes the ethic and the story by which we live:

Love is a wellspring from which we all can drink, but we may be coming to the wellspring from different paths. You can come to it from different sources of inspiration, but the love ethic itself is what is available for all of us, no matter who we are.…

I describe love as sweet labor, a fierce and bloody and imperfect life-giving choice that we make. And if love is labor, then love can be taught. Love can be modeled. Love can be practiced. What I find so invigorating is that more and more of us now are naming the practices—how to be brave with your grief, how to honor your rage, how to let go of things that are dragging you down and the little critic in your mind that’s keeping you from realizing your full self. The more we can share the good news around these practices, the more we can say, “All of us can have access to building beloved community right where we are.” [1]

Author and civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs (1915–2015) wrote about the power of collective commitment:

When people come together voluntarily to create their own vision, they begin wishing it to come into being with such passion that they begin creating an active path leading to it from the present. The spirit and the way to make the spirit live coalesce. Instead of seeing ourselves only as victims, we begin to see ourselves as part of the continuing struggle of human beings, not only to survive but to evolve into more human human beings. [2]

Valarie Kaur continues:

I’m seeing people waking up, being in relationship, grieving together, raging together, marching together, reimagining their own area of public life, their own sphere of influence in ways that I never imagined possible before. In those acts, in those moments and those gatherings around fierce love, I feel like I see glimpses of the nation, the world, that is wanting to be born.…

If we can create and nurture and inspire more and more of those containers, every school, every home, every workplace, every church, every house of worship, every neighborhood can become a pocket of that kind of beloved community, because this love stuff is not saintly. It’s practical. It’s pragmatic….

In the moments when I feel alone or afraid or that this love is absent, I just have to open my eyes, feel the earth beneath my feet, remember my grandfather’s love, know that separateness is an illusion. If I just sink into the present moment here and now, I can access the love that has been poured into me, the love that I am capable of, the love that surrounds me on all sides. And that can give me enough energy to take the next breath and then push. [3]

______________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Calling

I AM above all things: your problems, your pain, and the swirling events in this ever-changing world. When you behold My Face, you rise above circumstances and rest with Me in heavenly realms. This is the way of Peace, living in the Light of My Presence. I guarantee that you will always have problems in this life, but they must not become your focus. When you feel yourself sinking in the sea of circumstances, say “Help me, Jesus!” and I will draw you back to Me. If you have to say that thousands of times daily, don’t be discouraged. I know your weakness, and I meet you in that very place.  

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Ephesians 2:6 NLT

6 For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.

Matthew 14:28-32 NLT

28 Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.”

29 “Yes, come,” Jesus said.

So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he shouted.

31 Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him. “You have so little faith,” Jesus said. “Why did you doubt me?”

32 When they climbed back into the boat, the wind stopped.

Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren describe how Jesus invites us into the Seventh Story:

[Jesus] radically interrupted the six stories, saying that instead of getting stuff and keeping others from getting stuff, you can’t actually possess stuff for yourself alone in the first place. Instead of building walls, you are invited to show the same kindness toward your neighbor as you would want them to show to you, to celebrate his joys, to grieve her losses. Even more provocative: instead of defeating enemies, you are asked to love them. We call this the reconciliation-liberation story.

The most revolutionary part of the Seventh Story … is this: in each of the six stories, humans are masters of “our” domain, the world is divided into “us” and “them,” and the purpose of life is to be a selfish economic unit, producing bounty to keep for yourself and your group. The six stories are all based on reacting to other people’s desire; they invite separation at best, and violence at worst; and they seek to avoid suffering…. And in a world where we have the power to destroy ourselves, they are evolutionarily inappropriate.

But in the Seventh Story, human beings are not … masters of “our” domain, but partners in the evolution of goodness. [1]

McLaren discusses freedom to create a better story, and how Jesus lived out the Seventh Story:

I think it would be dangerous if there was some version of the Seventh Story imposed upon everybody to achieve world peace. There is something about the Seventh Story that needs to be powerful without exercising power, and needs to be persuasive without backing people into a corner. Something about it has to involve freedom and discovery and choice….

What we need isn’t a storyline that wants to erase all the others. What we need is story space that invites people, in whatever story they’re part of, to stop and wonder, “I don’t like where this story is going, and I don’t like how this is going to end. Is it possible there’s a better story to tell? Could we make a change and find a better ending?” That, to me, is what good news is about. For example, Jesus went around saying, “Repent.” I don’t think that necessarily means we should feel guilty and shameful about things we’ve done. I think it means rethink the story of your lives and open yourself to a different and better ending.

Jesus doesn’t give up on his story, but to the very end, he lives this Seventh Story. In the resurrection stories, he doesn’t come back saying, “Okay, enough of that love story. I’m going to come back a second time to get revenge on all those people.” The story of the resurrection is, “Let’s keep this story going.” He tells his followers to go into the whole world and keep this story going. Jesus lives and dies by a story of love, and the protagonist of the story is love. [2]

________________________________________________

Jesus welcomed the weird.

Weird is a relative term. We all have likes or dislikes or tendencies that others might consider weird. Some people think what we’re doing is weird—creating a campaign focused on the humanity of Jesus—a man who became the world’s most prominent religious figure. But as we read about Jesus, we cannot help but appreciate how often he made room for the outcast, the despised, and those people that most of society deemed “weird.”

His inner circle of disciples, for example, were not religious scholars but blue-collar workers, fishermen, former corrupt bureaucrats, and reformed violent zealots. It was a weird crew to start a love movement, to be sure.

And there was this story about a corrupt tax man named Zacchaeus. He was reviled by his own people. A corrupt tax collector working for the foreign occupying force of the Roman Empire, he made himself wealthy by extorting and overtaxing his countrymen. Oh … and he was really short.

By the time they’d crossed paths, Jesus had developed significant notoriety as a healer and a teacher. Crowds would follow him everywhere he went. When the crowd passed his way, Zacchaeus was curious to see what all the fuss was about, so he climbed a tree to see over the crowd of average-sized onlookers towering over him. And of all the people Jesus passed by, and of all the people who were following him down the path, Jesus only stopped for the odd short man that nobody liked sitting up in a tree.

Weird. But powerful. They spent time alone in his house, and their brief visit together changed Zacchaeus’ life. He gave back all the money (and some) he’d extorted from his fellow oppressed citizens. People marveled at how a visit with this teacher of love forever changed that weird little person.

And we were also enamored with the story of Mary Magdalene—one of the earliest and most devoted followers of Jesus. As his movement grew, she remained a steadfast member of his inner circle, but the Bible records her history as one who was demon-possessed. Tradition ascribed even more labels to her and her past, from being a prostitute and more. My guess is she had a host of challenges, and we don’t know all of them, but she certainly didn’t fit the mold most people would assume characterizes a devout, loving follower of Jesus. But Jesus welcomed her with open arms, helped her overcome her issues, and gave her an important role in his movement. It was one of the many instances where people dealing with spiritual, mental, and emotional disorders—even people with a questionable past—were not just cared for, but included in Jesus’ community in meaningful ways.

Jesus welcomed the weird, loved the weird, and built a movement full of weirdos that ended up changing the world. The example reminds us that every person has incredible value, and their story and their identity, no matter how strange, are beautiful and important.