The beguines’ choice to live in cities among poor and working-class people showed their dedication to serve God by serving the “least of these.” Theologian Wendy Farley presents Mechthild’s teaching on contemplation and compassionate action:

Mechthild’s theology is driven by Lady Love, who plants a seed of compassionate action superior to the marvels of contemplation. Lofty words without compassion are useless; love of God that rages against human beings is without value. [1] We get some clues about how contemplation of Love translates into practical compassion in her advice to leaders of religious communities.

Mechthild begins with this somewhat formidable advice: compassionately and cheerfully “you should so transform your heart in God’s holy love that you love … each and every brother or sister entrusted to you in all [their] needs.” This care should be quite concrete. Community leaders should arrange for basic comforts of others. They should console the sick every day while being generous with material gifts. They should clean them, make them laugh, and carry away their waste. “Then God’s sweetness shall flow wonderfully into you.” [2]

Mechthild insists that the intimate love she and God share is made manifest in a desire to serve others:    

The radical compassion she envisions as the heart of practical action cannot be generated out of a sense of obligation or duty. It is a heart-sense that makes it unbearable to be indifferent to another’s needs or to think of anyone as “below” oneself. In an echo of her trinitarian understanding of the soul, she suggests a threefold practice to support this radical compassion: detachment, which participates in the transcendent mystery of the godhead; compassion, which participates in the humanity of Christ; and desire to care for human need, which participates in the Holy Spirit. [3] In addition, she recommends that one dedicate an hour or so to undisturbed prayer. Though she is writing to people who live in religious community, the insistence that the wells of mercy and compassion are fed by prayer is pertinent to modern people as well. As many an overworked pastor or mother knows, this hour (or even twenty minutes!) is difficult to find. Yet without it, compassionate care can become exhausting rather than grace-filled and sweet. We are better able to convey love and compassion when we are grounded in the experience of being loved ourselves.…

Love of God and of humanity are not two separate things, as if one could love God but shun humanity. Compassionate action reflects and mirrors the divine image. Love is not an emotion or obligation but is God present in the soul. When we love others with warmth, affection, and care for their needs, it is God loving them through us. Mechthild hears Christ himself insist that those who know and love the preciousness of [Christ’s] freedom “cannot bear to love me only for my own sake. They must also love me in creatures. [Then] I remain what is most close to them in their souls.” [4]

______________________________________________________

Joy Fueled

Joy flows from giving and receiving love—the life of God. God is love, and where love is being expressed and received, the joy of God is also flowing. Nothing brings us closer to the center of all creative power than the joy of God. Sure enough, as scripture says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10 NIV). In a simple way, we experience this joy whenever we find ourselves in the presence of someone who makes it clear they are glad to be with us no matter what. Maybe it is the sparkle in their eyes when they look at us or a gentle touch when we are sad. The gift of their expressed love draws out our joy. We now know through studies in neuro-science that this pattern of love-sparking-joy forms the basis from earliest infancy for all healthy human development. When we witness a baby light up in the presence of her smiling mother, we’re witnessing the genesis of joy-fuel being formed in another life. This is love embodied—God’s life. The Greek language of the New Testament offers intriguing insight. The words for joy, gift and gratitude are closely related. All share the same root, char—pronounced “car.” Here’s the connection: Joy —Chara (delight) Gift or Grace—Charis (that which brings joy or delight) Gratitude—Eucharistia (joy or delight returned) These three ideas together, in any language, give us a way to describe what love-in-action looks like. Lovers give a gift to show their delight in the one they love. On receiving the gift, joy wells up in the beloved. Naturally, they say “thank you!” and deeper joy flows back to the lover. We sometimes say, “Love grows in the dance of joy between gift and gratitude.” More love, more joy. When you stop to think about it, this is astounding. What other process do we know that, all by itself, produces more than it starts with? Love-ignited joy is the one perpetual-motion fuel. Nothing else compares. This feeling of joy that flows from giving and receiving delight taps into God’s own life—the most enduring, powerful and motivational fuel of all (ref. John 15:11). Instead of living out of fear of shame, guilt or duty, when we receive from one another and God at the heart level, we experience a deep sense of joy that makes the relationship greater than any problems we face. No doubt, this is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11 NIV). Two stunning truths to notice here. First, Jesus desires that the very joy and delight in his heart would be in our hearts, that we would feel what he feels. But he doesn’t stop there. The second stunning truth is that he wants the joy in our hearts to be full to overflowing. (A better translation than “complete.”) If joy is a fuel source, Jesus is saying that he wants our “tank” to be filled beyond full. What a picture of abundance! When we share this LK10 Core Value, almost everyone says, “Well, of course! Who wouldn’t want joy to be their primary motivation for life and ministry?” What is easily missed, however, is how revolutionary this value actually is within the current Christian culture. We will say more about how we see joy as our primary fuel in later chapters. For now, let’s turn to the limited and ultimately harmful fuel source that many of us have used at some point in our lives: the gospel of knowledge and duty. This motivating source competes with joy, eventually smothering it out altogether. While appearing very spiritual, over time it will not only thwart intended character development but will erode the very lives it flows through.

White, John C.; Daniels, Toni M.; Smith, Dr Kent. Joy Fueled: Catalyzing a Revolution of Joyful Communities (LK10 Core Values) (pp. 8-10). LK10. Kindle Edition.

Author Laura Swan, a Benedictine nun, has studied Christian women’s spirituality movements and writes about the alternative lifestyle of the medieval beguines:

The beguines began to form in various parts of Europe over eight hundred years ago—around the year 1200. Beguines were laywomen, not nuns, and thus did not take solemn vows and did not live in monasteries. The beguines were a phenomenal way of life that swept across Europe, yet they were never a religious order or a formalized movement. And they did not have one specific founder or rule to live by. But there were common elements that rendered these women distinctive and familiar, including their common way of life, chastity and simplicity, their unusual business acumen, and their commitment to God and to the poor and marginalized. These women were essentially self-defined, in opposition to the many attempts to control and define them. They lived by themselves or together in so-called beguinages, which could be single houses for as few as a handful of beguines or, as in Brugge, walled-in rows of houses enclosing a central court with a chapel where over a thousand beguines might live. [1]

The inner spiritual world of the beguines was rich in imagination. These women, and some of their monastic contemporaries, instigated a seismic shift in the province of the imagination, bringing their embodied experience of God and their spiritual journey into a broadened and deepened inner realm. Beguine mystics experienced a fiercely intimate encounter with the Divine—whom they called both “God” and “the One”.…

For these women, prayer was being in the presence of God, seeking to unite their minds and hearts with the One they loved (and whom they frequently referred to as their “Beloved”). A central goal in life for beguines was unity of will—that their personal will would become so united with the will of God that they essentially functioned as a unified whole. God’s heart would be the seeker’s heart; the seeker’s heart would find a home in God and God alone. This unity of will would be evidenced by joy, mercy and compassion, and love….

Beguines exhorted their followers to recognize that there existed no impediment to a deep and meaningful prayer life. No matter what a person’s station in life, be they educated or uneducated, poor or wealthy, it did not impede or deny them awareness of God in their lives. God yearned to draw close to all. [2]

Body and Soul Are One in God

Lie down in the Fire;
See and taste the Flowing Godhead through your being.
Feel the Holy Spirit moving and compelling you within
the Flowing Fire and Light of God.
—Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead 6.29 

Mechthild of Magdeburg was a member of the beguines, lay women who lived communal lives of Christian devotion and service in the Low Countries of Western Europe and in France and Germany. Scholar Carol Lee Flinders writes:

Describing the soul’s relationship with God, [Mechthild] marvels at “the powerful penetration of all things and the special intimacy which ever exists between God and each individual soul” (Flowing Light 3.1).… The paradox enchants her: God is everywhere and surely, therefore, impersonal; and yet in relation to the individual soul, God is entirely intimate and surely, therefore, personal.

“Our redeemer has become our bridegroom!” Mechthild exults. Others had said as much, but in a relatively formal, allegorical mode. When Mechthild writes of the soul’s romance with God, she is no allegorist: in the depths of her being, she has found a lover who is fully, deliciously responsive. “Thou art my resting-place,” God tells her, “my love, my secret peace, my deepest longing, my highest honour. Thou art a delight of my Godhead, … a cooling stream for my ardour” (1.19). God is there, Mechthild insists, for every one of us, not in a general, impersonal sense, but there—so exquisitely right for you it’s as if you’d made him up. He “whispers with His love in the narrow confines of the soul” (2.23). Her language is almost shockingly erotic at times; for Mechthild, the sweet goings-on between God and the soul are the reality—all-consuming and exquisitely fulfilling—of which human sexuality is only a pale shadow.

Mechthild’s sensual language may surprise us, but it would have been familiar to readers of her own time:

Perhaps we need to emphasize this. The astonishing concreteness of Mechthild’s imagery—its unembarrassed physicality—is somewhat deceptive if she is read casually. One might think she was celebrating the senses, the body, and even sexuality in and of themselves. In a way, she is, but readers of her time would have understood unequivocally that she conjures up the pleasurable experiences of the physical realm as presentiments, or intimations, of an awakening into supreme joy—joy that is interior and immaterial and unending. Rather than distinguish sharply between the physical and spiritual realms, then, and reject the physical, she joins them in a natural continuity and progression. We are led inward by way of everything in this life: everything in this life, therefore, has its own sanctity.

https://youtu.be/Sc6SSHuZvQE?si=FrYZdZeTVlJI2DgY

God’s Passionate Love

Father Richard writes about God’s desire for loving intimacy with us:

Saint Bonaventure taught that we are each “loved by God in a particular and incomparable manner, as in the case of a bride and groom.” [1] Francis and Clare of Assisi knew that the love God has for each soul is unique and made to order, which is why any “saved” person feels beloved, chosen, and even “God’s favorite.” Many people in the Bible also knew and experienced this specialness. Divine intimacy is always and precisely particular and made to order—and thus “intimate.” [2]

The inner knowledge of God’s love is itself the Indwelling Presence, and it is also described as joy (John 15:11). Which comes first? Does feeling safe and held by God allow us to deal with others in the same way? Or does human tenderness allow us to imagine that God must be the same, but infinitely so? I do not suppose it really matters where we start; the important thing is that we get in on the big secret from one side or the other.

Yes, “secret,” or even “hidden secret,” is what writers like David (Psalm 25:14), Paul, Rumi, Hafiz, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and many mystics called it. And for some sad reason, it seems to be a well-kept secret. Jesus praises God for “hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them only to the little ones” (Matthew 11:25). Well, what is it that the learned and the clever often cannot see?

The big and hidden secret is this: an infinite God seeks and desires intimacy with the human soul. Once we experience such intimacy, only the intimate language of lovers describes the experience for us: mystery, tenderness, singularity, specialness, changing the rules “for me,” nakedness, risk, ecstasy, incessant longing, and also, of course, necessary suffering. This is the mystical vocabulary of the saints. [3]

The beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207–c. 1282) wrote about her experience of God’s passionate love and desire. She records a dialogue between her soul and God:

The soul begins: 

Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, love me long. For the more continuously You love me, the purer I will be; the more fervently You love me, the more beautiful I will be; the longer You love me, the holier I will become here on earth.

God responds: 

Because I Myself am Love, I will love you continuously.
Because I long to be loved passionately, My desire is to love you fervently.
Because I am everlasting and eternal, I will love you long…. [4]

When I shine, you will reflect my radiance,
When I flow, you will flow swiftly,
When you breathe, you draw into yourself My Divine Heart.
When you cry for Me, I take you into My arms.
When you love Me, we are united as one.
Nothing can separate us, for we abide together joyfully. [5]

God Is Hopelessly in Love

In season eight of Turning to the Mystics, James Finley points to the guidance Mechthild of Magdeburg offers to people in relationship with God: 

We turn to the guidance that Mechthild of Magdeburg offers in The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Through what we know about her life, she’s mentoring us and modeling for us this Christlike life. Mystics such as Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing all share their way as mystically awakened Christians. They try to offer guidance to help us discern our awakening, with instructions such as how to recognize our awakening starting, how to conduct ourselves, and so on. Mechthild doesn’t do that….

Mechthild shares this deepening love between herself and God, but she doesn’t share it by talking about it. She lets us in on it with the language of intimacy and bears witness to it. As we read her book, insofar as we’re touched by the beauty of what she’s saying about the deepening of this love, we’re being guided by her. The very fact that we’re touched by it and its beauty reveals that we’re also being drawn into this love—or we wouldn’t be touched by it. That’s how she guides us. That’s the intimacy of her teaching.

Finley describes how we might connect with Mechthild’s emphasis on love: 

In a way, Mechthild is playing a violin with just one string on it, which is love. But the more we listen to it, it’s the beauty of the whole orchestra. It’s the beauty that permeates the reverberations of all the various aspects of this. Even though she just stays on point, never leaving this love, she makes stunning statements about love. We wonder, “Where did that come from, seriously?” When we sit with her, we learn these endless variations are unfolding in us. It’s endlessly evocative and she helps us to be sensitized to surrendering ourselves over to that flow of love….

God says to her that he’s so freely chosen to be so hopelessly in love with her, that he quite honestly doesn’t know if he could handle being God without her. And she says back to God, “Take me home with you. I’ll be your physician forever!” [1] The power of these words is that, as we’re reading them, we know they are true of us. We know that God has freely chosen to be so hopelessly in love with us, and that God doesn’t know if God can handle being God without us in our brokenness…. It circulates back around, and we give back to God the gift that God longs for, which is us!…

To sit with Mechthild and to read her is to be taken by the beauty of what she says. It is to sit in silence and ask God to deepen our capacity to realize how the love of which she speaks is already unfolding within us, and how to be faithful to that, and to carry it through the day.

Pastor and “beloved community” organizer Leroy Barber explains the importance of overcoming barriers to healthy relationships with people whom we perceive as different from us.

We humans … are made in the image of that triune God. And while the imago Dei in us has many aspects, it’s clear that we are relational beings…. We cannot help but function in community, and when we’re not in community, we suffer consequences. We were made to be together, and that’s by God’s design. Human flourishing requires that we establish, mend, and maintain relationships with other people.

Jesus exemplified and taught that those loving relationships ought to cross culture’s artificial boundaries of politics, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and socioeconomic status. But in our world today, we have become adept at erecting and fortifying these barriers. We live in the most individualistic society in history, and when we do interact with others, we do our best to make sure that those people look, talk, think, and behave just as we do. These tendencies may keep us in our comfort zones, but they are antithetical to God’s will for us. They are the enemy of God’s plan of redemption and relationship, and they keep us distant from one another and ultimately from the one who created us. [1]

CAC teacher Brian McLaren identifies how “contact bias” causes us to distance ourselves from people who don’t look, think, or act as we do. 

When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Think of the child who is told by people [they trust] that people of another race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, or class are dirty and dangerous.

You can immediately see the self-reinforcing cycle: those people are dirty or dangerous, so I will distrust and avoid them, which means I will never have sustained and respectful interactive contact with them, which means I will never discover that they are actually wonderful people….

On page after page of the gospels, Jesus doesn’t dominate the other, avoid the other, colonize the other, intimidate the other, demonize the other, or marginalize the other. Instead, he incarnates into the other, joins the other in solidarity, protects the other, listens to the other, serves the other, and even lays down his life for the other. [2]

Barber concludes:

Is it possible for us to see each other the way God sees us instead of through our biases? The truth is that God doesn’t see people the way we do, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves and others that our way is the Creator’s way. In God’s eyes, each and every person is a bearer of [God’s] image. Each is a special creation, each is loved, each is in need of God’s love and forgiveness….

As ambassadors for the kingdom of God, we need to begin to see others as Christ does—as people in need of the same divine love, mercy, and grace that has been extended to us. [3]

______________________________________________________________

When Grief Grows and Loss Lingers
RACHEL MARIE KANG

“Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” Luke 24:52 (NIV)

Not too long ago, I found myself working through a few questions for self-reflection. They prompted me to think about my joys and my dreams, my friends and my family. Of these questions, two came in the form of charts with columns. The blank boxes beckoned me to name my wins and list my losses.

So I did.

I typed out my wins: finding a chiropractor, publishing my book, traveling to Mexico, growing stronger relationships with a few friends.

Then I also made a list of my losses: my diagnosis of Hashimoto’s disease, changes in my career path, the loss of my grandfather, the loss of many dreams. There are also the losses I wrote down with invisible ink — how I’ve lost more friends than I can count, how I wake every day with the same ache in my heart, missing my hometown and grieving the million little losses that come with moving to a new place.

It’s been said that time takes away the tears in our eyes, but this is not always true. Sometimes loss lingers long and loud. Sometimes grief grows thick with thorns. Sometimes we cannot escape our grief, cannot outrun those memories we still mourn. Sometimes we see their faces in framed photographs.
Sometimes we drive past the place where we watched our dreams die — the office, the church, the courtroom that ruined our lives with its ruling.

After I spent some time tallying up my losses, I studied Luke 24, which records what happened when Jesus returned to His disciples after His resurrection. He spent time with them, unfolding the mysteries of Scripture and breaking bread. Later, He led the disciples out of Jerusalem and into Bethany, where He blessed them before ascending into heaven.

I’ve found myself pondering these two verses over and over again: “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:51-52, NIV).

Is it possible? Jesus’ disciples returned to Jerusalem with joy? Jerusalem held the memory of their greatest grief: Jesus’ death. They returned to this place laced with the memory of their loss — and they rejoiced.

I am astonished, amazed and awed by the truth and the timeline of this. Jesus resurrected and then returned to the ones He loved, walked with them in the midst of their loss, broke bread with them, listened to their every lament and complaint … Then Jesus blessed them right in the middle of their brokenness. He calmed their confusion, dispelled their doubts and promised them power — so much so that they were able to return to Jerusalem with joy.

Inheriting a Prophetic Call

What does the Lord require of you? Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. —Micah 6:8

The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis recalls her mother’s deep devotion to justice:

A fierce activist for peace and justice, [my mom] dedicated herself my entire life to organizing for the human rights of all people, an end to war and global conflict, interreligious understanding, and the abolition of poverty and racism….

My mom’s favorite Bible passage … was always Micah 6:8. She knew that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God were the true instructions for living a faithful and impactful life. Her faith and activism were one.

Micah 6:6–8 is a typical story of the prophets. Biblical prophets tell the people what is necessary for honoring and worshipping God. Indeed, they all tell the same story: that God desires mercy, justice, and peace, especially for the poor, the widows, the suffering, and the victims of war. The prophets admonish us and the ruling authorities to work for peace and dedicate ourselves to ending poverty.

The book of Micah instructs that the only way to honor and worship God is to welcome the immigrant neighbor, the homeless, and the bruised and battered. Micah says we must overcome bias and inequality and advocate for all God’s children to have what they need to thrive, not merely and barely survive….

God does not ask for luxurious gifts, nor for the sacrifice of lives and livelihoods. God instead wants all people to prosper—for no one to have too much while others have too little. God demands justice, not charity or sacrifice. God longs for the righting of wrongs, the repairing of breaches….

Justice is possible. I learn this from the prophet Micah [and] from my fierce, prophetic mom. Our God will hear us. After all, God already does. [1]

The Rev. Dr. William Barber also absorbed the Bible’s prophetic call from his parents: 

The Bible was not just a book of the church or a guide for personal devotion. It was the book of the movement. When we stood against social injustice, our stance had to be rooted in the word of God….

We lived in one of the poorest regions of North Carolina. My parents challenged racism and economic injustice not just because they were unjust social realities but also because the Spirit requires a quarrel with the world’s injustices. They found this mandate in the pages of the B-I-B-L-E. I was taught Micah 6: What doth the Lord require, but to do justice? Isaiah 58: We are called to be repairers of the breach, to loose the bands of wickedness. Luke 4: The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor. Matthew 25: Inasmuch as you do to the least of these, you do it unto me. These were not just texts for memorization. They were the anchors around which an authentic Christian life must be centered. [2]

Responding to the Gaps

One of the most striking examples of mending a breach is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up in South Africa to deal with human rights violations during apartheid. The TRC was headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931–2021) whose leadership embodied forgiveness, love, and justice.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has drawn enormous attention, and people around the world are seeking to replicate it. But the unique gift of the TRC is not that it unveiled the truth about historic injustices, but that it did so within an atmosphere of mercy and forgiveness. This was possible only because Tutu had already been transformed into a man who could not envision the future without forgiveness. In other words, if a new South Africa is not possible without the unique gifts of its TRC, the TRC was not possible without the forgiveness of Tutu. [1]

Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice describe how leaders like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) respond to breaches, which they refer to as “gaps,” and how each of us may respond as well.

Responding to a gap is not about starting everywhere but about starting somewhere. Wherever we find ourselves, there are gaps. The gap can be as small and near as people in our own family, town or congregation. The challenge is for each of us to be faithful to discern and respond to the gap God puts before us….

Leaders respond to a gap without knowing the way. They belong to the gap to such an extent that they share in its suffering. This is as far as some leaders take the journey. But this is not far enough. While many leaders bear the signs of the world’s death and suffering in their body, engaging the world’s suffering does not necessarily lead us into redemption. We are just as likely to be transformed into bitterness as into new life.

There are many casualties in the journey of responding to the gaps of the world. Many leaders end up bitter and angry. They become despairing and sometimes even destructive….

Many warriors for justice become steeped in the skills of protest and resistance. Yet they never learn the equally critical skills of pursuing new life in the gap. One of the distinguishing marks of the gentleness that communion requires is this: leaders are ones who learn to absorb pain without passing it on to others or to themselves.

This is what is so remarkable about the spirit of leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, who are undoubtedly skilled at protest and resistance. While they carried a great burden about gaps of injustice, they radiated conviction and not condemnation, redemption and not final judgment, embrace and not rejection. The truly prophetic nature of their work in South Africa was pursuing justice with a quality of mercy that shaped a quest for communion with enemies and strangers. [2]

This is exactly what we need today in American Politics (DJR)

The Creation.

James Weldon Johnson. (Black preacher-poet during Reconstruction, KKK, and Jim Crow.)

1871 – 1938

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely—
I’ll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good!

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas—
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That’s good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I’m lonely still.

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.      Amen.

Repairers of the Breach

If you remove the yoke from among you, the accusing finger, and malicious speech;
If you lavish your food on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted;
Then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your gloom shall become like midday…. 
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you, 
“Restorer of ruined dwellings.” —Isaiah 58:9–10, 12

Many of the Hebrew prophets maintain a restorative vision of “repairing the breaches” in our lives and world. Father Richard writes:  

Polarities, dualisms, and seeming opposites are not opposites at all but part of a hidden and rejected wholeness. The task of true religion is to rebind (in Latin, re-ligio) that which is torn apart by temperament, ignorance, and institutionalized evil. Christians are led and grounded by Jesus the Christ, “in whom all things can be held together … and in whom all things are reconciled” (Colossians 1:17, 20).  

Mere information tends to break things apart into competing ideologies. Wisdom received through contemplative seeing puts things back together again. At the CAC, we have found that the most radical, political, and effective thing we can do for the world and the church is to teach contemplation: a way of seeing beyond the surface of things that moves people toward credible action.  

Contemplation, in non-mystified language, is the ability to meet Reality in its most simple and direct form. When I let go of my judgments, my agenda, my emotive life, my attachment to my positive or negative self-image, I am naked, poor, and ready for The Big Truths. Without some form of contemplative surrender, I see little hope for breakthrough, for new ground, for moving beyond ideologies, the small mind, and the clutching ego. Action without contemplation is the work of hamsters and gerbils. It gets us though the day, it gives us a temporary sense of movement, but the world is not made new by spinning wheels going nowhere.  

Even religion has its own equivalent of hamster spinning wheels going nowhere. Since Jeremiah’s time, we clergy have been shouting, “The sanctuary, the sanctuary, the sanctuary!” And God keeps telling us through the prophets, “Only if you amend your behavior and your actions … if you treat each other fairly, if you do not exploit the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, if you do not shed innocent blood … only then will I be with you here in this place” (see Jeremiah 7:3–7).  

Contemplation without action is certainly not contemplation at all. Jesus seemed to think it might even be the greater danger: “If the light inside you is, in fact, darkness, what darkness that will be!” (Matthew 6:23). Concrete action in the world of relationships keeps us from a world of self-delusion about our own “enlightenment.”

Love and Power

Father Richard writes about how we can help mend the breach between the world as it is (power) and the world as it could be (love).

Both love and power are necessary building blocks of God’s peaceful realm on earth. Love utterly redefines the nature of power. Power without love is mere brutality (even in the church), and love without power is only the sentimentality of individual lives disconnected from the Whole. The gospel in its fullness holds love and power together, creating new hope and healing for the world. [1]

Power assumes that life is lived from the top down and from the outside in. It draws its strength from elites and enforcement. As such it is efficient, clean, practical, and works well on many short-term goals. The gospel offers us the inefficient, not-so-clean, multi-layered, long-haul way of love. Love is lived much more from the bottom up and from the inside out. It’s easy to see why even churches don’t believe in it. It does not give ego or institution any sense of control. Often it doesn’t even “work.”

Perhaps one way of stating the “spiritual emergency” that Christianity faces is that many clergy and church membership were trained from the top down and the outside in. Love was the message, but power/control was the method. Holiness was in great part defined as respect for outer mediating structures: the authorities that “knew,” the rituals that were automatic, the laws that kept you if you kept them, the Tradition that was supposed to be the unbroken consensus of many centuries and cultures. I am convinced that the best top-down Christianity can do is get us off to a good start and keep us inside the ballpark, which isn’t bad! But it is not close to satisfactory for the great struggles of faith that people today face in family, morality, and society.

The very depth and truth of the gospel has led people to a more daring and necessary conclusion: Human life is best lived from the inside out and the bottom up. Now love is both the message and the method. Somehow our experiences, our mistakes, our dead ends are not abhorrent to God but the very stuff of salvation. There is no other way to make sense of the Bible or of every human life. Are we secure enough now to admit that there is just as much truth, maybe even more, inside our own journeys and for those living on the margins? So-called “tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). Mature Christianity is perhaps when the inside meets the outside and the bottom is allowed to teach the top.

Authentic power is the ability to act from the fullness of who I am, the capacity to establish and maintain a relationship with people and things, and the freedom to give myself away. Sounds like pure gospel to me. [2]

CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault writes of hope as a quality of God’s mercy, fully available to us:  

Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. When our innermost being is attuned to this pulse it will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives. Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life—a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.  

And since that strength is, in fact, a piece of God’s purposiveness coursing like sap through our own being, it will lead us in the right way. It sweeps us along in the greater flow of divine life as God moves … toward the fulfillment of divine purpose which is the deeper, more intense, more subtle, more intimate revelation of the heart of God. [1]  

Through contemplative practice and surrender, Bourgeault believes we can experience God’s mystical hope and become a healing presence to the world: 

In the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope, we begin to experience and trust what it means to lay down self, to let go of ordinary awareness and surrender ourselves to the mercy of God. And as hope, the hidden spring of mercy deep within us, is released in that touch and flows out from the center, filling us with the fullness of God’s own purpose living itself into action, then we discover within ourselves the mysterious plentitude to live into action what our ordinary hearts and minds could not possibly sustain. In plumbing deeply the hidden rootedness of the whole, where all things are held together in the Mercy, we are released from the grip of personal fear and set free to minister with skillful means and true compassion to a world desperately in need of reconnection.  

Hope is not imaginary or illusory. It is that sonar by which the body of Christ holds together and finds its way. If we, as living members of the body of Christ, can surrender our hearts … and listen for that sonar with all we are worth, it will again guide us, both individually and corporately, to the future for which we are intended. And the body of Christ will live, and thrive, and hold us tenderly in belonging. [2] 

______________________________________

Sarah Young

Be still in the Light of My Presence, while I communicate Love to you. There is no force in the universe as powerful as My Love. You are constantly aware of limitations: your own and others’. But there is no limit to My Love; it fills all of space, time, and eternity.

    Now you see through a glass, darkly, but someday you will see Me face to Face. Then you will be able to experience fully how wide and long and high and deep is My Love for you. If you were to experience that now, you would be overwhelmed to the point of feeling crushed. But you have an eternity ahead of you, absolutely guaranteed, during when you can enjoy My Presence in unrestricted ecstasy. For now, the knowledge of My loving Presence is sufficient to carry you through each day.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

1st Corinthians 13:12 NLT

12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

Ephesians 3:16-19

16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Richard Rohr reflects on the prophetic task of integrating our individual and collective memories, which creates the conditions for hope within us:  

Memory is very often the key to understanding. Memory integrates, reconciles, and puts the individual members into perspective as a part of the whole…. For us to recognize what God is doing and therefore who God is, we must pray like Paul “that your love may more and more abound, both in understanding and wealth of experience” (Philippians 1:9)….  

Our remembrance that God has remembered us will be the highway into the future, the straight path of the Lord promised by John the Baptizer [see Luke 3:3–6]. Where there is no memory, there will be no pain, but neither will there be hope. Memory is the basis of both the pain and the rejoicing. We need to re-member both of them; it seems that we cannot have one without the other. Do not be too quick to “heal all of those memories,” unless that means also feeling them deeply and taking them all into our salvation history. God seems to be calling us to suffer the whole of reality, to remember the good along with the bad. Perhaps that is the course of the journey toward new sight and new hope. Memory creates a readiness for salvation, an emptiness to receive love, and a fullness to enjoy it….

Only in an experience and a remembering of the good do we have the power to stand against this death [caused by evil]. As Baruch tells Jerusalem, we must “rejoice that you are remembered by God” [5:5]. In that remembrance we have new sight, and the evil can be absorbed and blotted out.  

It takes a prophet of sorts, one who sees clearly, one who has traveled the highway before, one who remembers everything, to guide us beyond our blocked, selective, and partial remembering: “Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery; put on the splendor of glory from God forever” [Baruch 5:1]. Choose your friends carefully and listen to those who speak truth to you and help you remember all things….

Ask God for companions (sometimes Jesus alone!) who will walk the highway of remembering with you, filling in the valleys and leveling the mountains and hills, making the winding ways straight and the rough ways smooth. Then humankind shall see the salvation of God.  

The repentance that the Baptist calls us to is one of remembering, and of remembering together, and then bearing the consequences of that remembrance. It is no easy matter, for the burden of re-membering is great. But we must try for the sake of truth….

So “Up Jerusalem! Stand upon the heights; look to the east and see” your whole life. See what God has given freely. [Our] hope lies hidden in the past. “And rejoice that you are remembered by God” [Baruch 5:5].

_____________________________________

Sarah Young

Pour all of your energy into trusting Me. It is through trust you stay connected to me, aware of My Presence. Every step on your life – journey can be a step of faith. Baby steps of trust are simple for you; you can take them with almost unconscious ease. Giant steps are another matter altogether: leaping across chasms in semi-darkness, scaling cliffs of uncertainty, trudging through the valley of the shadow of death. These feats require sheer concentration, as well as utter commitment to Me.
    Each of My children is a unique blend of temperament, giftedness, and life experiences. Something that is a baby step for you may be a giant step for another person, and vice versa. Only I know the difficulty or ease of each segment of your journey. Beware of trying to impress others by acting as if your giant steps are only baby ones. Do not judge others who hesitate, in trembling fear, before an act would be easy for you. If each of My children would seek to please Me above all else, fear of others’ judgments would vanish, as would attempts to impress others. Focus your attention on the path just ahead of you and on the One who never leaves your side.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 23:4 (NLT)
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.

Matthew 7:1-2 (NLT)
Do Not Judge Others
1 “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. 2 For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.

Proverbs 29:25 (NLT)
25 Fearing people is a dangerous trap,
    but trusting the Lord means safety.