The Spirituality of Letting Go

God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you.
—Meister Eckhart, sermon on 1 John 4:9   

Father Richard describes the spiritual discipline of detachment as the practice of “letting go”:  

In the larger-than-life people I have met, I always find one common denominator: in some sense, they have all died before they died—and thus they are larger than death, too! Please think about that. At some point, they were led to the edge of their private resources, and that breakdown, which surely felt like dying, led them into a larger life. They went through a death of their various false selves and came out on the other side knowing that death could no longer hurt them. They fell into the Big Love and the Big Freedom—which many call God.  

Throughout most of history, the journey through death into life was taught in sacred space and ritual form, which clarified, distilled, and shortened the process. Today, many people don’t learn how to move past their fear of diminishment, even when it stares them down or gently invites them. This lack of preparation for the “pass over,” the absence of training in grief work and letting go, and our failure to entrust ourselves to a bigger life, have contributed to our culture’s spiritual crisis.  

All great spirituality is about letting go. Instead, we have made it to be about taking in, attaining, performing, winning, and succeeding. True spirituality echoes the paradox of life itself. It trains us in both detachment and attachment: detachment from the passing so we can attach to the substantial. But if we do not acquire good training in detachment, we may attach to the wrong things, especially our own self-image and its desire for security. [1] 

Each time I learn to let go of what I thought was necessary for my own happiness, I invariably find myself in a larger place, a larger space, a deeper union, a greater joy. I’m sorry I can’t prove that to you ahead of time. We only know it after the fact. I used to read every book I could as a young man thinking if I understood good theology, good philosophy, good psychology, I’d know how to live the so-called perfect life and it would show me how to open the door in front of me. Now, in the last season of my life, I realize that what’s in front of me is still largely darkness—but it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s because letting go has taught me that I can look back, not forward, back at the past of my life and I can truthfully say, “What have I ever lost by dying? What have I ever lost by losing?” I have fallen upward again and again. By falling I have found. By letting go I have discovered, and I find myself in these later years of my life still surprised that that is true. [2] 

God Is the Ground of Our Being

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. —Meister Eckhart, sermon on Romans 8:18 

In his writings and sermons, medieval mystic Meister Eckhart (1260–1327) counseled detachment from anything that would separate us from God, whom he understood as the very ground of our being. In the latest season of his podcast Turning to the Mystics, CAC teacher James Finley shares his understanding of Eckhart’s teachings: 

The guidance that Meister Eckhart offers us in his sermons attempts to help us deepen our experiential understanding of the depths of God’s presence in our lives. A foundational way that he helps us with this deepening is with his metaphor of the ground. The ground of God is the deepest depths of God. And in the generosity of God, the deepest depths of God are given to us as the deepest depths of ourselves, in our nothingness without God. Our ground and God’s ground is one ground. And hidden down in the depths of ourselves is a union that’s already present, waiting to be realized, lived, and shared. [1] 

What is this path along which we can actually, experientially abide in the oneness of the ground? The path cannot be a path of attaining because nothing’s missing. The ground is this infinite generosity of God completely being given to us as this depth of ourselves. Therefore, the path has to be one of becoming detached from what hinders us from realizing it. 

Eckhart is saying we can choose to live this way: in a kind of empty-handed, open process of constantly letting go of everything as having the final say in who we are. We acknowledge it [the trait, the preference, the condition], but we know it doesn’t have the final say in who we are. The more we continue in that way, we are in this Gelassenheit, which means being released from everything that hinders. A key phase of this is what Eckhart calls “the birth of the Word in the soul.” [2] What comes welling up out of the ordinariness of everything is the divinity of everything. What Eckhart is looking for is a habitual underlying state of this releasing, of this birthing. [3] 

He gives some practical strategies so that we can practice finding our way to the ground in day-by-day consciousness by being sensitive to certain tendencies in our heart. 

Every time we catch ourselves getting reactive, every time we catch ourselves acting as if the outcome of the situation has the authority to name who we are, we are to take a deep breath and remind ourselves that it’s not true. That there’s this hidden, unfelt, deep, abyss-like center in which we’re being unexplainably sustained in the midst of the circumstances. [4]  

Therefore the land shall mourn. —Hosea 4:3 

Ecologist and pastor Andi Lloyd writes of the Hebrew prophets’ understanding that the land itself grieves with its people:  

In the Hebrew Bible, mourning is an expansive practice. The people mourn, of course, but so do the land, the pastures, and the deep springs. Even gates and walls lament. The Hebrew verb abal, translated here [in Hosea] as “mourn,” also carries the meaning “to dry up, to wither.” Where a widow might put ashes on her head, the land and pastures and springs mourn by withering and drying up—all ways of speaking aloud the truth of inward grief.  

Therein lies the power of lament: to speak the truth that all is not well. Walter Brueggemann writes that grief, spoken aloud, is “the counter to denial.” [1] Lament is prophetic speech. It bears faithful witness to all that is not right with the world and to all that is not right with ourselves. To take the land’s mourning seriously is to ask about its grief—to wonder what truth the land’s grief spoke to the people in Hosea’s day and what truth it might speak to us now.… 

The land’s lament speaks a foundational ecological truth: when one part of creation goes awry, the whole suffers. The land’s grief at what the people have done points to the fundamental reality of our interconnection. Perhaps it is the boundedness of our bodies that makes it so easy to overlook the truth of our connectedness. We appear so discrete, so unitary, but we are not. 

Lloyd describes our interconnectedness with God, each other, and the earth on which we dwell:  

Our lives are held, connected, one to the other and all to God: we are bound up in a beautiful, multicolored, homespun fabric. That fabric is an ecological truth: it describes the deeply interconnected and interdependent world that I came to know as an ecologist. And that fabric is a theological truth, reflecting the world as God made it to be—a relational world, a connected world, an interdependent world.  

The land’s mourning speaks simultaneously of a vision of the world as it ought to be—that beautiful fabric—and the truth of the world as it is: too much injustice and too little love fraying the threads that hold us all. The land feels those fraying threads. The land grieves those fraying threads. The land mourns.  

Now, as then, the fabric that connects all of creation is badly torn: torn by manifold injustices wrought and perpetuated by the exploitative systems in which we live, torn by ideologies of scarcity that teach us to love too narrowly and too little. To mourn is to speak that truth to the lies that prop up the denial on which the status quo depends.….  

Mourning together, in true solidarity, we name the truth of what’s wrong. And in so doing, we begin to make it right. 

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Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Refreshing Lord Jesus, I come to You for rest and refreshment. My journey has been a strenuous, uphill climb, and I am bone-weary. Help me not to be ashamed of my exhaustion but to see it as an opportunity to rely more fully on You. Please keep reminding me that You can fit everything into a plan for good, including the things I wish were different. I need to just start with where I am right now—accepting that this is where You intend for me to be. As I lean on You for support, I can get through this day—one step, one moment at a time. My main responsibility is to remain attentive to You, asking You to guide me through the many decisions I must make. This sounds like an easy assignment, but I find it quite challenging. My desire to live in awareness of Your Presence goes against the grain of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Much of my weariness results from my constant battle with these opponents. But I won’t give up! Instead, I will hope in You—trusting that I will again praise You for the help of Your Presence. In Your worthy Name, Amen

ROMANS 8:28 AMPC; We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.

PROVERBS 3:5 AMPC; Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths.

PSALM 42:5 NASB; Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 116). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Through studying Francis of Assisi, Richard Rohr learned that weeping is a mode of being that relinquishes any need to be in control: 

When I was a Franciscan novice in 1961, I only went to my novice master once with a complaint. Every month, we had been encouraged to read another life of Saint Francis. I kept reading about Francis going off into a cave and crying. These books said he spent whole days in tears, weeping. Frankly, this made no sense to me, so I went to my novice master. I said, “What’s he crying about all the time? I don’t get it. I don’t know if I want to be a Franciscan.” My educated, rational mind already resisted that kind of losing, weakness, vulnerability. My novice master told me, “You won’t understand it now, but I promise you will later.” 

The mode of weeping, of crying, is different than the mode of fixing. It’s different than understanding. That’s why we often cry when we forgive. I’ve given up trying to make rhyme or reason or blame or who’s right or who’s wrong. The dualistic mind just goes back and forth seeking justification, seeking the right reason to hate or reject another person. We never find home base. Now I understand why Francis wept so much. When we go to the place of tears, and I don’t mean necessarily literally—I still don’t cry very easily myself, I’m sad to say—it’s an inner attitude where when I can’t fix it, when I can’t explain it, when I can’t control it, when I can’t even understand it, I can only forgive it. Let go of it, weep over it. It’s a different mode of being. [1] 

After her father’s death, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captures the embodied experience of “the weeping mode,” in which no attempts to “fix” or “move on” will do: 

Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. Why are my sides so sore and achy? It’s from crying, I’m told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue is unbearably bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart—my actual, physical heart, nothing figurative here—is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odds with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable. For weeks, my stomach is in turmoil, tense and tight with foreboding, the ever-present certainty that somebody else will die, that more will be lost. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Almighty God, Your Word tells me that You will fight for me; I need only to be still. Lord, You know how weary I am. I’ve been struggling just to keep my head above water, and my strength is running low. I need to stop trying so hard—and just let You fight for me. This is very difficult for me to do because my feelings tell me I must keep striving in order to survive. But I know You’re working on my behalf, and You are calling me to rest in You. So please help me to be still and know that You are God. Trying to calm my mind is even more challenging than quieting my body. In my battle to feel secure, I have relied too heavily on my own thinking. As I’ve struggled to feel in control, I’ve unwittingly elevated my mind to a position of self-reliance. Forgive me, Lord! I desperately need Your Spirit to work within me—controlling my mind more and more, soothing me from the inside out. While I spend time resting in the shadow of Your Almighty Presence, I’ll rejoice that You are fighting for me. In Your invincible Name, Jesus, Amen EXODUS 14:14; The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

PSALM 46:10 NKJV; 10 Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! 11 The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

ROMANS 8:6; The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

PSALM 91:1; He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 115). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

A Cry to God

For Ugandan theologian Emmanuel Katongole and peacemaker Chris Rice, lamentation is a profound cry to God. It echoes through the Bible and generations of all who suffer and ask, “How long, O Lord?”: 

We are called to learn the anguished cry of lament.  

Lament is the cry of Martin Luther King Jr. [1929–1968] from his kitchen table in Montgomery after hearing yet another death threat: “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right…. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now, I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. Now, I am afraid…. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.” [1]   

It was not a cry in isolation but rather a tradition King had learned from generations of African American families who were literally torn apart by slavery. The cry of lament had been passed down to him in the music of the Christian spiritual, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child … a long way from home.”  

Lament is the cry of the psalmists of Israel in exile who, feeling abandoned by God, demanded, “Where are you, Lord?” Or the psalmists who were bothered by God’s remarkably bad sense of timing: “Why are you taking so long?” “The poor are being crushed. The wicked are winning. Don’t you see it?” The twin sisters of Psalms are prayers of praise and lament, and they are always walking hand in hand, sometimes singing, sometimes crying.  

Lament is not despair. It is not whining. It is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world’s deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are. We are enjoined to learn to see and feel what the psalmists see and feel and to join our prayer with theirs. The journey of reconciliation is grounded in the practice of lament.  

The prophet Jeremiah writes of Rachel’s lamenting “voice in Ramah” that can only weep at the world’s suffering: 

A voice is heard in Ramah,  
lamentation and bitter weeping. 
Rachel is weeping for her children;  
she refuses to be comforted for her children, 
because they are no more. (Jeremiah 31:15) 

The voice from Ramah refuses to be consoled. These are profound words in a world full of easy ways of consoling ourselves. Rachel’s cry refuses to spiritualize, explain away, ignore or deny the depth and truth of suffering in this world. She rejects soothing words and “can’t we all just get along” sentiments. Her refusal takes seriously the rupture and wounds of the world as well as the deep cost of seeking healing. It is a protest against the world as it is and the brokenness that seems so inevitable. Rachel allows the truth to shake her to the very core. And she is remembered for this.

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.

¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

²² This righteousness is given through faith in^[a] Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,

Surely you have granted him unending blessings
    and made him glad with the joy of your presence.

Poet Ann Weems (1934–2016) suffered tragedy firsthand when her twenty-one-year-old son was murdered. She poured her profound grief into writing her own versions of lament psalms. Here she takes heart from Jesus’ own weeping:  

Jesus wept,  
              and in his weeping, 
                   he joined himself forever 
                   to those who mourn.
       He stands now throughout all time,  
               this Jesus weeping, 
                        with his arms about the weeping ones: 
       “Blessed are those who mourn,  
              for they shall be comforted.” 
            He stands with the mourners, 
                   for his name is God-with-us. 
Jesus wept. 
             “Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted.” Someday.  
        Someday God will wipe the tears from Rachel’s eyes. 
                          In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,  
                          there is a deafening alleluia 
                          rising from the souls  
                          of those who weep, 
                          and of those who weep with those who weep. 
                          If you watch, you will see 
                          the hand of God 
                          putting the stars back in their skies 
                          one by one.  

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,

They will have no fear of bad news;
    their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.

You will keep in perfect and constant peace the one whose mind is steadfast [that is, committed and focused on You—in both inclination and character], Because he trusts and takes refuge in You [with hope and confident expectation].

How lonely sits the city, that once was full of people…. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks. —Lamentations 1:1, 2 

The Psalms and the books of the Hebrew prophets honor the deep, public grief of lamentation as holy prayer. Brian McLaren reflects on Jeremiah’s prophetic message and our need to lament today: 

The work of prophets is to warn, to warn people of the inevitable consequences of their foolish or immoral actions. It will be the end of the world as you know it, the prophets say, unless you rethink your current assumptions, values, and priorities, unless you become ready to change your way of life. Usually, the people don’t listen.  

Jeremiah lived long enough to see the result in 586 [BCE]. And it caused him to write this poem of public lament. Why is public lament so important? Well, imagine you’re a Hebrew slave in Babylon. Whenever you think of what you’ve lost, you weep. Your tears keep alive the folly of your people in not listening to the prophet’s warnings. Your tears keep alive your rage against the cruelty and domination of the Babylonians. Your tears keep alive a desire for change to regain your freedom, to return some day to your homeland. Guess who doesn’t want you to feel that grief? Guess who wants you to accept your new reality and surrender to it forever? Guess who wants you to put on a happy face in public? Guess who wants to defeat you into emotional numbness rather than emotional aliveness? Your oppressors, those who profit from your compliance, those who want you to be happy and well-adjusted drones in their system. They don’t want you to feel your own pain.  

Think of the prophets of recent decades: Rachel Carson warning of a silent spring, Dr. King warning of America’s unpaid promissory note coming due, César Chávez calling us to stop oppressing and exploiting farmworkers, Pope Francis warning us to hear the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor, Bishop Gene Robinson calling us to see every LGBTQ+ person as God’s beloved child, Dr. William Barber warning us that our national heart needs a moral defibrillator to shock us out of our coma, and Greta Thunberg warning us that the earth is on fire. The prophets warn us, and too few listen; when the inevitable consequences come, the prophets invite us not to let our opportunity pass by without being named, mourned, and lamented. 

Father Richard often defines contemplation as meeting all the reality we can bear. To help us meet and bear reality, the prophets say, mourn privately and lament publicly.… Feel the surge of divine grief, the groaning of the Holy Spirit deep within you, and let those groans of loss become the groans of labor so a better world can be born from our failure, beginning with a better you who is still capable of seeing, and feeling, and meeting all the reality we can bear. 

Complaining to God

I live / in the open mindedness / of not knowing enough / about anything. / 
It was beautiful.… / How quietly, / and not with any assignment from us, / 
or even a small hint of understanding, / everything that needs to be done / 
is done. —Mary Oliver, “Luna” 

Richard Rohr considers lamentation’s spiritual power: 

There is one strong form of biblical prayer that has been almost completely overlooked by the Christian tradition, maybe because it feels more like pre-prayer than what we usually think of as prayer at all. Let’s call it lamentation or grief work, and it is almost perfectly described in the Mary Oliver epigraph above.  

Lamentation prayer is when we sit and speak out to God and one another—stunned, sad, and silenced by the tragedy and absurdity of human events. It might actually be the most honest form of prayer. It takes great trust and patience … so I think it is actually profound prayer, but most of us have not been told that we could, or even should, “complain” to God. I suspect we mustcomplain like Job, Judith, and Jeremiah, or we do not even know what to pray for—or how to pray. Or we do not suffer the necessary pain of this world, the necessary sadness of being human. 

About one-third of the Psalms are psalms of “lament,” but they have been the least used in Catholic and Protestant liturgies. We think, perhaps, they express sinful anger or negativity, when grief and loss are actually something quite different. We think they make us appear weak, helpless, and vulnerable, and most of us don’t want to go there. We think, perhaps, they show a lack of faith, whereas they are probably the summit of faith. So we quickly resort to praise and thanksgiving, even when it is often dishonest emotion. We forget that Jesus called weeping a “blessed” state (Matthew 5:4). We forget that only one book of the Bible is named after an emotion: Jeremiah’s book of “Lamentations.” [1] 

Peace activist John Dear asks what Jesus’ teaching “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” might mean for us in times of global injustice: 

“Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus [says]. Millions of people in our world mourn because their loved ones have been killed by war, starvation, or injustice. Do we grieve for those who die in war? For those incinerated by nuclear weapons and bombs? For the [many thousands] who die each day from starvation? Do we allow the sorrow of the world’s poor to touch our hearts? Do we look the suffering of the world in the eye … or do we turn away in denial and thus postpone our own inevitable confrontation with grief? Jesus promises that, as we mourn the death of our sisters and brothers around the world, God consoles us, and we find a peace—even a joy that we did not know possible. [2] 

Do Not Worry

²² Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. ²³ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. ²⁴ Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! ²⁵ Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life^[a]?

1 Peter 5:7 In-Context

All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

²⁰ All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. ²¹ Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

The apostle Paul teaches that the resurrection confirms what the incarnation anticipates—Christ is another name for everything. Father Richard writes: 

The core message of the incarnation of God in Jesus is that the Divine Presence is here, in us and in all of creation, and not only “over there” in some far-off realm. The early Christians came to call this seemingly new and available Presence “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).  

Read 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, ³ For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that He was seen by ^[a]Cephas, then by the twelve. ⁶ After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have ^[b]fallen asleep. ⁷ After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. ⁸ Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time; …… where Paul describes how Christ appeared a number of times to his apostles and followers after Jesus’ death. The four Gospels do the same thing, describing how the Risen Christ transcended doors, walls, spaces, water, air, and times, eating food, and sometimes even bilocating, but always interacting with matter. While all of these accounts ascribe a kind of physical presence to Christ, it always seems to be a different kind of embodiment. Or, as Mark says right at the end of his Gospel, “he showed himself but under another form” (16:12). This is a new kind of presence, a new kind of embodiment, and a new kind of godliness.  

This, I think, is why the people who witnessed these apparitions of Christ seemed to finally recognize him, but not usually immediately. Seeing and recognizing are not the same thing. And isn’t this how it happens in our own lives? First we see a candle flame, then a moment later it “blazes” for us when we allow it to hold a personal meaning or message. We see a homeless person, and the moment we allow our heart space to open toward them, they become human, dear, or even Christ. Every resurrection story seems to strongly affirm an ambiguous—yet certain—presence in very ordinary settings, like walking on the road to Emmaus with a stranger, roasting fish on the beach, or one who appeared like a gardener to the Magdalene. [1] These moments from Scripture set a stage of expectation and desire that God’s presence can be seen in the ordinary and the material, and we do not have to wait for supernatural apparitions. We Catholics call this a sacramental theology, where the visible and tactile are the primary doorway to the invisible. This is why each of the formal Sacraments of the church insists on a material element like water, oil, bread, wine, the laying on of hands, or the absolute physicality of marriage itself.  

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

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Sarah Young, Jesus List

Prince of Peace, I come to You, feeling weary and burdened. I want to spend time resting in Your Presence. I need Your Peace continually, just as I need You each moment. When things are going smoothly in my life, it’s easy to forget how dependent on You I really am. Then, when I encounter bumps in the road, I tend to become anxious and upset. Eventually, this revives my awareness of my need for You, and I return to You—seeking Your Peace. I’m thankful that You give me this glorious gift, but it’s hard for me to receive it until I calm down. How much better it would be to stay close to You at all times! Please help me remember that You, my Prince, are Mighty God! All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to You. Whenever I’m experiencing hard times, I can come to You and tell You my troubles. But I need to come humbly, acknowledging how great and wise You are. Rather than shaking my fist at You or insisting that You do things my way, I can pray these wonderful words of David: “I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hands.” In Your majestic Name, Jesus, Amen

ISAIAH 9:6 AMPC; For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father [of Eternity], Prince of Peace.

MATTHEW 11:28; Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

MATTHEW 28:18; And Jesus came and spake unto them To the eleven disciples and apostles; for though there might be so large a number as before observed, yet the following words were only spoken to the apostles: saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth

PSALM 31:14–15; But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.” 15 My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 109). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Matthew Fox is one of the primary contemporary theologians to articulate a renewed vision of the universal or cosmic Christ. Here, he focuses on the Resurrection’s cosmic implications: 

Who does not seek Resurrection? Who does not seek a full and fuller life? Did Jesus not promise, “I have come that you may have life, life in abundance” (John 10:10)? How am I Resurrection … [and] Life for others? 

To be Resurrection for another I need to be Resurrection for myself. That means I cannot dwell in [despair] and death and anger and oppression and submission and resentment and pain forever. I need to wake up, get up, rise up, put on life even when days are dark and my soul is down and shadows surround me everywhere…. I have to listen to the voice that says:

“Be resurrection.”… “Be born again. And again. And again. Rise up and be counted. Rise up and imbibe the good news deeply—that death does not conquer, that life, not death, has the last word….” 

Fox insists that resurrection carries both grace and responsibility:  

Resurrection is a commitment to hope and being reborn. It is a commitment to creativity, to the Spirit who “makes all things new” (Revelation 21:5). Resurrection is the Spirit’s work. It is the life of the Spirit.  

And what about Life? How am I Life? How living and alive am I? How much in love with life am I? Can anyone or any event separate me from my love of life? Paul the mystic asks (and then answers), “Who shall separate us from the love of God? Neither death nor life, height nor depth, neither present nor future” (Romans 8:35, 38). Is my curiosity alive? My gratitude? My mind? My imagination? My laughter and sense of humor? My creativity? My powers of generosity and compassion? My powers for continually generating and regenerating life?  

Many mystics … say, “God is life.” Thus to say, “I am fully alive and fully in love with life” means that I am feeling fully the God presence in me—I am in love with God who is Life; the living God. And to say “I am the Life” is to say “I am God,” or at least a part of God, a son or daughter of God, an expression, an offspring, a manifestation, an incarnation of God. Another Christ.  

How are we doing? Are we growing in God-like-ness? In God action? In works of justice and compassion and healing and celebrating? To celebrate life is to celebrate God, to thank God for life, to worship. How are we doing in expressing the “sheer joy” of God (Aquinas) [1] as well as the justice of God?  

Yes, I am, yes, we are, the Resurrection and the Life. We bring aliveness and rebirth and plenty of hope into the world, however [distressing] the news becomes. That is what it means to believe in Easter Sunday and the Resurrection. We become Resurrection and the Life. Christ rises anew.  

_______________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Mighty Jesus, When things don’t go as I would like, help me to accept the situation immediately. I realize that fantasizing about how things might have gone is a waste of time and energy. Moreover, I’ve learned that if I indulge in feelings of regret, they can easily spill over into resentment. I need to remember that You are sovereign over all my circumstances—and humble myself under Your mighty hand, casting all my anxiety on You. I can rejoice in what You are doing in my life, even though it’s beyond my understanding. You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In You I have everything I need—for this life and for the life yet to come. I don’t want to let the impact of the world shatter my thinking or draw my attention away from You. The challenge I face each moment is to keep my eyes on You—no matter what is going on around me. When You are central in my thinking, I can view circumstances from Your perspective. This enables me to walk with You along the path of life, experiencing Joy in Your Presence. In Your matchless Name, Amen

1 PETER 5:6–7 NASB; Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you.

JOHN 14:6 NKJV; Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me

HEBREWS 12:2 NLT. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. * Because of the joy* awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.

PSALM 16:11. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 108). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Author Judy Cannato believes we experience Christ’s resurrection through ongoing growth and transformation:  

[Jesus] engaged death with every bit of consciousness and freedom that were his, and what we all discovered as a result is that death—while inevitable, while altering our dreams and causing us to let go of everything—does not have the final word. There is always—always—resurrection. And what is resurrection for us, in the context of the new universe story? It is a transformation in consciousness, an experience of transcendence in which we live out of the connectedness that is our truth. As we continue to evolve in consciousness, continue to emerge as more and more capable lovers, we share in the resurrection of Christ. We not only walk in the Light, we become light for others. Even little resurrections that come after choosing to die to fear and egocentricity release the Spirit. When we engage in a lifetime of death and resurrections as Jesus did, we become ever more empowered to do the work God asks us to do.  

Life and death are a single mystery. That is what the Paschal Mystery teaches us. Death is inevitable—but so is resurrection. We can be sure that dyings will intrude upon our lives, and we may have some choice about how we can respond to their coming. We can be awake and watchful for the resurrections as well, for the creative ways that new life streams into our lives even in the midst of death. Like supernova explosions that shatter every recognizable fragment of life [and scatter elements for new stars], we are capable of transcendence, capable of never allowing death to have the final say. [1] 

Theologian and mystic Howard Thurman (1899–1981) poetically described the surprise of resurrection and renewal:  

It is ever a new thing, a glad surprise, the stirring of life at the end of winter. One day there seems to be no sign of life and then almost overnight, swelling buds, delicate blooms, blades of grass, bugs, insects—an entire world of newness everywhere. It is the glad surprise at the end of winter. Often the same experience comes at the end of a long tunnel of tragedy and tribulation. It is as if a person stumbling in the darkness, having lost their way, finds that the spot at which they fall is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness into light. Such is the glad surprise. This is what Easter means in the experience of the [human] race. This is the resurrection! It is the announcement that life cannot ultimately be conquered by death, … that there is strength added when the labors increase, that multiplied peace matches multiplied trials, that life is bottomed by the glad surprise. Take courage, therefore: 

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,  
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,  
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,  
Our Father’s full giving is only begun. [2] 

 7  ^f“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, 

^gwhose trust is the Lord.

“And we know that all that happens to us is working for our good if we love God and are fitting into his plans.”

Psalm 40:2 NIV“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.

A New Energy and Joy

Contemplative theologian Beatrice Bruteau (1930–2014) describes the profound effect that our participation in the eternal life of God can have on us: 

Now that we know that our “roots” are “immortal” … we are reconciled to taking up again the work of the world. We come again into everyday life. But the transformation is still going on, both in ourselves and in the world that we touch. It has begun in earnest and is proceeding. What is different is that we are no longer concerned to gain eternal life for ourselves. We have that, we know it, we are sure of it. And because of that confidence, “faith,” we turn our attention and concern to manifesting the divine life in the forms of cosmic reality. We are looking now from a point of view that is rooted in our sense of our own reality in God. It makes everything look quite new to us, and our new ability to offer love-and-meaning energy to our world helps it to become “new” (Romans 6:4; Revelation 21:5).  

For Bruteau, resurrection starts in our lives now and transforms our engagement with the world: 

Coming back to our small private selves in very ordinary daily life, we also incarnate the Wondrous Being. One of the most striking things that happens to us in our resurrection of the body is that tiny, trivial things seem beautiful and marvelous—which, indeed, they are, as we recognize when we take time to study them carefully. Such a humble and common thing as water is almost miraculous in its varied properties, so essential to our survival…. What artistry and orderly connections we find all about us, how astonishing the complex world is.  

When we take a little time to remember to look, to marvel, we find that there are sources of joy, of esthetic delight, of quiet happiness on every hand….  

Our joy is not confined to ourselves but radiates out to all. Just as Jesus intended to enter into us, that his joy might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11), so neither can we contain our joy: our peace and happiness envelop all those around us. When we interact with people—or circumstances—we do not feel drained of energy, as we did when we were still obliged to protect and defend our ego-self. Perceiving creative action and interaction as reality itself, we feel ourselves fully living, full of the richness of God’s life, the interior fountain that never fails.  

The divine life now becomes natural for us, no longer something to be compared to an alternative. We are really “saved” when we no longer think of ourselves as “saved,” because there is no alternative. This is when profound incarnation takes places. The reality of God is intensely perceived as present in everything.… The kingdom is hidden right here, even in the passions and illusions of our superficial consciousness. When we are shaken awake, we see it.