The Next Right Step 

Thursday, November 12, 2026

Author and pastor Cameron Trimble describes how the wilderness experience of the ancient Israelites is a model for us today:

We are living through one of those rare moments in history when large numbers of people feel that a chapter is ending, even though no one can yet describe what comes next…. We don’t really know where we are on this journey, and that uncertainty can feel overwhelming.… I’m reminded of the book of Exodus, which tells us that Moses led his flock “to the farthest end of the wilderness” (Exodus 3:1).…

Most of us think of the wilderness as a place people end up when something has gone wrong. We imagine it as a barren stretch between where we were and where we hope to be, a place of delay, testing, and endurance.

The rabbis suggest something different: The wilderness is where people are shaped into a community. The Israelites went into the desert carrying the pain of slavery. They brought habits of fear, scarcity, and dependence. They wanted freedom but still thought like captives. The wilderness didn’t just change where they were. It changed who they were.

Maybe that’s why the question, “What is ours to do?” feels so hard right now. We think the main challenge is figuring out the right action, but maybe the real challenge is letting this moment shape us.…

Many of us feel overwhelmed by everything happening in the world. There’s a constant flow of breaking news about crises everywhere. We see suffering as it happens. We watch institutions fail to act and leaders use fear for their own benefit. We know things are serious, but we don’t know how it will all turn out. This can leave us feeling stuck and powerless.

People often call this feeling confusion, but I think it’s also exhaustion. There’s a difference. Confusion means not having enough information. Exhaustion comes from carrying more than anyone should have to. The wilderness takes away the idea that we can hold everything together by ourselves. Maybe that’s one of its gifts.

[Mystic and teacher Howard] Thurman [1899–1981] often talked about how important our inner life is for staying present with the pain in the world. He taught that justice movements need more than just plans. They need people who have learned to listen deeply, stay grounded, and act from conviction instead of just reacting.

The wilderness teaches us to listen in this way. It slows us down so we can hear what fear has been covering up. It reminds us that discernment isn’t the same as making decisions. Many people look for certainty, but what they really need is attunement. Making decisions is about picking between choices. Discernment is about noticing what life is asking from us right now….

The Israelites did not receive a map through the wilderness. They received manna for a single day. It was enough for the next step and enough for the journey that lay immediately before them.

Maybe wisdom still comes to us like that: just enough to help us take the next step.

Reference:
Cameron Trimble, “When the Horizon Disappears,” Oneing 14, What Is Ours to Do? (CAC Publishing, 2026): 92, 93, 95, 97. Available in print and PDF download.

Image credit and inspiration: Izzy Spitz, “hands at work,” 2026, mixed media, felt pen on paper, Placitas, New Mexico. Click here to enlarge image. We each respond to divine invitations in our own way, putting our hands in the soil and planting seeds of care without knowing what will grow, but trusting that each one carries life.

“Be Perfect”? Delusion, Exhaustion, or Graced

Three Responses to Jesus’ call to “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

BRADLEY JERSAKSEP 10

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Question:

In light of Christ’s revelation of God’s saving grace, how are we to understand his statement, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”? (Matthew 5:48)

The “Perfect Man”

Was there ever a “perfect man”—fully sanctified and completely sinless? 

Bp. Chris E.W. Green told me a story (I hope I get it write) about a Holiness Pentecostal Church where “complete sanctification” in this life was the dream of every member. He described the annual New Year’s Eve service where people would confess their sins publicly… but one man, sitting aloof in his own bring-you-own lawn-chair would announce, “I went the whole year without sinnin’… again.” 

This occurred year after year until one day, he proclaimed, “I went the whole year without sinnin’… again… But the Lord tol’ me if I stayed here, I would.” Then he stood, folded up his lawn-chair, and left. For good. 

I may not have this tale just right, but why ruin a good story with the facts. 

Deluded Perfectionism or Exhausted Failure

Imagine trying to be the perfect human! Imagine striving to be perfect like Jesus was perfect! Imagine trying to be as perfect as God himself! If we were to take Jesus literally there, we’d either be deluded in our perfectionism or exhausted failures all the time. It’s just not possible and even seems completely pointless.

Religious or moral perfectionism makes for a fragile faithfulness … fraught with peril and freighted with crushing burdens. The self-righteous are forever just one slip from moral catastrophe and spiritual despondency, or so you’d think. I call this “spiritual constipation.” Surely, there’s a laxative for that! 

Grace as a Loophole

For this reason, some of the great Reformers such as Martin Luther preached that the impossibility of perfect obedience was the whole point of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He theorized that the impossibly high standards of righteousness would lead us to despair and convince us to cast ourselves on grace. This reading became a loophole that would allow us to not follow Jesus—if by follow we mean obey (which became a swearword for many in the grace movement). Worse, some preachers even asserted that Jesus’ teachings were “old covenant” and that endeavouring to obey them denied the gospel! 

I’m not so sure. Consider the end of Jesus’ message, where he insists that the wise person who builds their house on the rock hears Jesus’ words and puts them into practice. As James says in his letter (a beautiful commentary on Jesus’ teaching), “be doers of the word and not hearers only.” So, I’d rather not simply ride the pendulum from perfectionism all the way to finding the loopholes to ignoring Jesus.

“Be Perfect” = Telos, fulfillment, completion, maturity

How then shall we hear the words, “Be perfect.” It seems that this translation creates confusion because the word for perfect there is derived from the Greek telos … usually translated as “end” as in fulfillment, completion or maturity. The telos of an acorn is an oak tree. The telos of a lamb is a sheep. And the telos of mature humanity is to reflect the image of God, revealed in Christ as self-giving love, grace and mercy, generosity and hospitality. In other words, Jesus is challenging his disciples to “grow up” as children who imitate their Father’s graciousness.

This becomes more obvious in context … here’s the passage in The Message Bible:

• “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.
• “This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
• “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” Matthew 5:43-48 (The Message)

Growing in Generous Grace via Inner Transformation

So our telos does not look like moralistic perfection or puritanical judgments. Growing by grace into our telos looks exactly like the generous grace of our heavenly Father, achieved not through striving to look right or be right, but through surrender to the transforming grace of God’s indwelling Spirit. The more we receive the Light of God’s generous grace, the more our lives will refract that Light into the world as God’s indiscriminate kindness.

In the end, our takeaway is that the telos Jesus calls for is Spirit-empowered, Abba-like grace, not a hopeless and self-defeating perfectionism. Jesus assures his followers that growing into that life of grace comes as we follow him on the Jesus Way.

Part of the Whole

Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Author and activist Liza J. Rankow considers how intergenerational service is the fruit of understanding our universal connection:  

In the subtropical forests of northeastern India, there is a network of living root bridges that traverse the steep terrain across valleys and rivers. Generation after generation, the Indigenous peoples of the region have twisted and woven the aerial roots of giant ficus trees, guiding their growth from one bank of the river to join with roots from the opposite shore. Over decades, the roots become thick and strong enough to walk upon. These bridges can last for centuries but require the tending of each generation, weaving in new young roots to shape and sustain them. When the monsoons come, and gentle streams turn into raging torrents, the bridges hold, and the people can pass safely across them….  

Each individual root makes an essential contribution but is insufficient alone. The bridge requires their union in a common purpose. A similar commitment and collaborative strength are needed now as we cross the hazardous terrain of this epochal turning.  

These times are calling us to reach toward one another, to recognize the truth of who we are and who we can become, together. To take love seriously—as if the world depends on it. Because, of course, it does. “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression,” wrote scholar and activist bell hooks (1952–2021). “The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” [1]…  

The culture of colonial modernity tells us we are separate, atomized beings, and we are now experiencing the conditions that ideology creates. However, the nature of Life is oneness. We are woven together with all that is. Remembering this shifts everything. Our capacity as agents of transformation is amplified through our belonging within the web of all being. And just like with a spider’s web, where a tap anywhere transmits vibration to the whole of it, every touch upon the web of Life vibrates everywhere. [2] Every act of love and justice ripples out farther than we will ever know. And every act of violation likewise echoes beyond our reckoning.… 

Times of crisis call us to our soul’s intent, the reason we are alive now, at this crucial moment in history. We can move beyond what is comfortable or familiar, to let the qualities of “who we are, really” shine forth. Through this, we inspire others to remember and live into the deeper truth that lies within them, and that in turn ignites an ever-wider awakening.  

We may never see our impact on the life of another or understand how pivotal the smallest acts can be. But I truly believe that if we are guided by the intention to be a beneficial presence, if we commit ourselves to making a positive difference in the world, Life will not waste our willingness. 

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From Diana Butler Bass

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Today is a solemn holiday in many countries. In the United States, it is Veterans Day. Others call this Remembrance Day.

I want to take a moment and paraphrase a question once uttered by Frederick Douglass about a different American holiday. Douglass asked, What to a Slave is the Fourth of July? 

But that’s not the only American holiday that needs rethinking. 

I humbly submit another question for consideration: What to a Christian is the Eleventh of November?

On November 11, 1918, the Great War, the conflict we know as World War I, ended. Earlier that day, the Allies and Germany signed a peace treaty calling for an armistice between combatants at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year.

A year later, the British and French commemorated Armistice Day, and a solemn annual memorial continued thereafter every November 11. Eventually, the day was re-christened as Remembrance Day throughout the British Commonwealth and as Veterans Day in the United States.

November 11, however, wasn’t always a day to remember lives lost in a war between the great imperial powers of Europe. Across Europe, November 11 was an important festival on the Christian calendar — St. Martin’s Day, or Martinmas, in memory of a pious bishop of the early church, Martin of Tours.

Martin of Tours (ca. 316-397) was born into a pagan family, but as a young man expressed interest in Christianity. His father, a soldier, was appalled by the religion and forced Martin to join the Roman army. While a soldier, Martin’s curiosity about Christianity grew and he became a catechumen, a “learner” of the faith.

According to legend, Martin was on patrol when he saw a naked beggar on the road. Moved with compassion, he dismounted his horse, took off his military cloak, tore it in half, and covered the man. In a dream that night, Jesus appeared to Martin and said, “Martin, a simple catechumen, covered me with this garment.”

Martin decided to be baptized and asked to be released from the army. “I am Christ’s soldier,” he maintained, “I am not allowed to fight.” He refused to wield the sword for Caesar.

Martin didn’t invent this position. He stated what most early Christians believed. Before theologians made a case for just war, Christians were primarily pacifists. Indeed, no record exists that Christians served in the Roman army before 170. The overwhelming consensus of the early church was that war was killing in service to the empire, killing was murder, and murder was wrong.

Martin left the army and became a monk, a priest, and finally, a bishop. He was known for peacemaking and his generosity toward the poor, especially children.

In the context of his own time, Martin’s insistence that faith in Christ precluded soldiering was both important and profound. Indeed, when he refused the sword, the church itself was cozying up to empire. In 312, Constantine legalized Christianity; by the end of the century, Christianity had become the imperial religion. The Roman army became warriors for both empire and church. 

But Martin embodied the ancient pacifist way of Jesus — the practice of his first followers — as the church slowed accommodated itself to the Empire. While the institutions of Christianity forgot the old path, Martin remembered. 

After his death, Martin was made a saint. His festival coincided with the end of harvest in northern Europe — and the day came to celebrate gratitude, abundance, and gift giving. It focused on the poor in memory of Martin’s good deeds (notice: the western church minimized the anti-military part of the story!). Martinmas was one of the most popular of all Christian holy days through the Middle Ages and into early modern Europe. 

Martin’s story did, however, lend itself to one peacemaking tradition — the practice of signing peace treaties on his feast day. Several wars ended with peace made in honor of St. Martin, including signings in 1500, 1606, 1648, 1865, and 1918. The ancient celebration of this Roman soldier turned conscientious objector was the reason why Armistice Day wound up on November 11.

But the memory of St. Martin has largely faded. And now, Armistice Day-Remembrance Day-Veterans Day is mostly a solemn commemoration of soldiers who served more modern empires at war, not to remember a soldier who rejected empire to serve the poor and outcast.

History takes us down some unanticipated pathways. And November 11 is surely one of its weirder journeys. Few recall Martin’s mercy on the road, the surrender of his military cloak to cover a poor man, and his rejection of violence on behalf of an empire. Instead, we extol military service as the highest form of sacrifice to a state. One of the most moving stories of nonviolence and anti-nationalism in the history of Christianity has become a holiday to valorize soldiers as national saints. 

Both the poor and peacemaking have been lost along the way.*

In a world of wars and warriors, we do well to remember what has been forgotten. 

*Commonwealth countries do more to remember peacemaking on this day than does the United States.

The work of the Center for Action and Contemplation is made possible thanks to the generosity of people like you. Thank you for your partnership and trust.

Support This Work

Loving a World We Have Yet to See 

Dear Dave (& COFew) ,

Ever since I read a novel about Saint Francis when I was fourteen, I knew I wanted to be a friar. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) seemed to understand something that I was only beginning to glimpse: God is not somewhere else. God is present in all things, being revealed in all creation. 

Francis lived in remarkable harmony with the world. He knew that care for the earth, justice for the poor, and nonviolence were not separate concerns. They were all expressions of one reality. What intuitive genius! I am blessed to include Francis among my spiritual teachers.  

We are always being shaped by lives we did not witness and people we never know. We carry our parents and grandparents within us, along with generations stretching farther back than we can imagine. We have also been impacted by the lives of the saints and mystics throughout history, whether we know them by name or not.

The Christian tradition gives us a beautiful name for this: the communion of saints. Past, present, and future are not nearly as separate as our ordinary minds imagine them to be. Once we begin to see ourselves as part of this much larger story, we can take our lives very seriously—we are part of the Great Whole—and not take ourselves too seriously at all—we are only one small part of the Great Whole. What freedom!

We do not have to fix everything. We do not have to complete the work ourselves. We only have to listen for what is ours to do and then have the courage to do it.  

Contemplation helps us live from this deeper place. It returns us to the Divine center beneath all our striving, fear, and need for control. From there, we can participate in something much larger than ourselves—the healing of our world today and planting seeds of love for people we will never know.  

I was touched by the way one reader of the Daily Meditations described this kind of discernment: 

“I will retire from teaching at the end of this school year but, at the age of sixty, I know I am not done. I feel God is calling me to something more—but what? I feel called to more activism, but so much needs to be done. Where does one begin? I now see that I need to take a longer view and not push this process of discernment. I am grateful for the assurance that leaving teaching is not a failure, but an opportunity to grow anew wherever God leads me.“

I suspect many of us know that question: With so much suffering in the world, where does one begin?  

We are grateful for the hundreds of thousands of spiritual seekers like you who allow the Daily Meditations to accompany you as you listen for what is yours to do and as part of your contemplative practice, seeking loving guidance from spiritual ancestors and contemporary companions on the journey. 

Twice per year, we pause our usual Daily Meditations and ask for your financial support. If the CAC’s work, including the Daily Meditations, has supported you on your spiritual journey, please consider making a gift.   

If you are able, we invite you to consider making a monthly gift as a member of the Bonaventure Circle of Support, CAC’s monthly giving community. Monthly gifts help provide scholarships to learners, expand the programs we offer, and make transformative wisdom more accessible for future generations.   

The world has changed in unimaginable ways since I was a small boy in Kansas, and it will change again and again. We can’t know for certain what is coming, but we have an opportunity in our lifetimes to love the world we have not yet seen.  

Somehow, our occupation and vocation as believers in this time is to restore and strengthen the Divine center in us. From there, we will know what is ours to do—and have the courage to do it.  

Peace and every good, 

Fr. Richard Rohr 

Founder, Center for Action and Contemplation 

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a faith we’re meant to outgrow

trading control for the cruciform path

CHUCK DEGROAT NOV 8

From ancient spiritual writers to contemporary developmental psychologists, there is a long tradition that recognizes unique seasons within a journey to maturity. 

Irenaeus, Bernard of Clairvaux, Jan van Ruysbroeck, Teresa of Avila, and others from centuries past intuited what James Fowler, Janet Hagberg, Robert Guelich, Walter Brueggemann, and Richard Rohr have made more widely known—growth isn’t an up-and-to-the-right rocket-ship of righteousness. It’s a long-and-winding wilderness journey, to be sure, but it’s a journey that unfolds in a discernible pattern. And it’s a journey that invites us to reckon with everything within us prone to control, certainty, and ego-centricity for the sake of our maturity—aimed at a cruciform life in communion with God. 

That sounds beautiful—but we’re too often stuck, personally and collectively, at the stage of control, certainty, and ego-centricity. And sometimes this is baptized as godly strength, even a masculine ideal in a weak and woke world—which tells me that we’ve lost the Storyline, we’re missing the ultimate aim, and we’ve traded the strength-through-weakness of Jesus for the power-to-conquer of Caesar. 

Many models of the unfolding journey see something similar—an early spiritual journey which requires some strengthening of the ego. Just as a child learns to stand on her own two feet and declare her presence to her parents, so we learn early in the journey to develop convictions, establish boundaries, make commitments, and grow in competence. 

Early on, we’re often formed within communities with clear theological frameworks and moral certainties and a clear sense of where they stand—and this is quite necessary for the formation of selfhood. But this isn’t a destination, it’s only a passageway on the journey. Conviction is meant to deepen into wisdom. Competence is meant to ripen into service to others. Control is meant to soften into humility. Even boundaries are meant to cultivate generosity. 

However, what I’ve observed personally and culturally over decades is that this early scaffolding of the faith is mistaken for maturity itself. In fact, the scaffolding meant to be a support is turned into a sword. What was meant to nurture and develop early in the faith journey is traded for self-protection and defense. 

Why? 

One reason is that we lack wise elders in the cruciform way. 

Ancient traditions, including the Christian tradition, have often taught that we need elders to apprentice us in an initiation into maturity, where we learn the gift of limitations, where we learn to metabolize rather than resist suffering, where we abandon the sturdy scaffolding for surrendered trust. 

This is the cruciform journey, where humility grows. Here, we don’t demonstrate our strength. Rather, a deeper strength is recognized in the character of one who no longer needs to prove or protect. 

Ancient traditions recognized the significance of an early, safe community where the scaffolding is offered, where an elder guides our path, where a community invites vulnerability and mutuality, and where a sacred story provides a frame and telos for unfolding maturation. 

But we’ve largely lost the ancient vision and the tested path. Today, we are seeing a diminishment of curiosity, a narrowing of empathy, an intolerance to difference, a fear of weakness, and a clinging to control. 

And the more tightly we control, the more narrow our world becomes. 

Instead of growing into generosity, we calcify in arrogance. This is where some of my larger work on narcissism is relevant—narcissism, as I’ve often said, isn’t excessive self-love, it’s self-defense. It’s a shame-based self, one who needs to prove himself in outward displays of strength—like the Caesars of old and the contemporary “Patriots” of today—outwardly impressive but inwardly impoverished. 

The ancient sages and contemporary theorists agree—it’s a life stuck in a developmental rut, a perpetual adolescence, like a boy with his guns playing cowboys and Indians at 13 who hasn’t learned the wisdom of surrender and humility. He simply isn’t able to live in a world the prophet Isaiah imagined, a world where God reigns and where the “proud and lofty” are judged, where:

They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore. (see Isa. 2). 

As ancient and modern sages might say, a sure sign that you’re stuck in an adolescent faith is that the world centers on you, your power, even (as we see today) your capacity to save Christianity, even to save God. 

And while that’s a stage of early faith, we’re meant to grow in cruciform hope and loving communion, a life shaped more by a paradoxical victory through the Cross rather than by the sword of control. 

I sense today that we have too few elders of maturity and character who are able to hold space for others on this unfolding journey. 

We’ve elevated the charismatic and the competent at the expense of character. 

We’ve prized quick and microwavable formation for the sake of efficiency and influence while sacrificing the slow and courageous work of cultivating depth and wisdom. 

Many shout from the mountaintops these days that we’re abandoning orthodoxy, but perhaps the orthodoxy we’ve more tragically abandoned is the cruciform way. 

But what Scripture and history attest to is this: while the way of power and control makes for quick and spectacular victories, the way of the Cross endures. Caesar’s palaces and military complexes lie in ruins today, as vanity projects often do when the shine wears off. 

But among the ruins and ashes, a shoot invariably appears, small and unrecognizable at first, yet capable of greening the earth and bearing fruit, if we have the eyes to see and the patience to allow it. 

And if you listen closely, you might even hear the hopeful whisper: 

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19)

Sunday, November 8, 2026 I have done what is mine; may Christ teach you what is yours!  —Francis of Assisi Father Richard Rohr invites us to discern what is ours to do in service to others:  I think there are three basic levels of social ministry. I believe all are the movement of the Holy Spirit within us for the sake of others. I like to imagine a river flooding out of control—symbolizing the circumstances and injustices that bring about suffering—overflowing its banks and sweeping those in its path off their feet. At the first level, we rescue drowning people from the swollen river, dealing with the immediate social problem right in front of us: someone hungry comes to our door and we offer them some food, or invite them inside. These are hands-on, social service ministries, like the familiar soup kitchen or food pantry. Such works will always look rather generous, Christian, charitable; and they tend to be admired, if not always imitated.  At the second level, there are ministries that help people not to fall into the swollen river in the first place, or show them how to survive despite falling in. In general, these are the ministries of education and healing. Most of the religious orders in the Catholic Church in the last three hundred years went in that direction, filling the world with schools, hospitals, and social service ministries that empowered people and gave them new visions and possibilities for their lives.  Finally, on the third level, some ministries build and maintain a dam to stop the river from flooding in the first place. This is the work of social activism and advocacy, critique of systems, organizing, speeches, boycotts, protests, and resistance against all forms of systemic injustice and deceit. It is the gift of few, but a much-needed gift that we only recently began to learn and practice. It seeks systemic change and not just individual conversion. I don’t think most people feel called to activism; I myself don’t. It was initially humiliating to admit this, and I lost the trust and admiration of some friends and supporters. Yet as we come to know our own soul gift more clearly, we almost always have to let go of other “gifts” and opportunities so we can do our own one or two things well and with integrity. I believe that if we can do one or two things wholeheartedly in our life, that is all God expects. The important thing is that we all should be doing something for the rest of the world! We have to give back, particularly those of us born into privilege and comfort. We also must respect and support the other two levels, even if we cannot do them. Avoid all comparisons about better or lesser, more committed or less committed; those are all ego games. Let’s just use our different gifts to create a unity in the work of service (Ephesians 4:12–13), and back one another up, without criticism or competition. Only in our peaceful, mutual honoring do we show forth the glory of God.

Serving the Seventh Generation

Monday, November 9, 2026

In the latest edition of CAC’s Oneing journal, Randy Woodley—theologian and co-founder of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice—reflects on his unique call in service to others: 

Every spring, my wife Edith and I kneel in the dirt of our ten-acre farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and do something that looks, to the untrained eye, like nothing much. We plant seeds. Some of them are varieties that Indigenous peoples have been keeping alive for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years—seeds passed from hand to hand across generations, carried through removals and relocations, hidden in pockets during forced marches, saved when everything else was taken. We put them in the ground, we water them, and we wait.  

It doesn’t look like revolution. It doesn’t look like resistance. It looks like two people with dirt under their fingernails doing small work in a world full of enormous problems.  

But after decades of this work, I’ve learned sometimes the most radical thing you can do is plant something you’ll never see fully grown.…  

What is ours to do? It’s whatever is right in front of us, done with full attention and love, connected to the web of relationships that sustains everything. For some people, that means running for office or organizing their neighbors. For others, it means tutoring a child or cooking for the elders. For Edith and me, it means keeping seeds alive and welcoming whoever shows up at the farm. And here’s what I want to say to anyone paralyzed by the enormity of what’s wrong: 

You don’t have to fix everything. You just have to be faithful to your particular piece.  

My ancestors understood this. Not everyone was a medicine person. Not everyone was a warrior or a chief. Some people made baskets. Some people told stories. Some people tended fires. The community needed all of it, and nobody’s gift was less sacred than anyone else’s.  

Indigenous peoples traditionally made major decisions with the seventh generation in mind. That’s roughly 175 years into the future. Think about that for a moment. I’ve planted oaks that I will never see fully mature. When you plant a seed, thinking about people who won’t be born for another century and a half, it changes your relationship to time, to despair, and to what counts as success.  

I will not see most of what I’m planting for. That’s fine. That’s the work. The people who for generations saved the seeds we plant at Eloheh didn’t save seeds for themselves. They saved seeds for us—through removals, through boarding schools, through every attempt to erase them. And we save seeds for people we’ll never meet.  

That’s what is ours to do. Not to solve everything, but to plant faithfully. Not to despair at the harvest we won’t see, but to trust that the seeds are good, the soil is alive, and the Creator is still at work in the dirt and the mess of it all.

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Individual Reflection

What are you holding onto that was never yours to carry?

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Group Discussion — choose one:

1. Rohr says comparisons about who is more or less committed are “ego games.” Whose kind of service do you secretly measure yourself against?
2. Woodley plants oaks he will never see grown. What are you doing now that only someone 175 years from now would be able to judge?
3. Rohr admits it was humiliating to say activism wasn’t his gift. What gift have you been reluctant to admit isn’t yours, and what would it free you to do?

A Generous Life and Death 

Friday, November 6, 2026

Drawing on the wisdom of Henri Nouwen, Father Ron Rolheiser explores the opportunity to give one’s life, and even one’s death, away for the sake of others:

In one of his last books, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, Henri Nouwen says that at a certain point in our lives, the question is no longer “What can I still do so that my life makes a contribution?” Rather, it becomes “How can I live now so that my death will be an optimal blessing to my family, the church, and the world?” and the central question should not be “How much time still remains?” but rather “How can I prepare now so that my dying will be a new way for me to leave a warm, nurturing, and blessing spirit behind for those who have loved me and whom I have loved?” [1]

For Nouwen, this is predicated on the fact that our lives belong not just to us but also to others. This is also true of our deaths. If we die with guilt, shame, anger, or bitterness, that will be part of what we leave to the world, and it will burden the lives of our family and friends. If we die unreconciled, in bitterness, most every memory we leave behind will cause unease, pain. And that will be our legacy. Conversely, if we die at peace, reconciled with our loved ones and the world, with a warm and grateful heart, then that warmth and love will be the spirit we leave behind, and most every memory of us will bring others warmth so that our dying in peace and reconciliation will then be our last gift—a wonderful, lasting one—to our loved ones. Giving our deaths away as a gift to our loved ones means that at some point in our lives, we need to stop focusing on our agenda and begin to focus on our obituary, on what kind of spirit we will leave behind. [2]

Rolheiser looks to Jesus’s life and death as a model for our own:

Ultimately, all the invitations in the Gospel can be summarized in one word—“surrender.” Our final human and spiritual task is to let go and, like Jesus in his final act, hand over our spirits in an act of love and trust. But this is also the most difficult task in life….

Dying is the ultimate surrender in trust, and it besets us un-invited. However, God and nature have arranged that the natural debilitations that come with aging give us lots of practice in letting go, long before our deathbeds…. One of our salient spiritual and human tasks as we age is to learn how to let go, how to surrender, so that the spirit we breathe out with our last breath or (ideally) long before our last breath is one that, like Jesus’s last breath, issues forth without bitterness as it says, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” [3]

References:
[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring (HarperOne, 1994), xvi.

[2] Ronald Rolheiser, Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years (Image, 2026), 12–13.

[3] Rolheiser, Insane, 46, 47

Image credit and inspiration: Ines Iachelini, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, China. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like a pomegranate broken open, we are invited to share the abundance that has grown in us over the years, offering our gifts freely to the beloved community.

John Chaffee – Five On Friday 11-6-26

1.

“The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching.“

– James Cone, Author of The Cross and the Lynching Tree

This is a shocking statement, but I believe it is true.

One thing that has helped my personal theology and even spirituality is reading figures from church history who were not of European descent.  Yes, much of church history and publication has been from the perspective of European thinkers and theologians, but that can only take us so far.

My interior life has been deeply enriched by reading African American, South American, Japanese, Russian, and Egyptian theologians.

This quote above, from James Cone, is a great example of why it is necessary to read theology from the vantage points of other cultures and perspectives.  Unless we put ourselves in the lives/contexts/vantage points of others, we might miss major insights that help us better understand God and what it means to be human.

The Cross and the Lynching Tree is considered a modern classic.  I strongly encourage you to read it if you can.

2.

“A fish cannot drown in water,
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
God doesn’t vanish:
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature;
How could I resist my nature,
That lives for oneness with God?“

– Mechthilde of Magdeburg

One of the most difficult things is to be what we are.

A tree has no problem being a tree.

A dog has no problem being a dog.

A beetle has no problem being a beetle.

However, we humans have immense difficulty just being human.

Something like an echo of Genesis 3, we often try to run away from being human, just like Adam and Eve, who sought to be something other than what they were.

The older I get, the more I see that healthy spirituality centers on the task of “being human.”  To be exactly and properly what we are, with all the glories and struggles of being human, is THE spiritual task.

It’s funny.  We are so desperate to avoid being human that we fail to recognize that God became human.  By trying to be something other than human, we actually miss the greatest commonality we have with God.

3.

“It is well and good, Lord,
If all things change,
Provided we are rooted in You.“

– St. John of the Cross, 16th Century Spanish Mystic

The past few months have been a fair amount of settling into new patterns or a new way of life.  Since we moved in January, we’ve experienced each season in the new house for the first time.  Not only that, but as a professor, one semester feels completely different from another, and that’s still different from what summer is like.

Everything changes; nothing ever stays the same for very long.

Adaptability is the name of the game…

And adaptability comes more easily the more grounded we are in God, who is faithful, consistent, and for us.

4.

“Let nothing disturb you;

Let nothing make you afraid;

All things pass;

But God is unchanging,

Patience

is enough for everything.

You who have God

lack nothing.

God alone is sufficient.“

– St. Teresa of Avila, 16th Century Spanish Mystic

I realize that this quote from Teresa of Avila comes up often.

In fact, I think I have used this subject line for this week’s 5 on Friday more than once.

For a moment, I felt bad about that, thinking that it was a cop-out to repeat a quote so many times.

But I am not so sure.

It is a timeless piece of wisdom that Teresa of Avila shares in the poem above.  It reads a little bit like a Christian Zen statement.  It is a poem of detachment, acknowledging that we get flustered by life and that God is enough for each moment.

Maybe this quote jumps out at me so often because I let many things in life “disturb” me.  I let many things make me “afraid.”  I have a difficult time with things that are “passing.”

Perhaps you do as well?

5.

“Few are guilty, but all are responsible.“

– Abraham Joshua Heschel

This sentiment is similar to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s: “We are responsible to all for all.”

This is radical ownership.

This is extreme culpability.

We are each individually responsible to all for the evil that some do.  We are all in this together.  None of us can fully wash our hands of the evils that happen in the world.  We are the One Mystical Body of Christ, and we cannot dare to cut ourselves off from one another.

I belong to you.

You belong to me.

We belong to one another, and therefore, we are responsible to everyone else for everything that one of us does.

Again, this might sound extreme, but what would our world look like if we had such a sophisticated sense of responsibility and global ethics?

copy link to browser to play Kari Jobe – Forever

Ripening: Aging with Grace

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Thursday, November 5, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

To ripen into an elder, into a being that is more than simply elderly, … is a deliberate, thoughtful, sustained choice.  
— Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Aging 

Buddhist teacher Kathleen Dowling Singh (1946–2017) considers the opportunity aging offers us to know our authentic selves:  

Aging can offer us the time to deliberately reorient ourselves toward the inner life, an infinitely more reliable refuge than anything the world can offer. To open these inner vistas is to enter a time of awakening, to lighten our attachment to self, the cause of all our unease. We have the opportunity to, first, recognize that living attached to our own sense of self is a small, confined, and stressed way to live and, then, to wholeheartedly engage in practices that will free that myopic attachment…. 

Using these last years of our life as a time to awaken can help us cope and even grow in love and wisdom as we confront decline, illness, and loss…. We can give ourselves, finally, the experience of freedom and illumination and grace while still in the midst of life. We can, also, with our own spiritual ripening, offer all those younger ones who follow behind us in our spiritually impoverished culture the witness that awakening is possible…. 

We can, if we so choose, dedicate these last years to waking up. [1] 

For Singh, choosing to awaken to reality is a gift in service to others: 

Opening deeply to the truth of our own aging is wise. Opening deeply to the truth of our own impermanence is wise. Although such opening may not come easily at first—we all know how the ego tends to resist vulnerability—it is important to do so if we wish to mindfully use the time remaining to us…. 

To live a life of an elder is to ripen into being that is more than simply elderly, more than just old. It involves ripening into clear-eyed acceptance of the way things actually exist. That ripening involves, for each of us, many difficult reckonings in the multifaceted, multidimensional understanding that everything that can be lost will be lost….  

If we are to claim the last years of life as years that hold the possibility of awakening into equanimity and lightness, into the very embodiment of grace, we need to bear witness to the ripening of that possibility. Not only would it be a blessing for each of us, it would be a blessing for a world starving for such witnessing….  

Mindful of impermanence, the breath-by-breath arising and abiding and falling of each moment, we can remain in remembrance of our longing to exist in wisdom and love and compassion. We can remain in our intention to ripen into the spiritual maturity that is our birthright to cultivate. There is no more noble way to spend these years than to become an elder, to bear witness to the world as placeholders for peace, love, wisdom, and fearlessness. [2] 

Brad Jersak
THE RANSOM: Excerpt from A More Christlike God

Jesus once said, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”(Mark 10:45). And Paul writes to Timothy that Jesus “gave himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Tim. 2:6).

In modern times, we associate ransoms with the demands of a kidnapper who wants payment for someone they hold in bondage. In this case, giving oneself in exchange for a prisoner, like we see in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Aslan gives himself over to the witch Jadis to be slain on the stone table in exchange for the life of Edmund. She is able to leverage this deal because under the law, someone must die. Again, seeing it this way can be a bit confusing, and in fact, it’s actually problematic on three counts. Specifically,

a. Was the ransom paid to God? If Christ’s life was given in ransom (or redemption), the church fathers reasoned that the ransom could not be paid to God, because God is not the slaveholder. The Book of Hebrews makes that clear: “by his death he [broke] the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14-15).

Lewis’s tale solves this problem because he doesn’t picture God requiring the payment. The witch is the one who demands punishment—a life for a life—leveraging the law of sin and death against Aslan. As in the New Testament, Aslan gives his own life and, in the end, “a deeper magic [self-giving love] from before the dawn of time” resurrects an innocent killed in place of a traitor.

b. Was the ransom paid to Satan? While some of the church fathers dabbled with this theory (i.e., a ransom paid to Satan), they ultimately reject this idea too. The truth, they said, is that God owes the devil—the thief—nothing. The prolific theologian Origen (182- 254 AD) starts out with a ransom to Satan, but like Lewis, treats Christ’s offering to Satan as a trap, where Jesus’ humanity is the bait. The devil takes the bait, but Christ’s divine nature and supernatural love overcome—it’s too hot to handle— and Jesus emerges from death along with all those Satan had held in his dungeon.

The truth is that Jesus utterly judged and defeated Satan on the Cross (John 12:31; 16:11; Col. 2:15). There’s no deal-making going on here. In another of his metaphors, Jesus said,

26 If Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 27 In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. —Mark 3:26-27

In this metaphor, there is no deal on the table, no careful trap being set. Jesus describes his ministry in terms of an overpowering home invasion where he storms Satan’s house, immobilizes him, binds him up and plunders his goods (namely, all those he had enslaved). This echoes the Exodus backstory, when God plundered Pharaoh of his slaves and Egypt’s gold (Exod. 12:36). Rather than paying Satan or Pharaoh, quite the reverse is true: he ransacks their territory and leaves them penniless.

A ransom?

Christ ‘gave his life as a ransom’ (Matt. 20:28). But to whom?

Not to God, for God is not the slave-holder.

Not to Satan, for God owes Satan nothing.

Not to the Law, for mercy trumps Law.

Jesus ransoms us from death, paying with his life. 

But Christ owed death nothing either, and so conquers it. 

c. Was the ransom paid to the Law? Origen and Lewis both hint at a third possibility—that the ransom meets the demands of some law. That is, the enemy’s leverage was an appeal to the rightful requirements of the law. Sometimes passages from Leviticus and Hebrews are quoted as proof-texts:

For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. —Lev. 17:11

In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. —Heb. 9:22

And yet the Bible also insists on these five points:

• 1. There is no law or principle of justice higher than God to which he is beholden. ‘Justice’ is not a god to whom Yahweh must bow or appease with blood. Nor is God’s ‘Law’ some retributive principle that binds him. The whole point of the prophetic Book of Hosea is exactly this: that God is utterly free to forgive sinners—to show mercy to the guilty. He is able to respond to legal demands for punishment with a counter-verdict: complete pardon based in God’s own grace.
• 2. Similarly, there is no judgment or statute that cannot be trumped by mercy, for mercy triumphs over judgment. On the scale of justice, mercy is always an ‘older magic’ than retribution or sacrifice.
• 3. In fact, even well before the Cross, Israel could testify to the mercy of God. God had not treated them as their sins deserved. They had received superabundant compassion and mercy (Ps. 103:10-12) rather than tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye justice. 
• 4. Rather than blood sacrifice or burnt offerings, the response God looks for is “a broken heart and a contrite spirit” (Ps. 51:16-17).
• 5. Further, legal provisions existed for a ransom (basically paying a fine) that would cover the debt for some crimes. But the Bible is clear: Under the law, “No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them—the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough—so that they should live on forever and not see decay” (Ps. 49:7-9). You could ransom people from debts and slavery, but who could pay you out of the grave?

Here we have our answer to whom or what was paid as ransom in exchange for our lives. When Jesus gave his life for ours, to whom did he give it? The life of Christ was given over to death itself. But, as in the case of Satan, Christ did not ‘owe’ death anything. He did not ‘owe’ Hades (the Greek god of death) a life. Instead, death is the gate by which Jesus entered Hades (death) and plundered its captives. In Psalm 49 we read, “But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead; he will surely take me to himself ” (v. 15). The early church (drawing from texts such as Matt. 27:52-53; Eph. 4:8; 1 Pet. 3:18-20; 4:6) called this victory raid ‘the harrowing of Hades’ and celebrated Christ’s posthumous saving work on ‘Holy Saturday.’

So, in Christ, the ransom metaphor points to the rescue of those taken by death and held in the grave. The ransom ‘price’ is Jesus’ life—Death (personified) is paid—but ‘payment’ might be too strong a word because Death can’t hold him. And so, in John’s Revelation, Jesus announces: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1:17-18).

Finally, let me ask you: If Jesus now holds the keys of death and Hades, what do you think he’ll do with them? In ransoming us, he also frees us from bondage and into lives of liberty.

A Windfall of Delight

Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Those who bless the world in the lifelong process of learning to ripen … are those who have mastered the art of sustained effort, infused with a surrender to hidden sources of grace. 
— James Finley  

CAC faculty member James Finley shares his thoughts on spiritual maturity as a form of ripening: 

We ripen in holiness and spiritual fulfillment as we learn to sit in the sun of God’s mysterious, sustaining presence that energizes and guides our efforts, bringing us to realms of grace that are beyond, way beyond, anything we can achieve by our own efforts alone…. 

The lifelong process of ripening brings about a corresponding ripening of our ability to understand the fundamentals in a wiser, peace-giving manner…. As a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. This is the mystery of the cross…. It does not mean that God prevents the tragic thing, the cruel thing, the unfair thing, from happening. Rather, it means that God is intimately hidden as a kind of profound, tender sweetness that flows and carries us along in the intimate depths of the tragic thing itself—and will continue to do so in every moment of our lives up to and through death, and beyond….  

We might say that, as fruit ripens, it fulfills itself in giving itself to us. In a similar way, we do not undergo the transformative process of ripening for ourselves alone, but rather that our transformed presence might be a source of nurture to others. 

Then too, there is the fruit that, in remaining unharvested, falls onto the ground and dies. The lesson here is in Jesus’s words, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it brings forth fruit…” (John 12:24). 

And so it is with us. As we grow old we realize that, in all we have been through, Love has been using us for its own purposes. And for this we feel immensely grateful. We know, too, that our inevitable passing away, in which we fall into the ground and die, is not the end of our ripened and transformed life. It is rather our passage into an infinite and deathless fulfillment. Saint John of the Cross [1542–1591] talks about a windfall of delight. [1] When fruit becomes very ripe, the slightest wind can cause it to fall to the ground. This is also true of us, and not just in the sense in which we learn to be undone and fulfilled in all the unexpected little blessings that come to us throughout the day. The windfall of delight pertains as well to our last breath, which we know and trust will send us falling forever into the deathless depths of God. 

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John 10:10 and the Problematic of Divine Violence 

BRADLEY JERSAK

OCT 29, 2026

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A Very Problematic Hermeneutic:
“It is God who kills, steals, and destroys, 
but Jesus came to give life to the full.”

—Wm. Paul Young

During a conversation with Paul Young (author of The Shack and Return to the Shack), he observed how common it is for Bible readers to infer disturbing theologies of divine violence that undermine Jesus’ revelation of God. He also noted dangerous ethical corollaries among Christians that result from these missteps.

First, you’ll note that Paul is obviously riffing off Jesus’ words in John 10:10:

“The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy;
I have come that they have life,
and have it to the full.

Jesus’ claim is indeed central to both our theology and our hermeneutic (interpretive system). Paul and I believe that when Jesus spoke, he spoke as the Word of God—or as Brian Zahnd says, “Jesus is what God has to say about himself.” 

That’s not a scandalous thought for any Christian who remembers Jesus’ words, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The epistle to the Hebrews doubles down: “He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Hebrews 1:3). 

To creedal Christians from Jerusalem to Alaska, from Argentina to India, the confession is that God is one—and that Father, Son, and Spirit share one ousia (being or essence). The conviction is that Jesus reflects the same nature of the God he reveals, and conversely, that God is known through the Son who has made God known. Theology 101 speaks of three persons sharing one divine identity, so Jesus can say “I AM” and claim God’s very character. 

To those who accept and conserve the ancient faith, John 10:10 becomes a powerful theological statement, although the math is profoundly simple:

1. 1. Jesus says, “It is the thief who is the death-dealer. I am the life-giver. 
2. 2. Jesus says, “To see me is to see the Father.”
3. 3. Thus, “God is not the death-dealer. That’s the thief. God is the life-giver.”

Destructive Theological Inferences 

And yet… another theology emerged and became dominant in the Protestant West (though not only there) that abandons Jesus’ claims in just the way Paul Young describes. It proclaims God as a death-dealer, punisher, and destroyer—a vengeful God exacting justice through never-ending violence from whom Jesus must come to save us. 

Do you see the theological problems in this model? 

1. 1. God is not like Jesus. God is wrath. Jesus is a redeemer. 
   God is who we’re redeemed from.
2. 2. Jesus does not share one essence, nature, or character with God.
   Jesus and God are not one. They are different. 
3. 3. Jesus is not the perfect image of God. Jesus is other than God.
   Jesus is not God.

Dubious Interpretive Methods

And so on. How do Christian theologians slip into such obvious, egregious errors? This involves a basic hermeneutical error: departing from the “Emmaus Way” of reading Scripture, where a Christian reading of the Old Testament must always begin with Jesus as the means and end of interpreting the Bible. 

In this case, we start with John 10:10 as a theological non-negotiable and read the Old Testament through Jesus’ picture of God. God is not a death-dealer; God is a life-giver. Okay, so then what about Old Testament narratives of divine violence? 

Indeed, what about them? Years ago, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo put it this way (some readers will recall): Any Scripture that claims to reveal God must bow to the living God when he came in the flesh. In other words, descriptions of God enacting or commissioning stealing, killing, or destroying must be subordinated to Christ, our final authority for faith and practice. 

Then what do we do with those texts that seem to say otherwise? The fathers and mothers of the Great Tradition trained us and modeled how to read those texts long ago, so our modern amnesia is actually without excuse. (I review their approach thoroughly in A More Christlike Word). 

We must not start our reading with the destruction texts and treat them as primary, infallible descriptions of God, nor read them literally without reference to Jesus, who said, “You have heard it say, but I [God’s self-revelation] say [otherwise]…” That’s the crack we trip over, inevitably landing us in the Christological errors mentioned above.

Dangerous Ethical Corollaries

I mentioned up front that Paul also exposed some dangerous ethical corollaries connected to these theological and hermeneutical stumbles. It boils down to imagining ourselves as God’s appointed agents of divine violence. With God as the author of destruction and wrath against the wicked, how do these divine judgments take effect in this world? 

Christians often attribute divine design to pandemics, geological calamities, and catastrophic weather… but we rarely stop at leaving retribution to ‘natural law’ or ‘acts of God.’ We have a track record of appointing ourselves as God’s executioners, whether on foreign crusades or domestic death rows. Rather than “overcoming evil with good” (as per Romans 12), we take a two-step approach: first, the loyalist church affirms death-dealing via the state sword (Romans 13), then campaigns to assume control of the state and so wield it ourselves (via Christian nationalism). 

This hideous outcome starts somewhere… but it also goes nowhere if we, as theologians, Bible interpreters, and peacemaking disciples of the Life-Giver, plant ourselves firmly in the good news gospel of John 10:10.

Tuesday, November 3, 2026

Life is a process of emptying and moving into the oneness of life and death. It is living through dying. 
—Sally Severino 

Dr. Sally Severino writes of the process of aging as an opportunity to more fully experience union with God.  

Human beings are meaning-making creatures. Our lives take on new meaning with age. As human longevity has increased, aging no longer means inevitable decline, deterioration, or disability. It is a time to become more authentically ourselves—to be more freely who we really are in the fullness of our ripening. 

Spiritually, my childhood entailed baptism and confirmation—a time when I experienced God as parent. During mid-life my relationship with God became an understanding of God as partner. During senior life my relationship with God has taken the form of realizing the oneness of all life, including my journey toward oneness with God. This is consistent with what Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung described as the seven tasks of aging: 

1. accepting death as a part of life 
2. reflecting on one’s life 
3. limiting one’s time and energy 
4. letting go of ego dominance 
5. bringing opposites within us together into wholeness 
6. finding meaning in one’s life 
7. engaging our unused potentials in “dying with life” 

In other words, we empty ourselves in imitation of Jesus. When we are totally empty and only God is within us, then we recover our true selves. 

When we realize God as our true being, we realize our true selves. All we need to do is open our eyes to the goodness we have possessed all along. In seeing this goodness, we can die to “our” life and live the unique expression of God we were created to be. We can let God act in and through us.  

Severino describes how, by fully welcoming our oneness with God, we can offer our lives to the world:  

We are not only the recipients of divine love; we are also the dispensers of love in the world. When we are one with Christ, our hearts and souls are full of a compassion that then flows out into the world through Christ…. 

We are each given the mind of Christ and the ability to give this gift to others.All we need to do is become aware, be grateful, and share our uniqueness with the world around us. Christ encourages us to do as he did—to act freely, expressing our gift in each unrepeatable moment of our lives. The spirituality of aging is a process of becoming increasingly Christlike—of emptying ourselves until only God lives within us. Just as we are each a unique image of Christ in the world, so too is our ripening process unique. God is always knocking, wanting to enter our lives. All we need to do is open. 

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Come, take a seat, and let’s talk. 

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the neuroscience of deep character change

(in a day of quick fixes) 

CHUCK DEGROAT NOV 1

It can be confusing to distill what real change looks like amidst the abundance of resources out there. 

Should I add new spiritual practices? 

Should I focus on my emotional health? 

Should I try to change my everyday habits? 

While all of these things are important, there is an underlying neuroscientific wisdom that holds much of it together—the body’s innate wisdom, which we can cooperate with for the sake of deep character change. 

Here are five high-level principles that lay a foundation for deep change. 

1. Regulation precedes maturation

Your nervous system profoundly influences how you perceive the world and respond relationally. And as I say in the new book, it’s almost impossible to change when your body is locked in threat mode. 

Threat mode is a body in dysregulation, with little capacity to adapt or grow. It’s a survival orientation, where your internal resources are bound up in self-protection rather than connection and growth. 

So, we need to create the conditions for growth by turning down your threat system and expanding your inner capacity for change. Otherwise, we may be inadvertently overwhelming your system with haphazard attempts at change. 

The change process often begins here—by working on creating the relational and internal safety that allows for a body to inhabit a new way of being in the world. 

2. Character is patterned

Neuroscience teaches us that what fires together, wires together. And repeated experiences strengthen neural pathways…the very pathways that shape your habitual ways of thinking, feeling, reacting, and relating, and which become your character. 

I know it’s common today to see books on character engaging ancient virtues—and I appreciate that—but these can become abstract. Character is anything but abstract. It’s who you’ve become over time. This is why insight or behavioral modification alone doesn’t produce lasting change. 

Your habits weren’t born overnight—and through the wisdom of neuroplasticity, you can slowly begin to reshape them. But this often requires more time and patience that we’re willing to invest amidst many other microwavable interventions. 

3. Character is formed and re-formed in connection

Your nervous system developed within your closest relationships, and continues to develop over a lifetime in the context of relationship. Those habits—as I said, they didn’t emerge overnight. They evolved based on the relative safety and connection you experienced. Who you are didn’t happen yesterday—you’ve been ‘becoming’ for quite a long time!

So, character maturation isn’t an individual achievement nor is it gained through mere self-help effort. To change, you’ll need to experience safety, trust, vulnerability, and belonging—and where there has been significant moral failure or betrayal, significant accountability. 

Creating the proper relational conditions is critical for real change.

4. There is a story your brain is telling you

Your brain is predictive. It actively interprets incoming data based on previous experiences. And in time, it forms a story. 

“Keep your guard up. You never know what’s coming.”

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

“Never let them see you sweat.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

“If I’m not in control, everything will fall apart.”

These stories can feel like objective reality when they’re simply ways you’ve learned to inhabit your world—for some really good reasons, I’m sure. But these stories do not need to define your future. 

Your body can learn a new way of being in the world and a new and better story to live within. 

5. You become what you behold

Character change depends, in large part, on what you attend to. When you’ve lived for years in threat mode—within whatever story that requires you to inhabit—you attend to the world in a braced and vigilant way. Your attention narrows. You control what’s in front of you. You tend to fight or flee. And it’s almost impossible to hold space for beauty, goodness, and gratitude. 

People are often surprised when I invite them to pay attention to what they’re paying attention to. But this simple act of intentional attention can begin to reshape reality. By doing this, you can make what has been invisible visible, bringing conscious attention to what has become habitual, engaging the prefrontal cortex, strengthening your capacity for self-awareness and emotional regulation, and increasing your sense of agency. 

In time, you’ll behold a whole new reality. 

In sum, character change is not about an exhausting attempt to reach for what feels like some unattainable and abstract virtue. It’s more about cultivating a capacity for deep change, through internal and relational safety and regulation, through intentional attention, through a growing awareness of your story and your state. 

Deep change is possible—but it’s a much more satisfying process when it’s a process that cooperates with your nervous system rather than fighting against it, which is so often the case when we simply apply behavioral or spiritual interventions willy-nilly. 

Character change, in the end, cooperates with your God-created, embodied wisdom. And it reveals that what you most deeply long for is possible, not least because God made this pathway of transformation possible in-and-through the unique way he designed you.

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Individual Reflection

Which of your scars is still doing the work of a wall?

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Group Discussion — choose one

1. Which of your patterns are ripening with age, and which are just hardening?
2. Where has your spiritual practice been one more quick fix laid over a body still braced for threat?
3. What have you been beholding lately, and what is it making you into?

Sunday, November 1, 2026

All Saint’s Day

Father Richard Rohr uses the language of “ripening” to describe the process of aging with wisdom and grace: 

The word “ripening” helps us move beyond any exclusive concern with physical aging, because our concerns are much more than that. We want to talk about notions of maturity, eldership, staging, sequencing, growth, and direction. Where is this thing we call “life” headed? Who sets the standard? Is there any standard?  

Unless we can somehow chart this trajectory, we have no way to discern growth or maturity, and no ability to discern what might be a full, fuller, or fullest human response. Neither do we have any criteria for discerning an immature, regressive, or even sick response. There must be a direction to ripening, but we must also recognize that any steps toward maturity are by necessity immature. An understanding of ripening basically teaches us the wisdom of timing, love, and patience, and allows us to be wise instead of judgmental.  

If I am to believe the novels, myths, poems, and people I have met in my life, old age is almost never described as an apex of achievement as one sits atop a summit with the raised arms of a victorious athlete. It is almost always something else—and usually something other than what was initially imagined or even hoped for. 

Ripening reveals much bigger or very different horizons than we realize. The refusal to ripen leads to what T.S. Eliot spoke of in “The Hollow Men,” lives that “end not with a bang but with a whimper.” I trust that we are willing to move toward our own endless horizons and not waste time in whimpering, trusting that we are, in fact, being led. Life—your life, my life, all life—is going somewhere, and somewhere good. We do not need to navigate the river, for we are already flowing within it. 

Ripening, at its best, is a slow, patient learning, and sometimes even a happy letting go—a seeming emptying out to create readiness for a new kind of fullness—which we are never sure about. If we do not allow our own ripening, an ever-increasing resistance and denial sets in, an ever-increasing protection around an over-defended self. At our very best, we learn how to hope as we ripen, to move outside and beyond self-created circles. Youthful hopes have concrete goals, whereas the hope of older years is usually aimless hope, hope without goals, even naked hope—perhaps real hope. 

Such stretching is the agony and the joy of later years, although one can avoid both of these rich experiences too. Old age, as such, is almost a complete changing of gears and engines from the first half of our lives, and does not happen without many slow realizations, inner calmings, lots of inner resistance and denials, and eventual surrenders. All of them by God’s grace work with our ever-deepening sense of what we really desire and who we really are.  

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A Spirituality of Ripening 

Monday, November 2, 2026

All Soul’s Day

Father Richard describes how a spirituality of ripening allows us to hold greater paradox through an increasing awareness of our union with God:  

Reality, fate, destiny, providence, and tragedy are slow but insistent teachers. The horizon of old age seems to be a plan that God has prepared as inevitable and part of the necessary school of life. What is gratuitously given is also gratuitously taken away, just as Job slowly came to accept. And sometimes we remember that his eventual pained response was “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:21). We all live in the same cycle of unrequested birth and unrequested death. Someone else is clearly in control, yet most of our lives are spent accepting and surrendering to this truth, and in trusting that this “someone” is good and trustworthy besides. It is the very shape of faith and the entire journey of faith.  

If we are to speak of a spirituality of ripening, we need to recognize that it is always (and I do mean always) characterized by an increasing tolerance for ambiguity, a growing sense of subtlety, an ever-larger ability to include and allow, and a capacity to live with contradictions and even to love them! I cannot imagine any other way of coming to those broad horizons except through many trials, unsolvable paradoxes, and errors in trying to resolve them.  

Without such a gradually renewed mind and heart, we almost certainly will end with a whimper—not just our own, but also that of the disappointed souls gathered around our sick bed or gravestone. Too many lives have indeed been lives of “quiet desperation” and God must surely rush to console and comfort all humans before, during, and after their passing. Many put off enlightenment as long as they can.  

The ripening of mind and heart is most basically a capacity for nondual consciousness and contemplation. Many might just call it a growth in compassion, but surely no growth in compassion is likely unless one learns how to forgive as a very way of life, and to let go of almost everything as we first imagined it had to be. This is possible as our understanding of faith deepens, requiring a careful pairing of not-knowing (the apophatic way) with knowing (the kataphatic way). The Jewish and Christian traditions balanced our so-called knowing with trust, patience, allowing, waiting, humility, love, and forgiveness, which is very nearly the entire message, and surely the core message, necessary for the possibility of ripening. Otherwise, we all close down, and history freezes up with all of its hurts, memories, and resentments intact.  

So my guidance after over eighty years of life is a simple reminder to recall what we will be forced to learn by necessity and under pressure anyway—the open-ended way of allowing and the deep meaning that some call faith. To live in trustful faith is to ripen; it is almost that simple. 

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Individual Reflection

What would your hope look like if it had no goal attached?

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Group Discussion — choose one

1. Where do others see an over-defended self in you that you’re only beginning to notice?
2. Which contradiction in your life have you stopped trying to resolve, and could you ever come to love it?
3. Does “aimless hope” feel like freedom to you, or like giving up?

Love Is Who We Are 

Friday, October 30, 2026

Father Richard identifies our ability to love as the very foundation of our being:

The most powerful, most needed, and most essential teaching is always about love. Love is our foundation and our destiny. It is where we come from and where we’re headed. As Saint Paul famously says, “So faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). 

My hope, whenever I speak or write, is to help clear away the impediments to receiving, allowing, trusting, and participating in a foundational Love. God’s love is planted inside each of us as the Holy Spirit who, according to Jesus, “will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (John 14:26). Love is who we are! 

All I can do is remind you of what you already know deep within your true self and invite you to live connected to this Source. John the Evangelist writes, “God is love, and whoever remains in love, remains in God and God in him or her” (1 John 4:16). The biblical creation story says that we were created in the very “image and likeness” of God, who is love (Genesis 1:26; see also Genesis 9:6). Out of the Trinity’s generative, loving relationship, creation takes form, mirroring its Creator.

We have heard this phrase so often that we don’t understand the existential shock of what “created in the image and likeness of God” means for us. If this is true—and I believe it is—our family of origin is divine. It is saying that we were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is positive and, as is written in the first chapter of the Bible, it is “very good” (Genesis 1:31). We do have a good place to return home to. If the beginning is right, the rest becomes considerably easier, because we can know and trust the clear direction of our life’s trajectory. 

We must all overcome the illusion of separateness. It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness “sin.” God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship. “My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God” (1 John 3:2). [1] 

Love is who we are. When we don’t live according to love, we are outside of being. We’re not being real. When we love, we are acting according to our deepest being, our deepest truth. We are operating according to our dignity. [2] 

References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books, 2018), 12–13.

[2] Rohr, Essential Teachings, v.

Image credit and inspiration: Samuel Oakes, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Broadway, UK. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like bread offered to someone beyond the frame, we are invited to reach out to an unseen neighbor, both giving and receiving blessing.

John Chaffee – Five On Friday 10-30-26

1.

“Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent.“

– St. John of the Cross, 16th Century Spanish Mystic

This one is a bit difficult for me.

Why?

Because in my own head, I know I am a complainer.

This probably leads well into the next quote.

2.

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian Philosopher

We likely all have internal narratives about the world around us.  It is not easy to observe what’s happening around us without also giving it an interpretation that SEEMS to make sense to us.

I am not conversant in neuroscience, but I would bet our interpretations of the world are automatic and instantaneous.  It takes a relatively mature person to even question our own interpretations.  Ask yourself: how often do you question your own read of things?

That said, what if Krishnamurti is correct?  What if the ability to simply observe the world around us is the highest form of intelligence?

Imagine this…  We watch something happen, and the only thing we say is, “Huh, how about that?”

Is it even possible to be that detached from the present moment?  Can we simply be an observer?  Is that even the goal?  At best, we can only theorize an interpretation of why something happened.

Honestly, even writing this is raising more questions for me.

I’ll have to reflect on this more.

3.

“Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.”

– Henri Nouwen, Dutch Catholic Priest

Henri Nouwen was a master at getting to the core issue, wasn’t he?

As I understand it, each of us tends to be one or the other, living primarily as a contemplative or an active.  This means we settle into one way of living and often neglect the other.

As a contemplative, I must be intentional about being more active.

Meanwhile, others are naturally active and must be intentional about being more contemplative.

It doesn’t matter which one you are; all of us must work toward becoming integrated active contemplatives or contemplative activists.

4.

“It’s not about right belief; it’s about right practice.”

– Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal Priest and Author

In seminary, I was encouraged to be as “orthodox.”  Fortunately, my schooling didn’t emphasize this enough to make me fundamentalist in my orientation to faith, but it did encourage me to do good scholarship on my own faith.

I am grateful for my schooling.  Looking back, I believe it did many things well.

However, since seminary, I have certainly encountered people who use orthodoxy as the highest metric for gauging someone’s faith.

Not only is this wrongheaded, but I believe it misses the forest for the trees.

The primary terms here are “orthodoxy” (right belief) and “orthopraxy” (right practice or action).

If my “orthodoxy” leads me to have an unloving, critical, vindictive, scapegoating, self-permissive/self-condemnatory “praxy” then something is wildly off.

However, if my “orthopraxy” leads me to go back and re-evaluate the “orthodoxy” I was holding onto, then I might just find myself being led toward the “orthodoxy” that Jesus had.

I have no idea if I am ranting or making sense to anyone but myself, but another way to say this might be…  If a tree (orthodoxy) bears bad fruit (bad orthopraxy), it is time to cut the tree (bad orthodoxy) down.

5.

“Fauxnerability is what happens when we learn the language of healing but stop short of the surrender healing requires. Fauxnerability is what happens when we become experts in talking about suffering without having experienced the dark night. Fauxnerabilty is what happens when we disclose to soothe our nervous systems rather than to be truly known. Fauxnerability is what happens when honest words are performative rather than a manifestation of authentic presence.“

– Chuck DeGroat, Author and Therapist

Fauxnerability.  That’s Chuck’s word for performative and false vulnerability.

I feel as though I am on a constant learning journey or path about vulnerability.  At times, I think I am good at it, and then more life happens, and I realize my tendency to “self-protectively” isolate.  Of course, that is an oxymoron because isolation is considered a war crime.  Isolation is not protective, healthy, or holy.

In fact, many orders of Christianity would not permit monks to become hermits if they were going into the hermitic life for the wrong reasons.  They must first be proven healthy and holy.

True vulnerability is most likely showing up to the present moment in the fullness of our whole being, with our strengths but even more so with our weaknesses and lack.

I rather enjoy the work of philosopher Pete Rollins, who teaches…

“The secret of the lack… is the lack of the secret.”

What does this mean?

We are all looking for a cure-all secret recipe to take away our sense that we are lacking, incomplete, or less than.

However, the real secret to the lack is realizing there is a “lack of a secret.”  There is no cure-all secret recipe.  Our sense of lack, our sense of being incomplete, our sense of being less-than is BECAUSE we think there is a secret fulfillment that we are not currently owning.

But what are the closing words of the Parable of the Running Father in Luke 15?

“Son, I am always with you, and everything of mine is already yours.”