Thursday, August 20, 2026

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

Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev reflects on the central themes of the biblical prophets:

The historical period of the prophets, from around 740 to 520 BCE, was a time of shattering social crisis and political instability that ultimately led to the destruction of both Israel and Judah….

While [the Jewish] elites treated the impoverishment of common laborers as an acceptable condition of society, the prophets would not turn aside from this human suffering. Seeing the situation as if through God’s eyes and carrying God’s word, the prophets proclaimed that economic injustice and the oppression of the poor were intolerable and abhorrent. The growing inequality was, in the prophetic perspective, an existential crisis….

Animated by God’s love for creation and God’s passion for justice, the prophets confronted the princes and the privileged, decrying the greed and insensitivity of these elites. Amos, the first of the writing prophets, was unstinting in his condemnation:

They sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes. They pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the humble (Amos 2:6–7)….

Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries of Amos. While Amos confronted the king and the high priest in the northern kingdom of Israel at the height of its wealth and regional dominance, Isaiah and Micah condemned the arrogant elites in Judah, the southern kingdom, at the apex of its power.

Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards (Isaiah 1:23).

Hear, I beg of you, O heads of Jacob …. Is it not for you to know justice? You who hate the good and love the evil (Micah 3:1).

Though each prophet has a unique style, they share God’s concern for justice in our fractured world:

Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and Hosea are just four of the fifteen prophets whose words have been preserved in Scripture. Each of these prophets possessed extraordinary vision. Perceiving their world as if through God’s eyes, these prophets were able to maintain a sustained focus on the suffering of the poor, to see the disaster that would inevitably come in the wake of profound, endemic injustice. At the same time, lifted by divine inspiration, each prophet possessed the moral imagination to transcend the brokenness of [their] own day and envision an alternative society. Even in the midst of crisis and imminent disaster, the prophets could see an inclusive economic and social order in which all beings would flourish.

These then are the three qualities inherent in every prophet and in the prophetic stream: an encounter with divine love and concern for the world, courage to name oppression, and moral imagination to articulate an alternative future.

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Jesus Calling Sarah Young

Trust Me, and don’t be afraid. I want you to view trials as exercises designed to develop your trust-muscles. You live in the midst of fierce spiritual battles, and fear is one of Satan’s favorite weapons. When you start to feel afraid, affirm your trust in Me. Speak out loud, if circumstances permit. Resist the devil in My Name, and he will slink away from you. Refresh yourself in My Holy Presence. Speak or sing praises to Me, and My Face will shine radiantly upon you.
     Remember that there is no condemnation for those who belong to Me. You have been judged NOT GUILTY for all eternity. Trust Me, and don’t be afraid; for I am your Strength, Song, and Salvation.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

James 4:7 (NLT)
7 So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Additional insight regarding James 4:7: Although God and devil are at war, we don’t have to wait until the end to see who will win. God has already defeated Satan (Revelation 12:10-12) and when Christ returns, the devil and all he stands for will be eliminated forever (Revelation 12:10-15). Satan is here now, however, and he is trying to win us over to his evil cause. With the Holy Spirit’s power, we can resist the devil, and he will flee from us.

Romans 8:1-2 (NLT)
Life in the Spirit
1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.

Additional insight regarding Romans 8:1: “Not guilty; let him go free.” What would those words mean to you if you were on death row? The fact is that the whole human race is on death row, justly condemned for repeatedly breaking God’s holy law. Without Jesus we would have no hope at all. But thank God! He has declared us not guilty and has offered us free from sin and power to do his will.

Additional insight regarding Romans 8:2: This life-giving Spirit is the Holy Spirit. He was present at the creation of the world (Genesis 1:2), and he is the power behind the rebirth of every Christian. He gives us the power we need to live the Christian life.

Isaiah 12:2 (NLT)
2 See, God has come to save me.
    I will trust in him and not be afraid.
The Lord God is my strength and my song;
    he has given me victory.”

Additional insight: This chapter of Isaiah is a hymn of praise – another graphic description of the people’s joy when Jesus Christ comes to reign over the earth. Even now we need to express our gratitude to God, thanking him, praising him, and telling others about him. From the depths of our gratitude, we must praise him. And we should share the Good News with others.

A Prophetic Dream of Peace

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Brian McLaren considers how the Hebrew prophets dreamed of peace in the midst of war and oppression:

Prophets in the Bible have a fascinating role as custodians of the best hopes, desires, and dreams of their society…. And when they see people behaving in harmful ways, they warn them by picturing the future to which that harmful behavior will lead.

One of the most important prophetic compositions was the book of Isaiah. Most scholars today agree that at least three people contributed to the book over a long period of time, but their combined work has traditionally been attributed to one author. The first thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah were situated in the southern kingdom of Judah…. The prophet saw deep spiritual corruption and complacency among his people and warned them that this kind of behavior would lead to decline and defeat.

That defeat came in 587 BC at the hand of the Babylonians. After the invasion, many survivors were taken as exiles to Babylon. Chapters 40–55, often called Second Isaiah, addressed those Judean exiles, inspiring hope that they would someday return to their homeland and rebuild it. That soon happened, beginning in 538 BCE under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. That era of rebuilding was the setting for Third Isaiah, chapters 56–66.

For readers in later generations, ingredients from these three different settings blend into one rich recipe for hope, full of imagery that still energizes our imagination today….

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more (2:4)….

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them (11:6)….

Isaiah’s descriptions of that better day were so inspiring that Jesus and his early followers quoted Isaiah more than any other writer. But many other prophets added their own colors to this beautiful vision of hope. In Ezekiel’s vision, people’s hearts of stone will be replaced with hearts of flesh. For Malachi, the hearts of parents would turn to their children, and children to their parents. Joel describes the Spirit of God being poured out on all humanity—young and old, men and women, Jew and Gentile. Amos paints the vivid scene of justice rolling down like a river, filling all the lowest places….

In the centuries between the time of the prophets and the birth of Jesus, these prophetic dreams never completely died. But they were never completely fulfilled, either…. It remained alive in people like Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, and Anna and Simeon, and even among humble shepherds who lived at the margins of society.

To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to have a desire, a dream, a hope for the future. It is to translate that hope for the future into action in the present and to keep acting in light of it.

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Jesus, Etc.

A Foreword to a Vulnerable God

BRIAN ZAHNDAUG 18

“Christ of the Eucharist” ~ Lyuba Yatskiv

Jesus is God. Nothing is more central to the Christian faith than this confession. Christianity orbits around the audacious claim that the Galilean Jew known to history as Jesus of Nazareth was and is uniquely and fully divine. We insist that no matter how incongruent it may seem, the carpenter of Nazareth is also the Creator of the Cosmos. In the most important of the ancient Christian creeds we confess that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” But I suspect that most Christians misunderstand why this is so important.

In confessing the divinity of Christ we do not mean that we already know what God is like—omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omni-benevolent, all the theistic omnis put together—and Jesus is that. No. We do not know what God is like. We don’t begin with an abstract philosophical concept of God and then project it on Jesus. Instead we begin with Christ himself as the only way to know what God is truly like. In seeking to understand the transcendent Creator who dwells in unapproachable light, we cannot begin with “God” in abstraction or we will mostly end up with a divinized projection of our own aspirations, fears, values, and concepts of violent power. Which is to say we have fashioned an idol.

At the end of the poetic prologue to his Gospel, John the Evangelist makes this daring assertion: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” (Jn 1:18) Think about what John has said. No one has ever seen God? We might protest. Didn’t Abraham see God under the oaks of Mamre? Didn’t Jacob see God at Bethel as the angels trafficked the ladder between heaven and earth? Didn’t Moses see God on Mount Sinai so that his face shone? Aren’t we told that Moses took the seventy elders of Israel up the mountain that they too might see God? Didn’t Isaiah see God in the Temple in the year King Uzziah died? Didn’t Ezekiel have visions of God by the river Chebar? Yes, the Bible tells all of these stories and more. And yet John is adamant—“No one has ever seen God.” Why? Because no matter what dreams, visions, revelations, epiphanies, theophanies, or Christophanies people have had in times past, compared to the revelation of God in Christ no one has ever seen God! Thus the reason Christians confess the full deity of Christ is so that at last we might know what God is like. God is like Jesus! Or in the language of the New Testament, Jesus is “the exact imprint of God’s very being.” (Heb 1:3) To see Jesus is once and for all to behold God and finally know what God is like. At the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples requesting to see the Father, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (Jn 14:9)

I know of nothing more central to Christian theology and Christian spiritual formation than a sustained meditation on Jesus Christ as the Word of God. The incarnation is the boundless mystery that should eternally fascinate our theological imagination. All Christian theology begins with wonder—and the greatest wonder of all is the Eternal Logos assuming human flesh. Why does the Word of God enter the world through a human birth? “In order that the world might be saved through him.” (Jn 3:17) The world will not be saved by political movements or various activisms. This is the folly of the culture wars—or of all wars for that matter. The crucified and risen Word of God may, at times, inspire movements and activism, but we must not imagine that Christ is a mere accessory to our political or social agendas. Christ is not an addendum; Christ is the Alpha and Omega. All things have been created by and for Christ. He is the origin and telos of all creation. In pronouncing that all things are created by and for Christ, and that all things in heaven and on earth are reconciled in Christ, the Apostle Paul begins his lofty Christological hymn by first telling us that, “He is the image [icon] of the invisible God.” (Col 1:15) Jesus is the perfect icon of the invisible God. We are no longer guessing in abstraction concerning what God is like—we now gaze upon the icon who is Christ and move toward the beatific vision.

I know Kenneth Tanner, and I know he loves icons. You will find icons in his domestic and ecclesial habitats. He speaks frequently of icons and has given small replicas of the famous Sinai Pantocrator to many a soul. I am a grateful recipient of one of these gifts. And Kenneth Tanner is an iconographer himself. No, he doesn’t work with egg tempera and goldleaf on wooden panels, but he is an iconographer, nonetheless. Tanner is a pastor-theologian who works with the medium of words. In Vulnerable God we find a valuable and beautiful sustained meditation on Jesus Christ. This book does not read like a dry academic theological tome—it is far more like a poetic portrait. Thankfully, this book does not join the ranks of the ubiquitous catalogs of Christian pragmatism where we are told “how to” do this or that. This book simply invites us to gaze upon the face of Christ until the miracle of inner transformation begins to occur. Christ does the saving, all we have to do is look upon him. “Look to me and be saved.” (Is 45:22) This book is not angry—we have far too many of those. This book is gracious. It doesn’t strike as lightning, it falls as a gentle rain. Vulnerable God as a sustained meditation on the implications of the incarnation draws regularly upon ancient Christian theologians and pastors, but Tanner does it in such a way that Origen, Athanasius and others feel bracingly contemporary.

What I love most about this book is that every single page is about Jesus. Yes, every single page! This is why I describe Vulnerable God as an icon, and Kenneth Tanner as a theological iconographer. Page after page we are invited to look upon Christ—as a helpless infant, as a curious adolescent, as a young carpenter, as an itinerate healer, as a humble servant, as one crucified and buried, as one risen and ascended. Through this literary icon we are invited to look upon the vulnerable God who sustains the Cosmos with his word and fills all things everywhere with himself. Read this icon and behold the beauty of the Lord.

BZ

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

The late Dr. Barbara Holmes (1943–2024), a beloved member of the CAC faculty, acknowledges the complicated feelings that prophets evoke in their listeners: 

Prophets are difficult to have around. No one wants to claim the title or do the work because of it. In this postmodern age, everybody is uncomfortable with prophets. They yell when you don’t want them to. They ask for trouble when it could be avoided. They don’t have a politically correct bone in their bodies.…

Prophets are leaders, but not leaders of their own choosing. Inevitably, they have some sort of divine encounter. They meet a burning bush, a ram in the bush, or hear a call in the night. They have visions and dreams. They’re quirky and more than a little weird. As an example, take Jeremiah—he’s crying all the time. Isaiah fasts and lies in the dirt; John the Baptist eats locusts, and Huldah prophesies doom. Finally, one of the most important characteristics of prophets is that they are dangerous to the system.…

In bringing messages from God—and God doesn’t mince words—God speaks directly through them. They have a relationship and intimacy with the Divine. They communicate with God through prayer and direct speech. God walks and talks with them (perhaps not literally but in other ways). They have gifts, and they offer signs and wonders associated with the verification of the presence of God. They have communal connections. They act on behalf of community, not for their own gain, and are dependent on the community for help when they need it.

Though they are often portrayed as solitary figures, Holmes emphasizes the communal nature of the prophetic role:

There is a neglected but important aspect of the prophetic call. In Numbers 11:24–29, Moses is exhausted with the people. Basically, God says “Okay, okay, assemble the elders. Look to the community. You were never supposed to do this alone. I told you to do it; I didn’t tell you to do it alone.” How many of us are carrying burdens that are not ours, and are feeling pretty righteous about it? The work of living and dying, raising children, and leading congregations, was never meant to be solitary work. After the elders assemble, Joshua tells Moses that the elders are prophesying, and he says, “Moses, make this stop!” Moses’s reply in Numbers 11:29 is, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that God would put God’s Spirit on them!”

Let’s just sit with that for a minute. Have you ever felt as if God’s Spirit was on you? Although many of the prophets in the Bible are presented as single carriers of God’s word, often there was a community of other prophets that they came from or were associated with. Who is your community?… If you’re called to the prophetic task, and I think in some aspects all of us are—where is your prophetic community that will feed you and support you and guide you and help you?

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From Curt Thompson

Dear friend, Every couple of years, I find myself returning to C.S. Lewis’s The Space Trilogy. People occasionally ask why. Surely, after reading the novels so many times, I know how the story ends. But that isn’t really the point. Yes, the through-line of the narrative continues to captivate me. The development of the central character—especially across the first two novels—is as compelling today as it was the first time I encountered it. And I continue to believe Lewis offers some of his richest theology in his fiction. The truths he entrusts to his characters often reach places that straightforward explanation cannot.

But the deepest reason I return is this: These stories continue to train my imagination. They remind me that the world is far more alive than I often remember.  * * * * * I first encountered The Space Trilogy in college, but it was the second novel, Perelandra, that took hold of me. Its vision of temptation, beauty, obedience, and the unseen conflict between good and evil did more than capture my attention—it shaped the way I began to understand the world. In fact, my first serious research paper was devoted to Perelandra. At the time, I was a chemistry major with very little exposure to literature or the humanities. Writing this kind of research paper felt impossible. The assignment had called for ten pages; somehow I wrote twenty. To my surprise, it earned high marks and awakened something in me that I hadn’t known was there. Later, one of my literature professors asked me a question I’ve never forgotten. “Why aren’t you an English major?” My response came almost instinctively. “Why didn’t someone tell me I should be?” I’ve often wondered if there was a deeper question hidden beneath those words.

Who is paying close enough attention to notice what is coming alive in another person?

Who sees gifts that the person carrying them cannot yet recognize? Formation often begins because someone notices. Perhaps that is another gift of stories like Perelandra. They do more than entertain us. They awaken our capacity to perceive what is most real—within the world, within ourselves, and within one another. Warmly, Curt

Question for Reflection

Who has been someone who “noticed” something coming alive in you before you could see it yourself—and who might God be inviting you to notice in that way now?

Sunday, August 16, 2026

Father Richard Rohr describes why the example and message of the Hebrew prophets continue to be important for us today: 

My favorite thing about the prophetic books of the Bible is that they show a whole series of people in evolution of their understanding of God. Like most of us, the prophets start not only with judgmentalism and anger but also with a superiority complex of placing themselves above others. Then, in various ways, that outlook falls apart over the course of their writings. They move from that anger and judgmentalism to a reordered awareness in which they become more like God: more patient like God, more forgiving like God, more loving like God.

Throughout Scripture, the prophets seem to emphasize one sin above all the rest: idolatry, our habit of making things “God” that are not absolute, infinite, or objectively good. They are also ruthless toward the preoccupations of our private self, which always wants to put itself in the best light.

Prophets are full truth-tellers, not fortune-tellers. They pull back the veil to radically reframe our preferred storyline of history: the boring and predictable narrative of winners and losers, rewards and punishments. They are by definition those rare individuals who see reality in its fullness and dimension, rather than in dualities like totally right or totally wrong, all good or all bad.

There must be someone—or several someones—in every age who can tell the faith community, and society at large: Your first egoic glance at life—and God—­is largely wrong! And it is largely engendered by fear. “No one else is your problem,” says the prophet. “You are your own problem. What you think is goodness is too often delusion, and what you think is bad just might be your spiritual best friend.” In doing so, prophets offer not only criticism but also visions of a more just, more merciful, more peaceful society—and call the people to live into it. Any religion or philosophy that teaches group blindness instead of full seeing is standing in the way of such clarity.

We must be eternally conscious of this fact: For the untransformed self, religion is the most dangerous temptation of all. Our egos, when they are validated by religion, are given full permission to enslave, segregate, demean, defraud, and inflate—because all bases are covered with pre-ascribed virtue and a supposed hatred of evil. This is what the prophets expose in their wholesale assault on temple worship, priestly classes, self- serving commandments, and intergenerational wealth. “Be very careful here!” they keep shouting. The prophets know that religion is the best and that religion also risks being the worst. We love to choose sides and declare ourselves sinless and pure and orthodox (“right”), with little evidence that it is true. This is always a surprise to everyone except the prophets.

The Task of the Prophets

Monday, August 17, 2026

It is the task of the prophet to bring to expression the new realities against the more visible ones of the old order. Energizing is closely linked to hope. We are energized not by that which we already possess but by that which is promised and about to be given.
—Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

In 1980, Richard Rohr gave a series of talks on the Hebrew prophets. Here he speaks of the hopeful imagination to which the prophets and God invite us:

Prophets nurture and evoke a new way of thinking. They give us images and words which subvert our system and tell us that we haven’t seen the whole picture yet. Prophets are not just concerned about social change for the sake of social change. They are concerned above all with transformation and  freedom of the heart, and then out of that free heart, the prophet says, “Listen.” The prophet creates a new, freeing consciousness which allows us to hear the divine word.

In the midst of that freedom, the prophets plant a promise, an alternative and new vision—but the promise never really gets fulfilled. It both tantalizes and torments us with dissatisfaction—and nevertheless calls us forward! It isn’t that God or the prophets are playing games with us. It’s that we are energized by the hope of God’s promises. What gives us the energy and power to keep moving is the promise, the dream, the vision of what could be and what’s beyond the moment. The prophet knows that, and God knows that. In the exodus, God plants the promise in Moses’s heart, and then Moses gives it to the people.

These promises are not lies. They’re true, but they’re not always what we expect or hope for, and so God calls us a little further. This is the way that divine love stretches our hearts. This is the real rebirth. This is the way we’re reborn again and again until we enter, through death, the promise of a deeper life.

The established and dominant culture does not have authentic promises because it seeks to maintain itself. The system has materialistic and self-protecting promises for more money and a better life; it encourages us to consume more and more. It cannot offer a promise which fills and expands the heart beyond itself to the larger world.

God’s promises energize and expand the heart, deepening our capacity for life and our quality of being in this world. They put the authority inside us. This, finally, is the only overcoming of death, the only answer to the absurdity that this time is going to end. That’s what the promises of God do—lead us to the experience of deeper life. The Gospel writers call it resurrection.

Remaining in Love

Friday, August 14, 2026

Francis’s love for God deepens his love for life. Mirabai Starr illuminates:

Now that he has fallen in love with God, Francis recognizes his relatedness to all life. If the creator is his father, then all living things are his sisters and brothers. This connectedness fills him with wild joy, a joy that spills over every vessel of the human experience and flows back into the earth, giving birth to the endless unfolding of creation. Francis invites everyone to his table, which is God’s table….
 
The more saintly Saint Francis grows, the more human he becomes. His love of creation keeps him close to the earth, where he rejoices in the simple yet unutterably holy gift of being a man, a man connected to other men and to women, to earth and sky, to forest and village and river and sea, to the tiny ant and the majestic eagle, to winter snowfall and the promise of spring sleeping beneath it. [1]

Father Richard considers Franciscan mysticism an invitation to love the divine presence in the world, in ourselves, and in all creation:  

All being can correctly and rightly be spoken of with “one voice” (univocity), as Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus (1266–1308) would later put it. What I am you also are, and so is the world. Creation is one giant symphony of mutual sympathy, or, as Augustine loved to say, “And thus the end will be the one Christ, loving himself.” [2]
 
To arrive at this mystical vision, I must know that I am, at least in part, the very thing I am seeking. In fact, that is what makes me seek it! God cannot be found “out there” until God is first found “in here,” within ourselves. Then we can almost naturally see God in others and in all creation too. What we seek is what we are. The search for God and the search for our true self are finally the same search. Francis’s all-night prayer, “Who are you, O God, and who am I?” is one the most honest prayers we can offer.

A heart transformed by this realization of oneness knows that only love “in here” can spot and enjoy love “out there.” Thus, all mystics are positive people—or they are not mystics. Their spiritual work is precisely that of recognizing and then handing over all their inner negativity and fear to God. The great paradox here is that such a victory is a total gift from God, and yet we must also want it very much (see Philippians 2:12–13).
 
The central practice in Franciscan mysticism, therefore, is that we must remain in love, which is why it is a commandment as such (John 15:9) and, in fact, the commandment of Jesus. Only when we are eager to love can we see love and goodness in the world around us. We must ourselves remain in peace and then we will see and find peace over there. Remain in beauty, and we will honor beauty everywhere. [3]

References:
[1] Mirabai Starr, Saint Francis of Assisi: Brother of Creation (Sounds True, 2013), 39, 41.

[2] Augustine, homily on 1 John 5:1–3, in Augustine: Later Works, ed. and trans. John Burnaby (Westminster Press, 1955), 341.

[3] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media, 2024), 8–9.

Image Credit and Inspiration: Pouya Hajiebrahimi, untitled, 2025, photo. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Alone in the mist, we stand quietly before the mirror Saint Clare speaks of, waiting to be transformed.

John Chaffee’s Five on Friday – 8-14-26

1.

“I have a rendezvous beyond my beloved horizon.”

– Capt. Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Several years ago, I did a deep dive on the Golden Age of the Pirates.

This was, of course, inspired by the fact that I love the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  I think they are generally good, clean, swashbuckling fun.

The last movie in the series finishes with this quote above, which, to anyone familiar with the Hero’s Journey, is the first stage of the Journey… Leaving the known, and crossing the threshold into the unknown.

Even after five movies, the series ends with the idea that another threshold of adventure is still beckoning Capt. Jack Sparrow.

Every one of us still has a threshold that we must cross over, from the known world in which we live and into the unknown world which will require courage and a sense of purpose.

Every good story is worth telling because it reminds us that there is still more to learn, to experience, to be challenged by.

2.

“A man who has been through bitter experiences and traveled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time.”

– The Odyssey

I likely would not have understood this quote in my younger years.

However, after living enough of life and experiencing disappointment, resentment, pain, loss, rejection, etc., I can look back and say that many of those things ended up being for my benefit.  Not only that, but I feel like I can tell the story of those days without getting dragged back into those old feelings.

Do you know what I mean?

More and more, I am coming to realize that the price of living is the willingness to experience not just what happened but stay present and open to the fact that future pain and suffering may still come my way.

I know that this is a misreading of Jesus, but remember that lesson he gave about the wheat and the weeds being allowed to grow together?  How might cutting out the weeds now negatively affect the wheat?  How will the two be separated later?

It might be that if we try to cut out everything ugly and painful in life, it could also come at the cost of other beautiful and healing things.

So yes, like Odysseus, may we come to appreciate and welcome it all.

3.

“One can never satisfy a closed mind.”

– Dr. Craig Keener, New Testament Scholar

Dr. Keener was one of my seminary professors.  I fully believe he might be a savant.  Never before had I met someone with such an intellect, and yet at the same time maintain such a meek and humble posture toward life.

I remember reading somewhere that we can change only 5% of our worldview on a good day, which probably means that on an average day we are closer to 2.5%.

So yes, for someone with a closed mind who deliberately chooses not to take in new information, there is likely a 0% chance that any change of mind will happen.

The problem is: Jesus’ first word of public ministry in the Gospels is metanoia, which can be translated as “reconsider everything.”

4.

“Moreover, when the narcissistic leader is under attack, his response is defensiveness and a victim complex.”

– Chuck DeGroat, Pastor and Therapist

This is also known as DARVO.

D – Deny

A – Attack

RVO – Reverse Victim and Offender

When someone has a weak ego or sense of self, as soon as they receive a critique or even honest feedback about how others perceive or experience them, they will DARVO rather than admit a mistake and make a commitment to change their behavior.

“I am not a jerk.” (Deny.)

“You are the jerk.” (Attack.)
“How dare you say that I hurt you? What about all the other instances when I have felt hurt by you!” (Reverse Victim and Offender.)

This leaves the victim feeling the need to apologize to the victimizer, so nothing changes; no one repents or makes true amends, and the victimizer is free to continue their unhealthy habits.

5.

“There is still time for endurance, time for patience, time for healing, time for change.

Have you slipped? Rise up.

Have you sinned? Cease.

Do not stand among sinners, but leap aside.”

– Basil of Caesarea, 4th Century AD,Cappadocian Monk

One fascinating thing about the early church, especially before the temptation of empire-building got its long tendrils into the mix, is that they seemed more concerned with behavior than creeds.

This is also true of Jesus.

Think about it…

Jesus doesn’t give long lectures or monologues about doctrine or how one should believe.  Jesus does, however, kickstart his ministry in Matthew’s Gospel with the Sermon on the Mount, which focuses on the ethics of the kingdom of God.

For Basil of Caesarea, who was born to an extremely wealthy family, his emphasis was often on how to live a good life.  No matter what we have done or where we have been, we can always make a commitment to leave it all behind and return to the places where we ought never have left.

Now, you might say that it is impossible to “not stand among sinners” since we are all sinners, but there is a difference between standing among sinners who are actively choosing to clean up their lives versus those who (like those with closed minds in the third quote) have no real interest in leaving their sins behind.  Some people simply haven’t hit their true rock bottom yet, and it is okay to set firm boundaries with them.

The emphasis, though, should be on ourselves and asking what things we ought to leave behind.

THE MYSTICISM OF FRANCIS AND CLARE

Incarnation: The Humility of God

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Franciscan mysticism is at heart incarnational mysticism. Theologian Ilia Delio highlights how Francis of Assisi was transformed by the radical implications of the Incarnation, including his powerful experience meeting a leper:
 
Francis lived in the spirit of humility and poverty by following the poor and humble Christ…. Just as God reached out to embrace Francis in the compassionate love of the cross, so, too, that same God was now present in the distorted figure of the leper…. The leper became a source of God’s loving embrace and thus someone to whom Francis realized he was intimately related….
 
The leper experience was a turning point in Francis’ life. As his life deepened in God, he made a constant effort to spend himself in love by giving himself to the other…. Following the footprints of Jesus, Francis found the God of humble love not among the popular and the proud, the arrogant and the rich or those who “stand out” in society, but among the ordinary, the forgotten, the poor and sick and marginalized….
 
The simplest way to describe God’s poverty and humility is in terms of love. Love gives itself away—this is God’s poverty. Love turns toward the other so it can give itself to the other—this is God’s humility. In the Incarnation, God turns toward us through the Son/Word and gives [God’s] self to us as love. We call this gift of God’s love to us, this gift of total self-emptying love, “kenosis.” The poverty of God is the kenosis or self-emptying of the Word, the descent of the Word, from the riches of divine glory into our fragile human nature. [1]
 
Delio invites us, like Francis, to experience the poverty and humility of God:

What would the world be like if Christians actually believed in a humble God? If following a God of poverty and humility led them to abandon their opinions, prejudices and judgments so they could be more open to love others where they are, like God? Francis went about the world following the footprints of Christ, not so he could look like Christ, but because they were the footprints of divine humility. He discovered that God descends in love to meet us where we are, and he found God in the most unexpected forms…. The humility of God means acceptance—God accepts ordinary, fragile human flesh to reveal [God’s] glory so that we in turn may accept others as the revelation of God. Christ discloses the beauty of the world as the radiance of God. That is why every person and creature merits utmost respect and attention because in that living being, God dwells. We may be confounded by the mystery of God’s humility if we try to understand it through reason alone. The humility of God is not an abstract concept. It is how God expresses [Godself] in concrete reality. [2]

References:
[1] Ilia Delio, The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005), 19–20, 25.

[2] Delio, Humility of God, 31–32.

Image Credit and Inspiration: Pouya Hajiebrahimi, untitled, 2025, photo. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Alone in the mist, we stand quietly before the mirror Saint Clare speaks of, waiting to be transformed.

Healing Prophetic Abuse & Hearing God Again

Bradley Jersak foreword excerpt to Eric H. Janzen’s “Ponder: Valuing & Evaluating the Gift of Prophecy”

Click here to order Eric Janzen, Ponder: Valuing and Evaluating the Gift of Prophecy here.

Foreword

I believe in and have been the grateful beneficiary of what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14 as the New Testament “gift of prophecy.” He describes it there as a function of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ gathered, whereby we build each other up in love. For thirty years, I have been committed to and taught the same criteria the apostle lays out there. He says that prophetic ministry serves to “strengthen, comfort and encourage” one another. By adhering to these parameters as our basic protocol, the churches and ministries where I’ve served have seen remarkably little prophetic abuse to the degree that we submitted to those love-centered guidelines.

Even before I first became conscious of this gift, I witnessed Spirit-filled encouragement at work in the life of my parents, who, as Baptists, would never dare say, “Thus says the Lord,” or “God is saying,” yet flowed in that ministry using phrases like, “I sensed the Lord prompting me” or “I felt led.” That approach called for bold action but humble terminology.

Unfortunately, in the decades since I first began to see authentic prophetic phenomenon, I’ve also witnessed profound examples of misuse, ranging from condemnation and accusation, flattery and manipulation, consumeristic confessions, and perhaps worst of all grotesque politicization. For all the bad press the self-proclaimed prophets have faced, I can say that I’ve been in the conference green rooms and it’s probably worse than you can imagine.

But that’s nothing new. One needs to ask why Paul was compelled (by the Spirit) to exhort the Thessalonians, “Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil.” I would propose that Paul needed to warn this family of faith not to hold prophecy in contempt precisely because they had been disillusioned by its misuse… so much so that, like many of us, they developed a cynical eye roll when the latest ‘prophet’ would show up. And who wouldn’t?

But to allow the counterfeits to incite you to ditch the authentic seems like an odd sort of concession to the thief. Paul’s wise advice is a doubling down on testing. Test everything. Boldly. Unapologetically. Even if the prophets claim to be exempt (“because I’m the Lord’s anointed). That claim is immediately self-disqualifying. Rather, the true prophetic spokesperson not only welcomes an examination of their message and their character but exhorts the listener to go listen for themselves to the same Spirit they believe is at work in them.

At one time, I believed this testing involved confirmation and alignment with the Scriptures, the Body of Christ and the voice of the Spirit. But it wasn’t long before I saw how quickly someone could produce a Bible verse, a yes-man and a warm fuzzy feeling to meet the criteria. I began to recognize the need to sharpen our focus onto the person of Jesus Christ—the threefold witness of his person, his ministry and his teaching, as laid out in the four Gospels and especially the Sermon on the Mount. At the end of that sermon, Jesus says, “Here’s the wise person who builds their house upon the rock—the one who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice.”

With that, I began to pray the Beatitudes every day, and I saw how many so-called prophetic words could not pass through the purifying fire of even the first beatitude: “Bless are the poor in Spirit,” much less the second, “Blessed are those who mourn,” and by the time we got to the third, “Blessed are the meek,” every grandiose word that appealed to our fleshly egoism was consumed. It’s an incredibly reliable furnace of discernment.

Having tested everything, Paul adds, “And hold fast to that which is good.” We used to say, “Chew on the meat, spit out the bones.” And what is good? Who is good? Jesus alone. And this is why, first and foremost, John the Revelator announces that “the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.” That is, the gift of prophecy points us back to Jesus, over and over. It’s not about my success or my ministry or all the things that make me feel great. It’s a constant invitation to look into the eyes of our gentle Shepherd and to listen to his kind words—even the stern ones.

If those who receive the prophetic word regard it as, in some sense, the voice of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, then I believe its greatest value is in how it makes God real to us. We see how many of those who’ve left the faith and abandoned Jesus himself do so as if they had never met him or known him as more than an idea or doctrine or remote figure… or if they had an experience of his voice, the birds of disillusionment and cynicism have stolen the seed from their hearts (because of rogue prophetic claims that sullied the whole experience).

But if we can somehow retrieve this gift, I believe we will find they invite us to deeper intimacy with Christ and into a greater wonder in following him… and his messages of hope then empower us to overcome inertia and opposition because we know God has our backs in a deeply personal way.

I will be frank here… I still have an anxious tick when folks begin to speak about the prophetic gift. The bizarre and blasphemous words given in the name of Jesus have left me jaded (which is a harsh way to say weary and untrusting). BUT if we’ll exercise a deep and consistent commitment to testing prophets and prophecies by their fruit, we’ll begin to see the powerful positive fruit of transformation in those who represent the “real deal.”

Sacred Reading: A Pathway to Connectivity

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Clare of Assisi provides spiritual counsel to Bohemian princess Agnes of Prague. She recommends praying before images of the cross: 

Gaze upon, examine, contemplate, most noble queen, desiring to follow your spouse…. If you suffer with him, you will reign with him. Grieving with him, you will rejoice with him. Dying with him on the cross of tribulation, you will possess mansions in heaven with him among the splendors of the saints, and your name will be recorded in the book of life. [1]
 
Franciscan friar and author Dan Riley (1943–2024) reflects on Clare’s second letter to Agnes and describes this experiential form of prayer as “Franciscan Lectio”: 

For Clare, Francis, and their followers, what we call “Lectio” always moves toward actio—the loving and healing action, the merciful movement toward justice. This is spherical in nature, out from the Crucified One in Christ, before whom you and I sit. She brings us into this sphere of love, around the axle—the primal tree.…
 
St. Bonaventure points to us a certain way of prioritizing “coming to know,” which involves placing ourselves in a place where we might learn more than to know…. In other words, this kind of knowing causes wonder to rise up from our hearts instead of dualism or certainty from our minds. To learn is to enter activity, even if it is dark or unclear or veiled or obscured. You and I journey in trust before the crucifix, a mirror for our lives. We come with our questions. We can be honest and real.
 
Riley notes that anything good, true, or beautiful can attract our gaze and invite sacred reading. In this form of prayer, wonder, gratitude, and connectivity can arise within our consciousness:

When Clare asks us to gaze upon the crucified Christ, the one whom she had long sat before, she is inviting us into an experience that will unfold differently for each of us. She is inviting us to gaze upon the Christ who has already risen, who has gone on before us into Galilee, … and entered the world wholly and fully alive. What emerges in her letters to Agnes is an invitation into the core of a beautiful, terrible mystery that is at the heart of all that is created: freedom in the Cosmic Christ. When she says “gaze upon,” I believe she is inviting us to open the focal point of our gaze. Clare was not caught up in her sinfulness while looking at the crucifix. She was rejoining the deep call of the suffering, dying, and resurrection of Christ. (She was doing Lectio with the crucifix.) She was looking at becoming one with the axis of the cosmos, the love-pole of life’s compass, and in this experience she was able to be a large enough “tent” for Agnes and others…. Again, we see in St. Clare the heart of Franciscanism: a deep, personal integrated journey within and through Christ and out into the world

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Keep Calm and Carry On?

The Commodification of Calm, and How Ancient Wisdom Can Help

CHUCK DEGROAT

AUG 12, 2026

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“Within each of us is a divine treasure, and if we hope to discover it, we need to go deep into the heart of who we are. To find that treasure requires that we work like a wood carver who does not work by adding, but by cutting away, removing what is rough to reveal what shimmers from within.” —Meister Eckhart (1260–1328)

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Years ago when I began training as a Christian therapist, I asked a question: What’s the goal? 

I really wasn’t sure. 

Was it catharsis—a good, healing cry? 

Was it insight—an aha about your childhood wounds? 

Was it a better boundary—meant to foster connection? 

I was also finishing my Master of Divinity degree, and was considering the larger telos of it all—what is flourishing on this therapeutic journey? 

It seemed to matter for the significant work of soul care we were engaged in. And yet, from supervisor to supervisor, the answers varied.

Years later, my first book—Leaving Egypt: Finding God in the Wilderness Places— was devoted to that question, as I anchored my own vision in the long journey home from slavery, through Sinai and sandy deserts, to a secure place—from neurosis to theosis, as I titled one chapter. 

Since then, we’ve learned a lot more about nervous system physiology, and I sense new goals being offered beyond catharsis, insight, and boundaries. Today, we’re invited to the kind of work that produces “calm,” that fosters “regulation,” that invites “ventral anchoring,” and more—a new language of the nervous system, offering an invaluable contribution to human flourishing. 

And yet, it’s become an industry, with apps and techniques and vagus nerve stimulation devices and books. 

Calm™ has been commodified. 

What Is This “Calm” You’re Seeking? 

When a group I was engaging was asking about resources and techniques and devices and media that could help them find this elusive state of calm, I pausing because I sensed the urgency. 

After a moment, I asked: 

What if what you’re seeking is already yours? 

I saw a few blank stares. 

But my point was this: we’ve turned nervous system regulation into another pursuit. 

And it’s not surprising. 

As I’ve written about in Healing What’s Within, it’s what we know in our bones, an ancient echo of a slithering serpent’s deceit in Genesis 3—the not-so-subtle hint that what you’re looking for is out there, waiting to be grasped, like Adam and Eve grasped for the tempting fruit. 

Purchase this vagal toning device for $399! 

Or, grab this yearlong subscription to the state-of-the-art breathwork app!

Or, enroll in this training for nervous system work not available anywhere else!

And—guess what?!—that buzzing anxiety will go away. 

That nagging restlessness will disappear.

Indeed, the promised land is just over the horizon!

Do you feel the pull? 

It’s just out there—yours to acquire—until it isn’t. 

That’s not to say that particular practices aren’t valuable—they are, and I commend them regularly—as resources to support someone, not the guaranteed means to unlocking the elusive calm. 

Yes, I’m deeply invested in engaging the best insights of today’s neuroscience, but when I sense its limits, I continually return to ancient wisdom. 

Ancient Calm?

Recently, I pulled a dusty copy of Cyprian Smith’s The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life as Taught by Meister Eckhart off my shelf. I set it alongside Jon Sweeney and Mark Burrow’s Meister Eckhart: Book of the Heart. And these two books accompanied me on a little birthday vacation week away. 

Sitting back in my camp chair one morning with a few hours of spacious time ahead, I exhaled. 

Echoing Jesus’s “the kingdom of heaven is within you” and his words to the elder son “everything I have is (already) yours,” the German Dominican philosopher and priest Meister Eckhart was eager to remind his listeners that what you’re seeking is already yours. 

He once said: 

“God is at home. It is we who’ve gone out for a walk.” 

You hear this echoed in the quote at the top, too. 

Eckhart knew his own restless heart, and he was interested in calm. In fact, he had a word for it: 

Gelassenheit.

Now, I’m no German scholar, but I’ve done a little digging and Eckhart’s vision of calm is a bit different than ours. For Eckhart, this “calm” state he envisions is not one we grasp or acquire or achieve. The best of contemporary neuroscience would agree, but marketplace products offering calm don’t always heed the science. 

For Eckhart, gelassenheit described a state of relinquishment, of letting go, of opening our hands, even releasement (as John O’Donohue names it). 

Eckhart might’ve said that grasping is the problem. 

We grasp after some image of God fashioned for pragmatic or power-seeking motives. 

We grasp after some image of ourselves. 

We grasp for success. 

We grasp for healing, for certainty, and even for calm. 

And I feel this. 

I’ve spent a lot of my life chasing the thing. 

It’s what we learned in school, in sports, in games, even in a church—there was always another achievement to unlock. We’re practically formed to grasp in our earliest years, and this grasping serves us in the first half of life until we hit a wall or realize our limits—often through significant disorientation, disruptions, and more. Most of us don’t know what to do when we arrive at this wall, and there are too-few guides around to help us navigate. 

So, we grasp some more. 

Scan your life: what did you learn to grasp for? What subtle formation oriented your life toward grasping? What did your school reward? What did your church prize? What would you need to achieve to be sanctified, smart, or successful? How were you formed to grasp? 

Already Yours

I turned 56 last week and grabbed copies of those books before Sara and I took a short birthday trip. 

Because I needed to be reminded. 

Even after midlife’s pruning, I still grasp. 

Even after experiencing the futility of grasping, I keep reaching. 

Eckhart might say today that we’re all addicts looking for the next fix—even if that fix is what we call “calm.” 

Perhaps the invitation—for you and for me—is to simply notice the grasping. Notice that subtle pull within to search for it, to reach for it, to purchase it. 

And then, breathe. 

Breathe in—and exhale.

Perhaps an old prayer might help:

Calm me oh Lord (inhale)

As you stilled the storm (exhale)

Still me oh Lord (inhale)

Keep me from harm (exhale)

Let all the tumult (inhale)

within me cease (exhale)

Enfold me Lord (inhale)

in Your peace. (Exhale)

(Celtic prayer via David Adam) 

And then consider: what if what I’m searching for is already available, in some mysterious way, to me, even within me? 

What if I’m already the beloved? 

What if Jesus’s words to the elder brother are true and it’s all alreadymine?

What if I’m one with God, even now?

What if “home” is a spacious place within? 

What if a “hidden wholeness” is my spiritual birthright and eternal inheritance?

And, as I wrote about years ago in a Lenten devotional, what if all I need to do is to fall into the goodness that is already given?

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Feast Day of Clare of Assisi

Sister Margaret Carney tells of the radical trajectory of Clare of Assisi’s life, who left behind wealth and social standing under cover of night in exchange for a simple life devoted to God:

The year was 1212. On Palm Sunday morning she attended the Mass in the cathedral…. Late that same night, Clare left her home on the piazza of San Rufino…. The gate by which she could leave the city after curfew was in a section owned by the bishop—the palm branch [he went out of his way to give to her that morning at Mass] might also have served as an “all clear” relative to the route she must take…. Once on the other side of this gate and Assisi’s protective walls, she would become a citizen of another “commune” of Gospel striving….

Finally, she arrived at the tiny church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Once there, she was formally received by Francis in a carefully orchestrated ritual. Her beautiful clothing was exchanged for a penitent’s robe. Francis himself cut her hair—the time-honored tradition for women seeking to leave the world to live by religious vows…. In the presence of the brothers, Clare professed her dedication to Jesus, and, like them, to poverty and their simple rule. All that she once claimed as a member of a noble family was put aside. [1]
 
In one of Clare’s letters, we sense the depth of her contemplative life: 

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance, and through contemplation, allow your entire being to be transformed into the image of the Godhead itself, so that you may feel what friends feel, and taste the hidden sweetness that God has reserved for His lovers. [2]

Richard Rohr reflects: 

This profound quote, that could only emerge as a fruit of contemplation, along with her very frequent use of the mirror metaphor in her writings, communicates to me that Clare experientially understood prayer as an actual transformation of the self, a reflected glory, even daring to speak of “allowing your entire being to be transformed into the image of the Godhead itself.” This was surely not common Catholic language in the Western Church at that time and would have seemed presumptuous or even heretical to many (as it may even seem today).

Clare directly expresses what the Eastern Church held onto under the name of divinization (theosis). Theosis was understood as a true, objective sharing and growing in our divine nature, which was then reflected and received in humans as in a mirror. All we can really do is polish our own mirror to reflect the gift of this Godself more perfectly. Thus the objectively given “image” at our conception becomes subjective “likeness” over time, building on the foundational metaphors that we were created in both the image and the likeness of God

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The Man Who Ran

Back to Maturity, Part Two

JASON TWOMBLY AUG 10

It was Mother’s Day.

I’d taken the kids to Walmart after church to grab a tablecloth for David’s sixth-grade project. Simple errand. Twenty minutes, in and out.

But church had already been its own weight. Mother’s Day as a widowed single dad is a particular kind of hard. You sit in the pew, you sing the songs, you watch other families move through it intact, and you carry something nobody in the room can quite see. By the time we walked out into that parking lot, I was already running on fumes (not the tired kind, the grief kind). The kind that sits just below the surface and waits for something small to tip it.

Someone had left the stereo running while we were inside Walmart. By the time we came back out to the parking lot, the battery was dead.

I want to be honest about what happened next.

When that battery died, something in me flipped. And instead of staying with my kids and solving the problem from where we stood, I ran. Five miles home, in my church shoes, to get another car and jumper cables. Leaving my three kids alone in that Walmart parking lot.

Here’s the thing: I was training for a marathon at the time. Five miles was nothing. My body didn’t even register it as a decision. And I told myself the kids would be fine, which they were. But that’s exactly what makes overwhelm so disorienting, it doesn’t feel like panic. It feels like logic. It feels like you’re handling something. What I couldn’t see, sprinting down the road in my dress shoes, was the image I was leaving behind. And what my kids were watching their dad do instead of stay.

In the moment it felt like decisive action.

Looking back, my overwhelm had taken the wheel. And my children paid the fare.

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Years later I came across a short video by Dr. Dan Siegel, the neuropsychiatrist and author who developed the concept he calls “flipping your lid.” In it, he uses his hand as a model of the brain to explain what happens when the prefrontal cortex (the part responsible for judgment, empathy, and regulated response) goes offline under stress. The lid flips. The rational brain disconnects. And what takes over isn’t evil or weak. It’s just the oldest part of your brain doing what it was built to do: survive.

I watched that video and I could smell that parking lot again.

For the first time, I understood what had actually happened that day. Not an excuse. Not a pass. But an explanation that quietly removed the shame and replaced it with something more useful: understanding. Because you can’t grow what you can’t see clearly, and shame makes everything blurry.

(I’ve linked the video below. If you’ve ever wondered why you said what you said, did what you did, or left when you should have stayed, watch it. It might do for you what it did for me.)

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That story surfaced in a men’s gathering I lead called MANCAVE. We were practicing something in this month’s coaching practice called “Back to Maturity Stories” (moments that quietly reveal where we stopped growing, usually in the most ordinary-looking scenes of our lives). When I told that Walmart story out loud, to a room full of men, something shifted in the telling. Not because it was dramatic. Because it was true.

And because the men in that room recognized it.

Not that exact story. But the shape of it, the man who, under pressure, disappears. Who mistakes movement for leadership. Who handles his own overwhelm by leaving the people who needed him to stay.

That shape has a name. And it lives inside a framework I’ve been training in MANCAVE, drawn from decades of maturity research and practice, the work of Dr. Jim Wilder in relational neuroscience, the Life Model carried forward by the team at LK10, and Marcus Warner’s work in Rare Leadership. These voices don’t all say exactly the same thing, but they’re mapping the same territory.

That territory looks like this. Human maturity moves across five stages, each with a core task:

Infant — the task is learning to receive. Not earning, not performing. Simply letting someone give you what you need before you know how to ask.

Child — the task is learning to ask for what you need. To do hard things on purpose. To discover what actually satisfies, not just what distracts.

Adult — the task is learning to take care of two people at once. Yourself and another, simultaneously. Taking responsibility for how your actions land on the people around you (including protecting them from your own unregulated self).

Parent — the task is giving without keeping score. Pouring into others without needing it returned.

Elder — the task is carrying the whole community. Staying yourself under fire. Being steady when everyone around you needs someone to hold the room.

Here’s what matters: your body doesn’t graduate a stage just because you had a birthday. Most of us are a mix (solid in one area of life, still working through something unfinished in another). That’s not a flaw. That’s just where growth still has room to go.

The Walmart parking lot? That was an Adult-stage task I hadn’t finished. I failed at the precise thing the Adult stage asks of us: taking responsibility for how my actions land on the people I love, and protecting them from my own overwhelm rather than leaving them to weather it alone.

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When a task at any stage doesn’t get finished, the researchers and practitioners in this space are consistent: the gap doesn’t stay invisible. It surfaces. It shows up as:

Avoidance — the world quietly gets smaller. We fill it with noise, or with work, anything to avoid what’s waiting at home.

Addiction — almost always a sign something is unfinished underneath. Not a moral failure. A developmental gap looking for relief.

Anxiety — a lower capacity means it takes less to overwhelm us. And overwhelm, over time, turns into fear about everything ahead.

Anger — a short fuse is one of the clearest signs of an unfinished task. Returning to calm from anger is a skill. If nobody taught it to you, of course you don’t have it yet.

None of these mean something is wrong with you as a man. They mean there’s work still to be done. And that work can be done.

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Here’s what I’ve learned to do with a moment like the Walmart battery: the redo.

Not to shame the man who ran. He was doing the best his nervous system could do that day. The grief was real. The overwhelm was real. But naming what I’d do differently is how I actually build the muscle for next time.

If I could walk back into that parking lot today, I’d stay. I’d ask the nearest person walking by for jumper cables, or I’d walk back into the store with my kids and ask an associate for help. My children would watch their dad handle a hard moment without disappearing (solving the problem while staying present with the people it most affected).

That’s the redo. Not just fixing the car. Staying with my children while I fixed it. Protecting them from my own flipped lid instead of leaving them to weather it alone.

The man who ran was doing his best. The man learning to stay is doing the work.

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This is what Back to Maturity stories are built for, not to catalog your failures, but to find the ordinary moments that are still quietly shaping you, name what task they’re pointing to, and practice what it would look like to finish what wasn’t finished.

We do this work inside MANCAVE every session. If you’re a man who recognizes the shape of that parking lot (the moment where you moved instead of stayed, handled instead of held) you’re not alone. And it’s not too late to learn what you were never shown.

You can’t go back. But you can grow forward into someone who stays. What you practice now shapes who shows up next time.

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Grace and Connectivity

Sunday, August 9, 2026

Father Richard Rohr describes how grace and connectivity are foundational to Franciscan mysticism: 

Before talking specifically about Franciscan mysticism, the meaning of the word mysticism needs to be clarified. As its Greek root form mu (closed eyes or lips) implies, mysticism is pointing to something that is somehow hidden and cannot be easily seen or talked about. A mystic reveals that which is hidden to most of us, yet it is also invariably what we also hope and imagine to be true! True mystics seldom if ever bring bad news. It seems Reality, at its hidden and deepest levels, is always very good—better than most of us can imagine!
 
I use the word mysticism in a very traditional and classic sense. It is not pointing to something esoteric and unavailable to the masses, but it does point to something that is only available to those who go beyond the surface and exterior, those who experience the inner grace and connectivity of all things. I emphasize connectivity because that unteachable gift is what I always see in true mystics. Mystics know and enjoy the connected core of reality. They look out from a different pair of eyes that see the grace in all things and the deep connection between all things.
 
Franciscan mysticism is a subset of mysticism. Though it overlaps with aspects of non-Christian mysticism—such as nature mysticism, Islamic Sufi mysticism (ecstasy and joy), Hindu mysticism (unitive consciousness itself and asceticism), and Buddhism (nonviolence and simplicity)—Franciscan mysticism has a unique place in the world through its Christocentric lens. 

It was the unique person of Jesus that Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) fell in love with, precisely in his incarnate and humble state, identifying with the excluded and little ones, whom Jesus calls “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). The bias toward the edge and the bottom has always been at the heart of Franciscan mysticism, explaining its perennial identification with poverty and suffering.

The cosmic vision, personalized in Jesus, was an intuition that Francis and many of his followers lived and experienced, but most of them did not formulate it in theological words or academic concepts as much as in lifestyles. Usually they picked it up by osmosis, through the gospel and the Franciscan lineage. Followers of Francis bore “fruit that remained” and invariably believed in original blessing much more than original sin.

Franciscan mysticism is therefore not really about Francis, but about a universal notion of Christ and therefore all reality. Francis pushes all of our seeing to the absolute edge by always including those whom other systems might too easily exclude—lepers, non-Christians, poor people, hated outsiders. When it loses that “edgy” position, it might be mini-mysticism, or even church mysticism, but it is never Franciscan mysticism. Francis knew that only love is big enough to handle and hold truth. Truth which is not loving, joyful, and inclusive is never the Great Truth.

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The Infinite in the Finite

Monday, August 10, 2026

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Father Richard explores how Franciscan mysticism invites us to encounter divine presence in our concrete, specific lives: 

Francis of Assisi knew that if we could accept that the finite manifests the infinite, and that the physical is the doorway to the spiritual (which is the foundational principle we call “incarnation”), then all we need is right here and right now—in this world. This is the way to that! Heaven includes earth. Time opens us up to the timeless, space opens us up to spacelessness, if only we take them for the clear doorways that they are. There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments—and it is we alone who desecrate them by our willful blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it. We really cannot get any better or more simple than that in terms of a spiritual vision.

The realization that the concrete opens us up to the universal might be the only fully trustworthy or possible path anyway, because that is how sensate humans normally operate. Abstract ideology will not get us very far, and much common religion is ideology more than any real encounter with Presence. But we all must start with our anecdotal experience and then build from there. People all over the world are rejecting the ideological (top-down) form of religion—and they should, because this is not the path of Christ himself.

By taking the mystery of the Incarnation absolutely seriously and gradually extending it to its logical conclusions, the seeming limitations of space and time are once and for all overcome in Francis. The Christ Mystery refuses to be vague or abstract and is always concrete and specific. When we stay with these daily apparitions, we see that everything is a revelation of the divine—from rocks to rocket ships. There are henceforth no blind spots in the divine disclosure, in our own eyes, or in our rearview mirrors. The only hindrance to our seeing is our own lack of fascination, humility, curiosity, awe, and willingness to be allured forward.

Franciscan spirituality emphasizes a real equivalence and mutuality between the one who sees and what can be seen. There is a symbiosis between the mind and heart of the seer—and to what they will then pay attention. Francis had a unique ability to call others—animals, planets, and elements —“brother” and “sister” because he himself was a little brother. He granted other beings and things mutuality, subjectivity, “personhood,” and dignity because he first honored his own dignity as a son of God. The world was a transparent two-way mirror for him, which some of us would call a fully “sacramental” universe.”

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Individual Reflection

What’s one ordinary, physical thing in your life right now that you’ve stopped seeing as sacred?

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Group Discussion — choose one:

1. Rohr says there’s no such thing as sacred and profane places — only sacred and desecrated ones, and “we alone” do the desecrating. Where have you desecrated something by not paying attention to it?
2. Francis called elements and animals “brother” and “sister.” What would it mean to grant that kind of mutuality and dignity to something you currently just use?
3. “Abstract ideology will not get us very far… we all must start with our anecdotal experience.” What’s one concrete, specific moment that taught you more about God than any idea did?

From Suffering to Sacred Wounds

Friday, August 7, 2026

Father Richard reflects on Job’s story as a source of wisdom about the path of transformation:

No piece of religious literature teaches the way of “descent” more daringly and effectively than the book of Job. The story cries out against a darkness that refuses to reveal itself—and a path that does not feel at first like life at all. This makes it a challenging but important text for those of us in the West who tend to resist the archetypal and necessary journey of “descent.” We have been able to manufacture a kind of “ascent” unlike that of our ancestors. Reason, medicine, technology, and speed have allowed us to avoid the ordinary “path of the fall.” Now we are unpracticed and afraid of all kinds of suffering—big and small.

At the same time, no book is less an answer book than the book of Job. It fixes nothing, explains nothing, and dismisses those who even try to explain, yet the story of Job realigns and regenerates the soul in ways that few books can.

If the postmodern crisis is above all else a crisis of the self, and I think it is, then the story of Job realigns the “self”—correctly, humbly, and truthfully. What both Job and Jesus seem to say is that truth is finally a person and an encounter—much more than a concept that can be argued. It is not quick or easy to encounter the true self or the true God. Both encounters require a gradual unveiling that is both sacred and full of suffering. Every movement toward union with God will feel like a loss of self-importance and self-control. We are realigned with truth when the real person meets the real God—which is exactly the stuff of spirituality, good theology, and transformation.

The book of Job ultimately assures us that faith can forever be found, like the hill of Calvary, “outside the walls.” In fact, that is where it finds its most ready soil—at the bottom, the broken, the edges of things.

If no meaning can be given to human suffering, if our wounds are not capable of becoming sacred wounds, the human project is surely doomed to a blaming war of all against all. The future, like the past, will be full of scapegoats and victims. This is no peripheral question the book of Job pursues.

Without the response from God in the whirlwind—what we might call today the sacred or transcendent dimension—life will surely be “nasty, brutish, and short” for most people in the twenty-first century. There will be no place to go to make our wounds sacred, but they will still be wounds, sore and bleeding. If there is no voice from the whirlwind, no calming eyes in the heart of the tempest, humanity can only “sit on its dung heap picking at its sores.” But in Job and in Jesus, we have heard a story that is always true, a story that makes all our wounds sacred.

Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections (Crossroad Publishing, 1996), 185–187.

1.

“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

– Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy

Well, I guess according to Dante Alighieri, it is brutish to follow vices and foolishness.

I think that as an itinerant rabbi, Jesus would agree with that.

2.

“The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes.”

– St. Therese of the Child Jesus

This one has stood out to me since I read Therese’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul.

I think I was simple in my youth.  I do not mean this in any pejorative way, just that I did not have any extravagant ideas or things that made me really stand out.

Then, in my teenage years and college years (and perhaps even in my young adult years), I wanted to be seen as complex, interesting, with deep thoughts that were unique and adventurous.

But now….

Not so much.

Now, I realize the value and the beauty of the simple life.  I enjoy a simple morning, beautiful music, etc.  Gone are the days when I wanted to watch shows or movies with intense adventure or high stakes.  I’ve seen enough of the world’s complexity and violence that I would truly choose the quiet, simple life every day if I could.

Perhaps that is one marker of knowing that you have entered the “second half of life,” in that we then begin to prefer the quiet, simple, and small life.

3.

“One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God’s love for him.”

– Thomas Merton in No Man is an Island

The first chapter of No Man is an Island is called “Love Can Only Be Kept By Being Given Away.”  Thus far, it is still the best chapter I have ever read on godly love.

The world has a relatively low bar for love, in that it might just be happy with us being content, healthy, and prosperous.

What is interesting is that godly love is different because it seeks the deep, mysterious good of God’s love for another person.

And, let’s be honest…  Being content, healthy, and prosperous can actually become hindrances to the Good happening in our lives.

What if we are content with things that we ought to fight against?
What if, being healthy, we fail to recognize our interdependence with one another?
What if being prosperous leads us to be stingy with our money, or impulsive with what we choose to buy, and then regret it?

To love at all means that we must want the Good for one another, and that includes wanting the mystery of the love of God.  As Merton says, we must enter deeply into the mystery of God’s love for other people.

4.

“Lukewarm people don’t really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.”

– George MacDonald in Unspoken Sermons

Two or three years ago, I bought a hardcover copy of all of George MacDonald’s sermons.  I read half of them, and then life got in the way.

One thing that fascinates me is how, even though MacDonald was a Scottish preacher in the late 1800s, he read very much like the early Patristics of Church history.  There is something about his theology and way with words that is refreshing, precise, holy, integrated, and joyful.

MacDonald is the first theologian I know of to articulate how mercy and judgment can coexist in God.  These two things, mercy and judgment, are not mutually exclusive.  There can be mercy even as there is judgment, and there can be judgment even as there is mercy.

Modern Western Christianity, however, wants to hold these two things apart.

We either want full judgment without any mercy for some (usually for others) or full mercy without any judgment for others (usually for ourselves or those close to us).

MacDonald helped me understand that, in the justice of God, our vices do not disqualify us from God, yet that does not mean we will not experience the repercussions, consequences, or the need to make amends.

5.

“The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed, we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles.”

– The Way of a Pilgrim (Russian Spiritual Classic)

Is it just a human thing to want to run from ourselves?

Dogs don’t do it.  Cats don’t do it.  Neither do horses.

Why is it that we are so uncomfortable with ourselves?

Perhaps it is because we each have an archetypal understanding of what it means to be a human being, a mental image to which we are constantly inspired by as well as judged by.

Cats, dogs, and horses don’t have an “ideal” version of themselves.  They simply are what they are.

For some of us, our image of what it means to be human might inspire us to go to the gym, do helpful work in the world, and be creative in ways unique to us.  For others, their image of what it means to be human is so far removed from who we are that we probably run from or avoid confronting the gap between our ideals and ourselves.

It is not an easy thing to drink reality straight and look at all the ways we fail to live up to our ideals.

I say all this because I think Jesus is interesting as the archetypal human.  He is our image of what it means to be a “perfect human,” and as such, he inspires us and causes us to “aim higher.”  And, in the same breath, he “judges” us for all the ways that we do not live up to that ideal and forgives us anyway.  As our archetype of what it means to be human, Jesus inspires, judges, and forgives.