Beloved One, may you be blessed because it is so: all is well. —Julian of Norwich, Showings
Spiritual teacher and translator Mirabai Starr describes how Julian’s positive experience of God sustained her when things were not “well” in the world around her:
The medieval English anchoress Julian of Norwich bequeathed us a radically optimistic theology. She had no problem admitting that human beings have a tendency to go astray. We rupture relationships, dishonor the Divine, make unfortunate choices, and try to hide our faults. And yet, Julian insists, “All will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.” [1]
Take that in.
This assertion is meant to penetrate the fog of our despair and wake us up. She does not simply state, “Everything’s going to be okay.”… She does not ask us to engage in a spiritual bypass by relegating everything that unfolds to the will of God, calling it perfect against all evidence to the contrary. She squarely faces the inevitability that we will miss the mark and that there is wickedness in this world. Even so, she is convinced that the nature of the Divine is loving-kindness, and she wants us to absorb this into every fiber of our being.
Starr considers Julian’s teachings on sin:
In her mystical masterwork The Showings, Julian shares that she used to obsess about sin. She couldn’t figure out why God, who is all-powerful, wouldn’t have eliminated our negative proclivities when he made the world. “If he had left sin out of creation, it seemed to me, all would be well.” But what God-the-Mother showed Julian in a near-death vision was that all shall be well anyway….
Julian unpacks this for us [in chapter 27]. In doing so she dispenses with the whole concept of sin and replaces it with love. “I believe that sin has no substance,” Julian writes, “not a particle of being.” While sin itself has no existential value, it has impact. It causes pain. It is the pain that has substance.
But mercy is swiftly forthcoming. It is immediately available. Inexorable! It is frankly rude of us to doubt that all will be well (and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well). “When he said these gentle words,” Julian writes, speaking of God-the-Mother, “he showed me that he does not have one iota of blame for me, or for any other person. So, wouldn’t it be unkind of me to blame God for my transgressions since he does not blame me?” The merciful nature of God renders the whole blame game obsolete….
For those of us who do not subscribe to a belief in some perfect afterworld but, rather, are focused on making things better right here on Earth, this teaching may feel disconnected. But what Julian is saying, with heartbreaking compassion, is that we cannot know this now, from our limited, pain-drenched perspective. Yet eventually we will awaken to the truth that we are unconditionally adored by God. =
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Never a Lonely Prayer. Skye Jethani
In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, we find the most well-known passage in all of Scripture: the Lord’s Prayer. Long before most people had access to the Bible, and well before most people were educated enough to read it, Christians were taught the Lord’s Prayer. It has been used in Christian worship since the beginning of the church, and continues to be a guide for how we commune with God. Interestingly, the Lord’s Prayer is found in the sermon immediately after the section where Jesus warns his followers not to pray openly in public for others to see. He calls them to pray alone, in private. However, the prayer he then teaches them to recite while alone is entirely corporate in structure and language. In other words, Jesus commands us to pray in private while understanding that our prayers themselves are never private.For example, the Lord’s Prayer begins by addressing God as “OurFather.”
John Chrysostom, the early church father, noted that Jesus “did not say ‘My Father’ but ‘Our Father,’” and that when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we are “offering petitions for the common body, and not looking merely to each man’s own interests but everywhere to his neighbor’s.” Of course, he is correct. Nowhere in the prayer do the pronouns I, me, or my appear. Only our and us.The prayer of Jesus assumes we are connected—that we are part of a community. I appreciate how Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it in his book,Life Together: “The prayer of the Christian is never a lonely prayer.” The individualism that marks so much of our culture does not contaminate Jesus’ teaching. He recognizes that even when we are alone in prayer, our prayers are never lonely because we are forever connected to one another. We are all part of the great family of God, which transcends every boundary: national, ethnic, cultural, even generational.
When we bow our heads and pray these words, we are taking part in a family prayer. The Lord’s Prayer binds the people of God together across time and space.This morning, as you commune with God alone in silence and in prayer, recite the Lord’s Prayer silently or aloud. As you do, allow the plural pronouns “our” and “us” to resonate and inspire your imagination. Pay attention to the faces that come into your mind. Remember your sisters and your brothers. Remember that we all share the same Father in heaven and that your communion with him cannot be separated from your communion with them.
DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 6:9–13 ROMANS 8:12–17 WEEKLY PRAYER. Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me no longer desire health or life except to spend them for you and with you. You alone know what is good for me; therefore do what seems best to you. Give to me or take from me; conform me to your will; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In a time parched for wisdom like ours … we are invited to return to our ancestors who have proven themselves wise. Julian is such an ancestor. —Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich
Theologian Matthew Fox describes Julian of Norwich as a mystic for our times. He highlighted her writings during the COVID-19 pandemic, living as she did through the Black Death (bubonic plague). He writes:
A time of crisis and chaos, the kind that a pandemic brings, is, among other things, a time to call on our ancestors for their deep wisdom. Not just knowledge but true wisdom is needed in a time of death and profound change, for at such times we are beckoned not simply to return to the immediate past, that which we remember fondly as “the normal,” but to reimagine a new future, a renewed humanity, a more just and therefore sustainable culture, and one even filled with joy.
Julian of Norwich … is one of those ancestors calling to us today…. Julian is a stunning thinker, a profound theologian and mystic, a fully awake woman, and a remarkable guide with a mighty vision to share for twenty-first-century seekers…. Julian knew a thing or two about “sheltering in place,” because she was an anchoress—that is, someone who, by definition, is literally walled up inside a small space for life. Julian also knew something about fostering a spirituality that can survive the trauma of a pandemic. While others all about her were freaking out about nature gone awry, Julian kept her spiritual and intellectual composure, staying grounded and true to her belief in the goodness of life, creation, and humanity and, in no uncertain terms, inviting others to do the same. [1]
Julian was not afraid to face reality. By entering fully into it, she discovered God’s grace:
Julian’s response to the pandemic [of her time], as we know it from her two books, is amazingly grounded in a love of life and gratitude. Instead of running from death, she actually prayed to enter into it and it is from that experience of death all around her and meditating on the cruel crucifixion of Christ that she interpreted as a communal, not just a personal event, that her visions arrived….
What is remarkable about her life and teaching is that instead of yielding to despair or blame, she sought out in depth the goodness of life and creation. Indeed, she established her entire worldview on this sense of goodness and the sacred marriage of grace and nature, a sense of God-in-nature. [2]
Julian’s teachings are encouragement for our time:
Our sister and ancestor Julian is eager not only to speak to us today but to shout at us—albeit in a gentle way—to wake up and to go deep, to face the darkness and to dig down and find goodness, joy and awe. And to go to work to defend Mother Earth and all her creatures, stripping ourselves of racism, sexism, nationalisms, anthropocentrism, sectarianism—anything that interferes with our greatness as human beings. And to connect anew to the sacredness of life.
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Thoughts…DJR
Yesterday we sat with John’s sentence: God is love. Period. Today we meet a woman who tested it.
Julian of Norwich lived through the Black Death. Estimates run from a third to half of her city dead — and this wasn’t a once-and-done event; the plague came back in waves through her lifetime. This is the world she was praying in. Walled into a small cell attached to a church, by choice, by vocation. Sheltering in place, as Fox puts it, before any of us knew what that phrase meant.
And out of that world, she wrote a sentence that ought to be impossible: There is no wrath in God.
Not “less wrath than we thought.” Not “wrath balanced out by mercy.” None. She said it plain. And she said it after watching her neighbors die. Whatever we make of that sentence theologically, let’s sit for a second with the fact that it wasn’t written by someone who had the luxury of not knowing what suffering was. It was written by someone who had seen more death than most of us will ever see, and who came out the other side saying — He was good the whole time. The wrath was never there.
This is what I trust about Julian. She earned the right to say what she said.
Fox calls her a mystic for our times. I think he’s right, but not mainly because we’ve been near a pandemic ourselves. She’s a mystic for our times because most of us are carrying some version of the question she answered. Can the goodness of God hold when the bottom drops out? Is “God is love” a sentence that works in the daylight but evaporates at 2am? Julian’s whole life is an answer. Yes. It holds. And not because we white-knuckle our way into believing it — because, if we go down far enough into the dark, we find it was already there. Holding us the whole time.
Her famous line — all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well — gets read sometimes like a refrigerator magnet. It is not a refrigerator magnet. It is something Christ said to a woman in the middle of visions of His own crucifixion, while plague-pits were being dug in the next parish over. That sentence has teeth. It’s the sentence of someone who looked.
If we’re in a hard stretch right now — and a few of us are — let’s not reach for Julian like a pill. Let’s meet her as a sister who’s been there. She’s not telling us to feel better. She’s telling us that the ground we’re walking on, even now, is held. The love John wrote about in our reading yesterday is not a fair-weather sentence. It’s bedrock. It was bedrock when her city was dying. It’s bedrock today.
Let’s sit with that for a minute. Let it be true.
For Contemplation: Where in our own lives have we had to discover that “God is love” actually held — not in theory, but in the dark?
Father Richard Rohr praises the wisdom of the mystic Julian of Norwich (1342–ca. 1416), who experienced the motherhood of God and Jesus.
Translator and dear friend of mine Mirabai Starr offers these words from the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich: “This beautiful word ‘mother’ is so sweet and kind in itself that it cannot be attributed to anyone but God.” [1] With these words, Julian offers us an amazing and foundational statement. She is not saying that the most beloved attributes of motherhood can analogously be applied to God, although I am sure she would agree they could. She is saying much more—that the very word mother is so definitive and beautiful in most people’s experience (not everybody’s, I must add) that it evokes, at its best, what we mean by God. This perspective is not what most of the world’s religions have taught or believed up to now—except for the mystics. Among these, Julian of Norwich stands as pivotal.
The concept and human experience of mother is so primal, so big, deep, universal, and wide that to apply it only to our own mothers is far too small a container. It can only be applied to God. This is revolutionary! Mother is, for Julian, the best descriptor for God Herself! I use this to illustrate the courageous, original, and yet fully orthodox character of Julian’s teaching.
Father Richard considers the archetypal human need for maternal care:
Julian helps me finally understand one major aspect of my own Catholic culture: why in heaven’s name, for centuries, did both the Eastern and Western Churches attribute so many beautiful and beloved places, shrines, hills, cathedrals, and works of religious art in the Middle East and Europe, not usually to Jesus, or even to God, but to some iteration of Mother Mary? Many people in Julian’s time didn’t have access to scripture—in fact, most couldn’t read at all. They interpreted at the level of archetype and symbol. The “word” or logos was quite good, but a feminine image for God was even better.
The soul needs a Mother Savior and a God Nurturer! God is, in essence, like a good mother—so compassionate that there is no need to compete with a Father God—as we see in Julian’s always balanced teachings. [2]
Mirabai Starr translates one of Julian’s teachings on God as Mother:
Only [God] who is our true Mother and source of all life may rightfully be called by this name. Nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge are all attributes of the Mother, which is God. Even though our earthly birth is low and humble … [God] is the one responsible for the birth of all babies that are born to their physical mothers.
The kind, loving mother, aware of the needs of her child, protects the child with great tenderness. This is the nature of motherhood…. Whenever a human mother nurtures her child with all that is beautiful and good, it is God-the-Mother who is acting through her
An Anchor-Hold of Love
Monday, May 11, 2026
Father Richard recounts the circumstances of Julian’s mystical experience:
Ever since I discovered Julian of Norwich so many decades ago, I have considered her one of my favorite mystics. Each time I return to her writings, I always find something new. Julian experienced her sixteen visions, or “showings” as she called them, all on one May night in 1373 when she was very sick and near death. As a priest held a crucifix in front of her, Julian saw Jesus suffering on the cross and heard him speaking to her for several hours. Like all mystics, she realized that what Jesus was saying about himself, he was simultaneously saying about all of reality. That is what unitive consciousness allows us to see.
Afterwards, Julian felt the need to go apart and reflect on her profound experience. She asked the bishop to enclose her in an anchor-hold, built against the side of St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, England. Julian was later named after that church. We do not know her real name, since she never signed her writing. (Talk about loss of ego!) The anchor-hold had a window into the church that allowed Julian to attend Mass and another window so she could counsel and pray over people who came to visit her. Such anchor-holds were found all over 13th- and 14th-century Europe.
Julian first wrote a short text about the showings, but then she patiently spent twenty years in contemplation and prayer, trusting God to help her discern the deeper meanings to be found in the visions. Finally, she wrote a longer text, titled Revelations of Divine Love. Julian’s interpretation of her God-experience is unlike the religious views common for most of history up to her time. It is not based in sin, shame, guilt, fear of God or hell. Instead, it is full of delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope. How did she retain such freedom? Maybe because she was not a priest, ordained to speak the party line?
As I read her words lately, what strikes me is the similarity between Julian’s time and our own. Here is how Episcopal priest and scholar Mary Earle describes Julian’s fourteenth-century context:
Julian lived at a time of vast social, [religious,] and political upheaval, incessant wars, and sweeping epidemics. Norwich, with a population of around 25,000 by 1330 … was struck viciously by the plague known as the Black Death. At its peak in the late 1340s in England, it killed approximately three-fourths of the population of Norwich. A young girl at this time, Julian was certainly affected in untold ways by this devastation. When the plague returned, she was about nineteen. [1]
In her anchor-hold, Julian certainly would have recognized the spiritual benefits of contemplation, such as the awakened ability through solitude to be personally present to divine love. Yet we must remember that she also let God’s love flow right through her to those on the street requesting her counsel, and to us through her writings.
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Individual Reflection
Where does the word Mother open something in your experience of God that the word Father does not — or where does it close something?
Group Discussion — choose one:
What stirs in you when you hear God called Mother?
Julian sat with one night’s vision for twenty years before she felt she understood it. What in your own life is still asking that kind of patience?
Julian’s faith was “full of delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope” rather than sin, shame, and fear. Where have you tasted that kind of faith, and where do you still hunger for it?
Don’t need to talk to my doctor Don’t need to talk to my shrink Don’t need to hide behind no locked door I don’t need to think
‘Cause when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know
Read all my books and talked about Listen to my radio Been in school and dropped right out Tryin’ to find what I didn’t know
But when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know
Don’t need to talk to my doctor Don’t need to talk to my shrink Don’t need to hide behind no locked doors I don’t need to think
‘Cause when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry When my baby’s beside me all I know
Set me as a seal upon your heart, a seal upon your arm, For love is as strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. —Song of Songs 8:6
Mirabai Starr describes how the language of romance and erotic love is the universal experience of mystics across religious traditions:
Every spiritual tradition on the planet seems to have some version of the Song of Songs. The language of romantic love describes and evokes the soul’s relationship with the divine more accurately than any descriptive theological language ever could. I guess that’s why the Song of Songs, which is quite revolutionary and hard to explain, made it into the canonical texts….
All of the love language with which the mystics speak is arising from that same wellspring from which the Song of Songs unfolded. There is this place in the heart that is the truth of spiritual communion, of spiritual longing.The longing becomes the portal to union and communion, and that union becomes the reference point for the longing. Any time any of the mystics touch upon the themes of yearning, anguish, separation, and the sweetness of taking refuge in the arms of the beloved, they’re singing this essential song, this Canticle of Canticles, whether or not they actually are familiar with this particular text…. The Song of Songs is an essential blueprint that’s instilled in all our souls, the fuel that propels us on a spiritual path, even if some of us never get around to it. I think it’s in all of us. [1]
In the Song of Songs, the lover sings of her search for her beloved:
At night on my bed I longed only for my love. I sought him, but did not find him. I must rise and go about the city, the narrow streets and squares until I find my only love. I sought him everywhere but I could not find him. (Song of Songs 3:1–2)
Starr describes longing as an essential aspect of nuptial mysticism:
Something in our souls recognizes this dynamic of exile and return. We remember that our source is Love. We suffer from the illusion of having been pulled up from our soul roots. We long to go home. We engage every practice we can get our hands on to restore our birthright of belonging. And when we attain those fleeting moments of union, we realize we were never two to begin with. We were always one and always will be one.
The language of love is like a spaceship that blasts us through the layers of illusion and delivers us to the truth of our essential connectedness with the Divine and our interconnectedness with all of creation. There’s nothing like a passage of mystical poetry, incandescent with the fire of longing and besotted by the wine of union, to evoke our own burning yearning and reveal our capacity for melding. [2]
References: [1] Mirabai Starr with James Finley and Michael Petrow, “The Song of Love Lost and Found,” The Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation, Center for Action and Contemplation, 2025.
[2] Mirabai Starr, Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics (Sounds True, 2019), 57.
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Sarah Young – Jesus Calling
It’s all right to be human. When your mind wanders while you are praying, don’t be surprised or upset. Simply return your attention to Me. Share a secret smile with Me, knowing that I understand. Rejoice in My Love for you, which has no limits or conditions. Whisper My Name in loving contentment, assured that I will never leave you or forsake you. Intersperse these peaceful interludes abundantly throughout your day. This practice will enable you to attain a quiet and gentle spirit, which is pleasing to Me.
As you live in close contact with Me, the Light of My Presence filters through you to bless others. Your weakness and woundedness are the openings through which the Light of the knowledge of My Glory shines forth. My strength and power show themselves most effective in your weakness.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Deuteronomy 31:6 NLT
6 So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.”
1st Peter 3:4 NLT
4 You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.
2nd Corinthians 4:6-7 NLT
6 For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.
2nd Corinthians 12:9 NLT
9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.
Additional insight regarding 2nd Corinthians 12:9: Although God did not remove Paul’s affliction, he promised to demonstrate his power in Paul. The fact that God’s power is displayed in our weaknesses should give us courage and hope. As we recognize our limitations, we will depend more on God for our effectiveness rather than on our own energy, effort, or talent. Our limitations not only help develop Christian character but also deepen our worship, because in admitting them, we affirm God’s strength.
In the summer of 2016, I binge-read the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I did not read everything, but I did knock out 7-8 of his books and another 2-3 about him.
His integrated theology, which seems to me like a modernized, evolutionary form of Ignatian Spirituality, gave me a complete and utter paradigm shift. Prior to reading him, I would say my spirituality was more “static” (meaning, figure out God’s divine plan and live stoically according to it). After reading Teilhard de Chardin, my spirituality became much more “dynamic” (meaning, it was more focused on personal growth and growth in virtue).
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin taught me a spirituality of becoming.
Am I becoming greater or less? Am I active or passive in the events of my life? Do I see it as a form of love of neighbor to work on myself as much as possible, to heal my traumas, and invite others to do the same? Is my life integrated, or am I working against myself? Is the direction of my life in the direction of greater or less health and holiness?
If I live by these things, I will eventually come into contact with others who are also “aiming high.” After all, “Everything that rises must converge.” If you are reading this, it is possible that we are “converging.” You were drawn to read this newsletter, and this quote, and my typing this is somehow our common spiritualities finding a friend for the journey.
2.
“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore, the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”
Merton’s teaching on the True Self and the False Self was a game-changer for me. This quote comes from Chapter 5 of New Seeds of Contemplation, and the first time I read that chapter, I teared up.
(In fact, I love this teaching so much that I am incorporating it into the next online class I hope to offer this summer.)
The teaching of the True Self/False Self is not so much a question that you answer once in your life and be done with it. Rather, it is more of a question to be holy haunted by for the rest of your life.
The True Self/False Self teaching requires me to ask myself certain questions…
Am I being my True Self?
Am I saying or doing things born out of my identity or from the expectations of others? Am I being a False Self that I believe others will like more?
Why is it that I am my False Self when I am with this or that group of people? Who in my life allows me to be my True Self?
Who in my life encourages me to find my True Self?
Is there anyone in my life who does not want me to be something other than my False Self?
Can I have meaningful relationships if I am only my False Self?
Can I join God in God’s own understanding and love of my True Self?
If Christ was his own True Self, can that inspire me to be my own True Selfless?
The list could go on!
I think this teaching resonates with me because sainthood, then, is less a matter of moral perfection, and more a matter of constantly discovering my True Self (which is loving, gracious, virtuous, joyful, etc.) and living from that center or ground.
3.
“Christianity is an entirely new way of being human.”
If Adam is the Old Man, and his progeny are the Old Humanity…
Then Christ, as the New Man, leads the way for a New Humanity.
I believe Maximus the Confessor made this comment after reading Ephesians 2, which talks about creating a New Humanity that operates by a completely different set of values.
The New Humanity has different values because it has different goals, and it has different goals because it has a different starting point. For the New Humanity, the starting point (and ending point) is always Love. And, since Love seeks to do no wrong to anyone, and instead to help carry one another’s burdens, Love is the fulfillment of the Law.
To me, Christ invites me to a completely other mode of existence. I sincerely believe there is sophiological importance to the Gospel teaching. There is more wisdom in the faith about how to live life than I believe most know.
To follow the teachings of Christ is inherently rebellious to a culture that is hedonistic (pleasure-seeking), sees people as a means to an end, focuses on what can be gained rather than who can be helped, and refuses to participate in anything that diminishes oneself or others.
Truly, it is a new way of being human.
4.
“The important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”
This means I live in my head, and fear often gets the best of me.
So, when I first read Teresa of Avila’s masterpiece, Interior Castle, I was gut-punched.
I am far too cerebral in how I live my life. Too much of my focus is on my own interior life, on thinking big thoughts, and trying to assemble theories for why certain things are the way they are.
Add to this that I am a professor and occasionally have the opportunity to preach, and you have a recipe for someone to share what they know, yet perhaps not always grow in love.
It is good for me to shut off my darn brain, with its scarcity mindset and fear-mongering, and just try to love better.
5.
“All will be well, all will be well, in every manner of thing, all will be well.”
Julian of Norwich was potentially dying from either the grief of her whole family being lost to the Bubonic Plague and/or dying from the Plague herself.
On her deathbed, the whole world was closing in around her until she essentially had just tunnel vision straight forward to where there was a crucifix hanging on the wall opposite her.
It was then that she had a mystical experience of the Christ, and the two of them had 16 different conversations.
Miraculously, and much to the surprise of those attending her final moments, Julian recovered. It was not long before Julian put to writing the content of her conversations with the Christ.
Julian’s understanding of God is utterly kind, patient, paternal, and maternal, joyful, compassionate, and tender. Much like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Julian caused me to shift my paradigm for understanding and relating to God.
The God revealed in the person of Jesus is completely hopeful. And at those deathbed conversations, God showed Julian that even with all the darkness and vice and sin in the world, “all will be well.” God, who is infinitely creative and infinitely capable, is going to turn all things for Good.
Reflection
The first two readings suggest that intimacy with God is less about achieving and more about returning — again and again. What does that kind of practice look like in your daily life?
A Prayer to Close
Lord, set me as a seal upon Your heart. In my longing, draw me near. In my weakness, shine through. Let me not be surprised by my wandering mind or my restless heart, but simply return — again and again — to You, the source of all love. Amen.
I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me. —Song of Songs 7:10
James Finley celebrates Bernard of Clairvaux’s emphasis on love:
When I was at the monastery, they had a statue of Saint Bernard holding a scroll. In his commentary on the Song of Songs, he says, “Amo quia amo.” “I love because I love.” He writes, “Everything we do, we do for a reason, but only love is its own reason.” [1] Clearly this is the motivation of the lovers in the Song of Songs. Love is their only reason, their only reward. This is how I would put it: Ultimately, God is speaking just one thing. Only one thing is happening: The infinite love of God, in an ongoing self-donating act, is pouring itself out, emptying itself, and giving itself away in and as the intimate immediacy of the gift and the miracle of our very presence, the presence of others in all things, and our nothingness without this infinite love. Love is our origin, love is our ground, love is our sustaining reality, and love is our destiny. Love and love alone is the substance of reality. Everything else is smoke and mirrors, really. [2]
Bernard of Clairvaux recognized that there’s fraternal love, our love for our siblings. There’s the love of parents for their children, and the love of children for their parents. God also gives us love for our friends. But nuptial love is unique in that two people freely choose to give themselves to each other completely: to support each other, to be there for each other, and to be with each other. So, their sexual union is a physical, somatic celebration of the love in which they give and receive.
Arise my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, in the clefts of rocks, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face; let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely…. My beloved is mine, and I am his. (Song of Songs 2:13–14, 16)
You can see why Bernard saw nuptial love, portrayed in the Song of Songs, as the supreme love. It’s like when spouses love and give themselves to each other—the infinite love of God infinitely gives God’s self to us. Nuptial mysticism is like being married to God. God wants us to be married to God in this kiss, this ultimate, sovereign, and supreme love.
The philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reason which the mind knows not.” [3] Bernard of Clairvaux understood this long before Paschal wrote it. In working with the Song of Songs, he is dropping down into the heart realm, searching for words and metaphors that will resonate with us. When we hear these words, we’re touched by them because we can tell Bernard is trying to put into words what our own hearts know is true. The depth of who we are is God’s beloved. [4]
I AM with you always. These were the last words I spoke before ascending into heaven. I continue to proclaim this promise to all who will listen. People respond to My continual Presence in various ways. Most Christians accept this teaching as truth but ignore it in their daily living. Some ill-taught or wounded believers fear (and may even resent) My awareness of all they do and think. A few people center their lives around this glorious promise and find themselves blessed beyond all expectations.
When My Presence is the focal point of your consciousness, all the pieces of your life fall into place. As you gaze at Me through the eyes of your heart, you can see the world around you from My perspective. The fact that I am with you makes every moment of your life meaningful.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 28:20 NLT
20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Additional insight regarding Matthew 28:20: How is Jesus “with” us? Jesus was with the disciples physically until he ascended into Heaven and then spiritually through the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4). The Holy Spirit would be Jesus’ presence that would never leave them (John 14:26 – “But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.”). Jesus continues to be with us today through his Spirit.
NLT Bible Versions
Psalm 139:1-4 NLT
Psalm 139
For the choir director: A psalm of David.
1 O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
3 You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
Additional insight regarding Psalm 139:1-5: Sometimes we don’t let people get to know us completely because we are afraid they will discover something about us they won’t like. But God already knows everything about us, even the number of hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30), and still he accepts and loves us. God is with us through every situation, in every trial – protecting, loving, guiding. He knows and loves us completely.
Reflection question: Do you tend to treat God’s presence as background knowledge or as the focal point of your daily consciousness? What’s one practical way you could shift toward the latter?
The theologian Stephanie Paulsell considers how praying with the Song of Songs can help us discover “good news”:
What would we find if we turned to this poem listening for God’s voice, as countless readers before us have done? What would we hear if, as Origen long ago urged, we made the words of the Song our own?
One thing we find when we pray with the Song is good news: good news about the glory of the human body, the joy of mutuality in love, the responsiveness of a world that is cherished and loved, and the longing to know and to be known. These are the Song’s own concerns, the Song’s own preoccupations. Bringing the Song into our prayer brings our bodies, our relationships, the earth, and our longings into our prayer as well. This is precisely where these concerns belong: at the intersection of our life and God’s life, at the place where we turn toward God with all we are. [1]
Paulsell encourages us to linger in our reading with the Song of Songs:
The Song offers us a way of reading that is also a way of receiving the world, a way that leads to prayer. By inviting us into the dialogue of the two lovers, we are encouraged to read as they love—lingering in the presence of the beloved, admiring the beloved’s beauty and grace, and adoring both what can be seen and known and spoken of, and what is beyond our sight, beyond our ability to know or describe. In a world marked by speed and overwhelmed by information, the Song offers us a space beneath the pine branches and cedar boughs to read slowly, admiringly, meditatively….
The Song does not rush us…. Rather, it invites us to read and reread and read again, listening for unexpected resonances, allowing multiple meanings to accumulate. It is a banqueting house, a garden, a vineyard, a field: a place to be explored in every season, a place that discloses something new each time we move through it….
Hidden like a jewel at the heart of the Bible, the Song of Songs waits for us to take it up again and so enter with other faithful people in a song that never ends. [2]
Paulsell invites us to encounter the Song of Songs as an opening to prayer and life:
Think and pray with the Song about the life of the body, our life with one another, our life in creation, and our life with God. It is just one life, after all.… One life that opens onto depths that are spiritual, erotic, compassionate, and, on some level, not entirely knowable. One life touched and blessed by the kiss that has been sung about over centuries in language unutterably beautiful.
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Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara, on April 26, 2026 by The Rev. Sarah D. Thomas
“Awe came upon everyone” – these people were experiencing a spiritual high. They were becoming a new kind of community in those post-Easter days. They called themselves “the Way.” A Greek word used to describe their life together is koinonia, which means fellowship, communion, shared life. To our ears their new way might sound simple, quaint, or idealistic. But to Jesus’ early followers, it was electric. Risky. Brave. Awe had come upon them and they were reoriented to living differently.
We have all just lived through something like this, something electric, brave, and risky.
During Holy Week this year, four humans left Earth, launched into space at 25,000 miles per hour to achieve a first for humanity: a mission around the back side of the moon. Some of you followed it closely. Some of you may have missed it in the flood of everything else. I’ll admit, I was captivated. I marveled that I was able to watch live video footage inside a space capsule floating 250,000 miles away from Earth.
The first thing that really hit me wasn’t the technology, but the conversations that took place between the astronauts in space and the scientists on the ground. The way they spoke to each other was respectful. Attuned. Intelligent. Kind. Even though I didn’t understand any of the scientific language they were using, I was riveted to the live feed because the way they were all speaking to each other was so different from what I’ve become accustomed to hearing in public discourse. Apparently, I have become accustomed to snark. Mistrust. Disrespect. Competition. But now I was hearing something different. There was humor. Competence. Supportive, clear communication. Real teamwork. The mere words “copy that” made me tear up a little. (They said it a lot.) “Copy that”: “I hear you. I believe you. I will address that.” The Artemis II mission didn’t just show us space, it showed us our better selves.
And then there was a moment I can’t forget: As the crew passed the farthest point from Earth any humans have traveled (a record set by Apollo 13 over 50 years ago), they paused to mark it – not with data or achievement, but with love. They wanted to name two craters on the moon. One they named “Integrity,” after the spirit of their mission. And the other they named “Carroll,” after the late wife of one of their crewmates, who had died a few years ago. “Copy that,” said mission control. At the moment they were the farthest yet from Earth, their first instinct was to care for one another.
I pulled my car over and watched them. Their voices wavered and there were some tears. They formed an unplanned group hug and their legs drifted upward in zero gravity, forming a web of connection. This moment spread quickly on social media. Suddenly the whole world was paying attention. Because when humans act like this, it draws us in. Their survival depended on it. They needed each other. They shared everything: tight quarters, weird space food, exhaustion, wonder. Together, they looked back at Earth, just a small blue crescent as they drifted behind the moon. It did something to them. And by extension, it did something to us.
When they returned and spoke at a press conference one day after “splashdown,” their words were unpolished and emotional. Astronaut Christina Koch said this: “What struck me wasn’t necessarily just tiny Earth, it was all the blacknessaround it. Earth was just this life boat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.”
And then she said something that sounds remarkably like our reading from the Book of Acts.
She said, “A crew is a group of people that is in it all the time no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable. A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked. I know I haven’t learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there is one new thing I know. And that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew.”
Listen again to Acts: “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Awe came upon everyone. And it made them see life differently. Jesus’ followers experienced his risen presence in the days following that first Easter morning. It was shocking and surprising. And it changed them. It made them want to be together, to share all they had; to care for each other, to care for those in need. They had glad and generous hearts and had the goodwill of all the people. They became a crew.
This is what it means to be saved – not saved for some kind of afterlife, but to experience something in this life that leaves us in awe; to have our hearts opened to realities we often don’t see; to be filled with gladness and generosity; to let that spill over into the world. This is what being saved means.
Those four astronauts experienced a kind of salvation, too. Awe came upon them. They were shaken into what is real: Earth is tiny, we need each other, and there is great love when we bear witness to that together.
On this Earth Day Sunday, could there be any better message for us to hear? We are here on this tiny lifeboat floating in space, together. One small fragile crew. And yet, we have a hard time living that way. Every day we see division, greed, violence, and systems that pull us apart.
But we’ve also seen something else: a mirror held up to us, reminding us of what is also true.
Bill McKibben, a famous environmentalist, spoke at UCSB a few days ago. While his talk was full of sobering and alarming science regarding climate change, his message was also hopeful. Solar and wind energy are accelerating at a very fast pace. He said that the past 36 months have made all the difference in ways many of us don’t really see. The earth is producing roughly a third more power from the sun this spring than it was last spring. China is at warp-speed-ahead on solar energy. We are almost too late, but if we can continue to speed this up, we have the ability to make a difference for the future. The problem is, the progress is being slowed by those invested in fossil fuels.
A journalist summed up McKibben’s main point: “Time is short. The technology is here. The obstacle is power. Fortunately, sunlight is much harder to hoard – or to wage war over.”[1] A student in the audience asked, “What can I do?” And McKibben replied, “We need to stop thinking of ourselves as individuals, as an ‘I,’ and join others. Join a movement.”
In other words, become a crew!
Astronaut Jeremy Hansen, in his little speech right after splashdown, asked his fellow astronauts to stand up there next to him. They put their arms around each other as he said, “What you saw is a group of people who loved having meaningful contribution, and extracting joy out of that, and what we’ve been hearing is … that was something special for you to witness. If you look up here, you’re not looking at us. We are a mirror reflecting you. And if you like what you see, then just look a little deeper. This is you.”
The Artemis II mission became a mirror reflecting ourselves back to us in a way we needed to see. We saw teamwork, we saw sacrifice, we saw humble intelligence put to use for a greater good, we saw humans trembling with awe and wonder at the mystery of our universe, and we saw deep love. When I looked into that mirror, something in me shifted, and I haven’t been able to shake it for days.
We must take care as we look into the mirrors that are around us. There are plenty that distort, magnifying fear, division, and scarcity. But there are other mirrors that remind us who we are at our best, and mirrors that connect us to awe and the wonder of life itself.
When the church is at its best, it gets to be one of those mirrors – a people of koinonia: a community of joy and shared life, with glad and generous hearts, sharing presence and resources with those in need, and reminding the people of the world that it is a crew, held together in the love of Christ.
“Awe came upon everyone” and reoriented them to becoming a new kind of community.
Awe is a renewable resource! And one that we can easily harness if we cultivate it, if we become a crew. Our salvation depends on it.
Copy that?
============
Individual Reflection
Where is awe trying to reach you?
Group Discussion — choose one:
Where are you being invited to linger and behold rather than rush past?
When have you experienced shared life that reoriented you toward awe?
What would it mean for you to live as if “Planet Earth, you are a crew”?
James Finley reflects on the teachings of the twelfth-century mystic and monastic reformer Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most prolific commentators on the Song of Songs:
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux. He was so enamored of the Song of Songsthat he wrote eighty-six sermons about it over the last twenty years of his life. He went line by line. He thought of it as the supreme text of all Scripture because of its nuptial theme—the ultimate union of incarnate love. It’s personal for me because I lived in a Cistercian monastery with Thomas Merton, where I was steeped in this union and love mysticism.
The Cistercians were founded as a reform of the Benedictine monasteries. They felt the need to get back to the heart of Benedict’s Rule, which is also the heart of the gospel. In the opening sentences of the Rule of Saint Benedict, he said, “Listen, my child, to the words of the master, and if today you hear his voice, harden not your heart.” The master is Christ, so we’ve got to listen to hear the voice of Jesus calling to us in our hearts.
Through his sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard was trying to help us understand what it means to obey God on a deep level. Basically, to obey God is to interiorly accept that the infinite presence of God is an ongoing self-donating act that is presencing itself and giving its very presence away as the gift of our very presence. Love is the fullness of presence. Infinite love is giving itself to us as the gift and the miracle of the immediacy of our very presence in our nothingness without God. To see that and to accept it is to obey God. Bernard is trying to reestablish the radicality of this infinite love, which is infinitely in love with us in our brokenness. He used the Song of Songs to do that because it’s a song about being in love. It’s romantic, sexual, erotic, mystical, and marital love. [1]
Bernard of Clairvaux comments on the opening lines of the Song of Songs:
Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth (1:1). Who speaks? The bride. Who is she? The soul thirsting for God…. If one is a servant he is in dread of his lord’s face. If one is a hireling he hopes for pay from his lord’s hand. If one is a disciple he gives ear to his teacher. If one is a son he honors his father. But the soul who begs a kiss, is in love. Among the gifts of nature this affection of love holds first place, especially when it makes haste to return to its Origin, which is God. Words cannot be found so sweet as to express the sweet affections of the Word and the soul for each other, except bride and Bridegroom. [2]
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The All-Encompassing Ethic of Love. Skye Jethani
I recently read an interview where an influential pastor was asked why he and his congregation do not reflect the message and ethics of Jesus. Instead, they have become known for extreme political rhetoric that demonizes their cultural enemies, minorities, and even refugees. The pastor gave a two-word answer: “Under siege.”He believes conservative Christians in America are persecuted by a ruthless legion of militant secularists and threatened by an invasion of violent migrants. Under these perilous conditions, he explained, loving your enemies and turning the other cheek no longer makes sense. To follow the Sermon on the Mount would mean letting the forces of evil win and his country be destroyed. In other words, in his view, being “under siege” gives Christians permission to worship Jesus and not obey him.
The stunning interview vividly illustrates a sentiment that’s not limited to Christian nationalists and culture warriors: nothing in the Sermon on the Mount makes people more uncomfortable than Jesus’ words against retaliation. His calls to not resist an evil person, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, and to give more than what is demanded all seem like nonsense to those who feel threatened or who recognize the perils of our world. Anyone who actually lived what Jesus said, we are told, will never get ahead in the real world.
For this reason, some, like the pastor in the interview, boldly dismiss Jesus’ words while still claiming to follow him as their Lord. Many more have simply tried to reinterpret Jesus’ teaching in light of practical realities; to make his counter-intuitive commands appear more conventional or, at least, less costly. Behind this is really a desire to justify ourselves. We desperately want to rationalize our hatred and anger. We want to retaliate and resist those who interfere with our desires. We want to believe our selfishness and devotion to self-preservation are not only acceptable but admirable Christian qualities.
Jesus, however, leaves no room for such convolutions of his words. The ethic of love that dominates his kingdom is all-encompassing. Our call to self-sacrificial love must override and restrain our instinct for retaliation. Rather than reading these statements in the Sermon on the Mount as commands to be obeyed, twisted, or dismissed, we ought to see them as illustrations of what a life shaped by God’s kingdom looks like in practice. They are examples of what happens when we consider what is best for the other person rather than ourselves, even if that other person is our enemy.
DAILY SCRIPTURE
MATTHEW 5:38–42 1 PETER 2:18–25 WEEKLY PRAYER. John of the Cross (1542 – 1591) I no longer want just to hear about you, beloved Lord, through messengers. I no longer want to hear doctrines about you, nor to have my emotions stirred by people speaking of you. I yearn for your presence. These messengers simply frustrate and grieve me, because they remind me of how distant I am from you. They reopen wounds in my heart, and they seem to delay your coming to me. From this day onwards please send me no more messengers, no more doctrines, because they cannot satisfy my overwhelming desire for you. I want to give myself completely to you. And I want you to give yourself completely to me. The love which you show in glimpses, reveal to me fully. The love which you convey through messengers, speak it to me directly. I sometimes think you are mocking me by hiding yourself from me. Come to me with the priceless jewel of your love. Amen.
Group Discussion — choose one:
Where in your life are you tempted to “worship Jesus and not obey him”?
What does it stir in you to hear that God is “infinitely in love with us in our brokenness”?
Which messengers or doctrines are you ready to set down in your hunger for direct presence?
In the CAC’s Essentials of Engaged Contemplation course, James Finley and Mirabai Starr describe how the Song of Songs in the Old Testament expresses the soul’s longing for God as well as God’s longing for us. Core faculty member James Finley says:
The Song of Songs is one of the poetic works of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament, along with the Torah and the Prophets. It’s a poem about two people who are very erotically and intensely in love with each other. They also have a deep reverence for each other, which is the gift of such love. The text’s inclusion in the Bible is interesting because it makes no mention of God.
The scholar Bernard McGinn points out that there’s an understanding of this poem that is relevant to faith communities. The Jewish community viewed it as a poem of God’s love for the Jewish people and of the people’s love as a community for God, but it’s also about each Jewish person’s love for God and God’s love for each person. That understanding carried over into the Christian tradition, where it’s read as God’s love for the church as well as God’s love for each Christian and their love for God. The central imagery reveals a deepening interplay of communion between God and humanity, collectively and personally.
CAC guest faculty member Mirabai Starr continues:
The Song of Songs is our soul’s quintessential blueprint. We often have this sense that to be born is to be separated from our source. The path of this life, then, is a path of return and homecoming—and it’s characterized in many ways by longing, yearning, and remembering in our bones that we come from Love. The desire beyond all other desires is to return to Love. That spiritual longing is often expressed or mirrored in our human relationships. I don’t see that as a problem. Our human relationships are not illusions that stand in for the real thing, the spiritual longing of our spiritual selves. Rather, our human relationships are the field on which this love dance plays out in this life.
Finley concludes:
Anyone who’s ever been smitten by love doesn’t need to explain why the Song of Songs is sacred. In other words, love’s the best thing going. It’s way up there with hummingbirds and sunsets. It’s one of God’s better ideas, because a life rich with love is a life rich with meaning. God is the infinity of love; therefore, our love for each other is an incarnate manifestation of that infinite love, which is incarnate in our love for each other.
The Song of Songs expresses this love song of the heart. The rhythms of the poet’s voice are the rhythms of love itself. The language is so poetic because it’s evocatively incarnating the nonlinear realizations of love. That’s why, when we read Scripture this way, it affects us at such a deep level.
The Holy of Holies
Monday, May 4, 2025
If a dream of God is a delicate thing, how much more so a dream of God the Lover. —Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God
The Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis shares the history of the Song of Songs’ inclusion in the Bible:
Here is a book that barely (no pun intended) made it into the Bible, and with good reason. It never mentions God, at least not explicitly, and it mentions a lot of other things we would not expect to find in the Bible. The scriptural status of the Song of Songs is so questionable that the Talmud actually records the great debate…. It was the declamation of Rabbi Akiba, the great teacher, scholar, and martyr of early Judaism, that finally carried the day:
Heaven forbid! No Jew ever questioned the sanctity of the Song of Songs; for all the world is not worth the day when the Song of Songs was given to Israel. For all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies! [1] …
Akiba’s view of the Song’s unique holiness carried not only that day, but well over a millennium of biblical interpretation among both Jews and Christians. The eight chapters of the Song of Songs have generated more commentary than almost any other book of the Bible…. In the thirteenth century, Bernard [of Clairvaux] wrote eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs, and he never got beyond chapter three, verse one!
In recent years, however, this tide of interpretation has turned…. The present consensus is that the Song of Songs is a celebration of human sexuality that was included in the canon of scripture by mistake, because the ancient rabbis thought it was about the love of God and Israel….
If the Song is solely a celebration of human love, then nowhere within the covers of the Bible is there a truly happy story about God and Israel (or God and the Church) in love…. If the Song has nothing to do with the story of God and Israel after all, then there is nowhere to turn to hear one partner say, “I love you,” and the other answer right back, “Yes, yes; I love you, too.” For this is the only place in the Bible where there is a dialogue of love.
Davis describes how the Song of Songs overcomes the separation that began in Genesis between God, humanity, and the earth:
The poet of the Song has a dream, and in that dream all the ruptures that occurred in Eden are repaired…. Following carefully and imaginatively where the words of the Song lead, we can share the poet’s and God’s dream of the original harmony of creation restored…. A woman and a man, equally powerful, are lost in admiration of each other—or more accurately, in admiration they truly find themselves and each other. And the natural world rejoices with them.
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Individual Reflection
Where does the two-way dialogue of love — “I love you” answered by “I love you, too” — feel most alive or most absent in you right now?
Group Discussion — choose one:
Starr says our human relationships are “the field on which this love dance plays out.” What does that stir as you sit with your own?
Davis writes that the Song’s poet dreams the ruptures of Eden repaired. What in you longs toward that dream?
What would it mean to receive the Song of Songs as written to you — not about someone else’s love, but God’s love song to your own soul?
Father Richard teaches that a practice of contemplation carries us into the “Big River” of God’s love, enabling us to release our fears.
Grace and mercy teach us that we are all much larger than the good or bad stories we tell about ourselves or one another. Our small, fear-based stories are usually less than half true, and therefore not really “true” at all. They’re usually based on hurts and unconscious agendas that persuade us to see and judge things in a very selective way. They’re not the whole You, not the Great You. It’s not the great river and therefore not where Life can really happen. No wonder the Spirit is described as “flowing water” and as “a spring inside you” (John 4:10–14) or as a “river of life” (Revelation 22:1–2).
I believe that faith might be precisely that ability to trust the Big River of God’s providential love, which is to trust its visible embodiment (the Christ), the flow (the Holy Spirit), and the source itself (the Creator). This is a divine process that we don’t have to change, coerce, or improve. We just need to allow it and enjoy it. That takes immense confidence in God, especially when we’re hurting. Often, we feel ourselves get panicky and quickly want to make things right. We lose our ability to be present and go up into our heads and start obsessing. At that point we’re not really feeling or experiencing things in our hearts and bodies. We’re oriented toward making things happen, trying to push or even create our own river. Yet the Big River is already flowing through us and each of us is only one small part of it.
Faith does not need to push the river precisely because it is able to trust that there isa river. The river is flowing; we are already in it. This is probably the deepest meaning of “divine providence.” So do not be afraid. We have been proactively given the Spirit by a very proactive God.
Ask yourself regularly, “What am I afraid of? Does it matter? Will it matter in the great scheme of things? Is it worth holding on to?” We have to ask whether it is fear that keeps us from loving. Grace will lead us into such fears and emptiness, and grace alone can fill them, if we are willing to stay in the void. We mustn’t engineer an answer too quickly. We mustn’t get settled too fast. We all want to manufacture an answer to take away our anxiety and settle the dust. To stay in God’s hands, to trust, means that we usually have to let go of our attachments to feelings—which are going to pass away anyway. People of deep faith develop a high tolerance for ambiguity and come to recognize that it is only the small self that needs certitude or perfect order all the time. The true self is perfectly at home in the River of Mystery.
Come to Me with all your weaknesses: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Rest in the comfort of My Presence, remembering that nothing is impossible with Me.
Pry your mind away from your problems so you can focus your attention on Me. Recall that I am able to do immeasurably more than all you ask or imagine. Instead of trying to direct Me to do this and that, seek to attune yourself to what I am already doing.
When anxiety attempts to wedge its way into your thoughts, remind yourself that I am your Shepherd. The bottom line is that I am taking care of you; therefore, you needn’t be afraid of anything.Rather than trying to maintain control over your life, abandon yourself to My will. Though this may feel frightening–even dangerous, the safest place to be is in My will.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Luke 1:37 NLT
37 For the word of God will never fail.”
Daily devotional book
Ephesians 3:20-21 (NLT)
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
Additional insight regarding Ephesians 3:20-21: This doxology – prayer of praise to God – ends Part 1 of Ephesians. In the first section, Paul describes the timeless role of the church. In Part 2 (chapters 4-6), he will explain how church members should live in order to bring about the unity God wants. As in most of his books, Paul first lays a doctrinal foundation and then makes practical applications of the truths he has presented.
John Chaffee Five on Friday
1.
“Lord, teach me to be generous, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to look for any reward, save that of knowing that I do your holy will.”
For several months now, I have been working through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Ignatius was a 16th-century Spanish infantryman who left his sword and shield behind after taking a cannonball to the legs. During his recovery, they had to rebreak his legs to help them to heal better, and it left him with a limp for the rest of his life. These were some of the most formative years of his life, and during his life, he founded the Jesuits and wrote the Spiritual Exercises (something like a military-style manual for spiritual formation).
Over the years, I have found Ignatius of Loyola’s life and wisdom to be quite helpful. This prayer has recentered me more than once, and is doing so for me again this week.
2.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.“
Just before Easter, I was able to go to St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome to pray, where the Apostle’s bones are buried beneath the altar.
Actually, it is more that I tried to pray. I couldn’t quite do it.
Not because of some lack of reverence, but because of some surplus of it.
Something within me glitched as I knelt in that massive church.
I could not comprehend what was in the bone box right in front of me.
The bones of St. Paul? Really?
Sure, there is plausible deniability, but if there is deniability, then there is also a plausible possibility!
I had studied the life and letters of Paul for literal decades of my life. I was even given the opportunity to learn ancient Greek in seminary and read about his life and letters in their original language. What a privilege!
Since that day of visiting St. Paul’s bones, I read his words in a different way. I can’t quite pinpoint it, but his words now resonate as if on a new frequency for me.
It is fascinating how ancient words we know so well can suddenly take on a new freshness we could not make happen ourselves.
3.
“The vast majority of people walking away from Christianity in America are not rejecting the person and work of Jesus. They are rejecting faulty biblical interpretations that lead to bigotry, oppression, and marginalization. This rejection isn’t unchristian. It is Christlike.”
Thanks, Mark. This book you bought for me (and for Mike) is kind of rocking me.
Fortunately, I believe my parents were/are emotionally mature and healthy people who did a great job in our household.
That said, this book is doing much to help me understand people in general. As someone who pastors and gives spiritual direction, anything that helps me better understand how we cope and how we respond to one another is enormously helpful.
The human person is infinitely complex, and with so many nuances and exceptions to the rule that it can be disorienting, and so I admit that a book like this is enlightening.
When I see immaturity in myself or in others, it irks me terribly.
I firmly believe that a healthy Christian spirituality helps us to “clean up, grow up, wake up, and show up” to our own lives. Authentic faith helps us take accountability for ourselves and puts us back “on the hook” to become the best versions of ourselves.
I firmly believe that we have an ethical and spiritual responsibility to those around us to be the most virtuous, whole, and loving versions of ourselves. The world already has enough trauma from our general immaturity and vices that I actually believe Jesus is in favor of whatever helps us to grow more fully into human beings who help one another to heal and be well.
5.
“The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire.”
I said to the Lord, I’m going to hold steady on to you, and I know you will see me through. —Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
Spiritual director Therese Taylor-Stinson offers Harriet Tubman as a model of spiritual courage:
Harriet [Tubman] made three attempts to freedom but returned each time because of fear. The fear of being alone. The fear of dying. The fear of never seeing her family again or being part of a vital community…. Fear can be debilitating. Overcoming debilitating fear brings a new sense of freedom and a focus to accomplish your goal, though the struggle that ensues may seem like only a first step for some. To escape your enslavers is to take ownership of your own life. That is not just a physical or intellectual achievement. It is an emotional achievement that changes how you view yourself and how you allow others to view you. [1]
Taylor-Stinson describes how Tubman’s faith has inspired her own reliance on prayer in times of crisis:
Throughout [Harriet’s] life of approximately ninety-three years, she returned to God again and again, asking for protection, insight, and the ability to lead her family and others to freedom. Despite the many close calls and her own fragility, she would breathe deeply and present herself to God through prayer and song and faith, believing in her call to freedom. [2]
Later in life, she would say that she always knew when danger was near…. She said God would tell her when to stop, when to leave the road, or when to turn in another direction. She was always in prayerful discernment: “’Twasn’t me, ‘twas the Lord! I always told Him, ‘I trust you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect You to lead me,’ an’ He always did. I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”…
Reflecting on the way Harriet faced uncertain times, times of need, even as she sought to help others, I think of a time in my own life—a time of great trial, a time I was unable to pray, a time I felt silenced by others; I fell silent myself, except for one name I repeated again and again: “Jesus.” I did not know what significance the name held, but it was all I had. As the saying and the song go, “There’s something about the name of Jesus!” I found that my silence was prayer. My willingness to trust the unknown was prayer. My desolation was prayer. My intention for a Presence surely greater than me was prayer. I would say, like Jacob, “I will not let go until you bless me.” Though uncertain about what the blessing might be or how the blessing would be delivered, I walked in trust. I trusted that something greater than myself lived in me and would see me through. [3]
References: [1] Therese Taylor-Stinson, Walking the Way of Harriet Tubman: Public Mystic & Freedom Fighter (Broadleaf Books, 2023), 99–100.
[2] Taylor-Stinson, Walking, 27.
[3] Taylor-Stinson, Walking, 117, 119.
Jesus Calling – April 1st, 2026
Jesus Calling – Sarah Young
I am calling you to a life of constant communion with Me. Basic training includes learning to live above your circumstances, even while interacting on that cluttered plane of life. You yearn for a simplified lifestyle, so that your communication with Me can be uninterrupted. But I challenge you to relinquish the fantasy of an uncluttered world. Accept each day as it comes, and find Me in the midst of it all. Talk with Me about every aspect of your day, including your feelings. Remember that your ultimate goal is not to control or fix everything around you; it is to keep communing with Me. A successful day is one in which you have stayed in touch with Me, even if many things remain undone at the end of the day. Do not let your to-do list (written or mental) become an idol directing your life. Instead, ask My Spirit to guide you moment by moment. He will keep you close to Me.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
1st Thessalonians 5:17 (NIV) 17 pray continually,
Proverbs 3:6 (NIV) 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Today’s Prayer:
Heavenly Father,
Today, I come before You seeking constant communion. Help me to rise above life’s clutter in order to embrace each moment as it comes while finding You amidst it all. Grant me the wisdom to surrender the idea of a perfect world and instead, to engage fully with Your presence in every day in every way.
Guide me, Lord, to communicate with You openly, sharing my joys and struggles without reservation or hesitation. Teach me to release the need for control, understanding that true and fulfilling success lies in staying connected with You, regardless of what remains unfinished.
May Your Spirit lead me moment by moment, day by day, shaping my path according to Your will. Let my heart be ever attuned to Your presence as I submit all my ways to You.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, we find the most well-known passage in all of Scripture: the Lord’s Prayer. Long before most people had access to the Bible, and well before most people were educated enough to read it, Christians were taught the Lord’s Prayer. It has been used in Christian worship since the beginning of the church, and continues to be a guide for how we commune with God. Interestingly, the Lord’s Prayer is found in the sermon immediately after the section where Jesus warns his followers not to pray openly in public for others to see. He calls them to pray alone, in private. However, the prayer he then teaches them to recite while alone is entirely corporate in structure and language. In other words, Jesus commands us to pray in private while understanding that our prayers themselves are never private.For example, the Lord’s Prayer begins by addressing God as “OurFather.” 
