Jesus said, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already blazing.” —Luke 12:49 

Richard Rohr’s faith is strengthened by acknowledging that everything changes: 

The inner process of change and growth is fundamental to everything, even our bodies. Having undergone several surgeries, cancer, and a heart attack, I’ve been consoled by the way my body takes care of itself over time. In religion, however, many people prefer magical, external, one-time transactions instead of this universal pattern of growth and healing—which always includes loss and renewal. This is the way that life perpetuates itself in ever-new forms: through various changes that can feel like death. This pattern disappoints and scares most of us, even many clergy who think death and resurrection is just a doctrinal statement about Jesus.  

Religions tend to idealize and protect the status quo or the supposedly wonderful past, yet what we now recognize is how they often focus on protecting their own power and privilege. God does not need our protecting. We often worship old things as substitutes for eternal things. Jesus strongly rejects this love of the past and one’s private perfection, and he cleverly quotes Isaiah (29:13) to do it: “In vain do they worship me, teaching merely human precepts as if they were doctrines” (Matthew 15:9). Some Christians seem to think that God really is “back there,” in the good ol’ days of old-time religion when God was really God, and everybody was happy and pure. As if that time ever existed! This leaves the present moment empty and hopeless—not to speak of the future.  

God keeps creating things from the inside out, so they are forever yearning, developing, growing, and changing for the good. This is the fire God has cast upon the Earth, the generative force implanted in all living things, which grow both from within—because they are programmed for it—and from without—by taking in sun, food, and water. Picture YHWH breathing into the soil that became Adam (Genesis 2:7). That is the eternal pattern. God is still breathing into soil every moment! [1]  

There is not a single discipline studied today that does not recognize change, development, growth, and some kind of evolving phenomenon: psychology, cultural anthropology, history, physical sciences, philosophy, social studies, art, drama, music, on and on. But in theology’s search for the Real Absolute, it made one fatal mistake. It imagined a static “unmoved mover,” as Aristotelian philosophy called it, a solid substance sitting above somewhere.  

To fight transformative and evolutionary thinking is, for me, to fight the very core concept of faith. I have no certain knowledge of where this life might be fully or finally heading, but I can see what has already been revealed with great clarity—that life and knowledge always build on themselves, are cumulative, and are always moving outward toward ever-greater connection and discovery. There is no stopping this and no returning to a static notion of reality. [2]   

Authentic Experience and Transformation 

Father Richard names transformation as the fruit of an authentic spiritual path:  

For much of my life, I’ve been trying to facilitate transformation—conversion, change of consciousness, change of mind. The transformed mind lets us see how we process reality. It allows us to step back from our own personal processor so we can be more honest about what is really happening. Transformation isn’t merely a change of morals, group affiliation, or belief system—although it might lead to that—but a change at the very heart of the way we receive and pass on each moment. Do we use the moment to strengthen our own ego position, or do we use the moment to enter into a much broader seeing and connecting?  

Authentic God experience always leads toward service, toward the depths, the margins, toward people suffering or considered outsiders. Little by little we allow our politics, economics, classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and all superiority games to lose their former rationale. Our motivation foundationally changes from security, status, and control to generosity, humility, and cooperation. [1] 

Activist Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove tells how his transformed Christian faith led him to work for racial justice:  

Twenty years ago, Jesus interrupted my racial blindness….   

I was both born into an economy built on race-based slavery and baptized in a church that broke fellowship with sisters and brothers who said God was opposed to slavery. White supremacy isn’t something I chose, but I have to own it. It is my inheritance. In this, I am not alone.…  

By God’s grace, I was invited into a [Black] church that offers a real alternative to the patterns and practices of this death-dealing system. My life in that beloved community has ushered me into a moral movement that not only offers the possibility of a better politic but also connects me to beloved community beyond my own faith tradition—a confluence of streams that make up that great river Revelation [22:1–2] images as the chief corridor in the polis[city] that is to come, right here on earth as it is in heaven…. 

The only gospel that can be good news to me is the one that has the power to touch me down on the inside and heal the hidden wound that rends my soul. Reconstructing the gospel can never only be about the individual. This is why so many noble efforts at reconciliation fail. They pretend that broken people with the best of motives can simply opt out of hundreds of years of history through individual choices and relationships. Such relationships are necessarily dishonest, both because they ignore the real material conditions that weigh on people’s lives and because they offer a false sense of relief from white guilt, which keeps people like me from facing the hidden wound of our whiteness.…  

For white people who have learned to think of themselves as naturally in control, the rare experience of vulnerability introduces the possibility of the essential soul work that might lead to conversion. [2] 

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A Long Way Off

The most shocking part of Jesus’ parable, at least for his original audience, was undoubtedly the father’s reaction when he saw his son. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” Given the magnitude of the son’s disrespect and disregard for his father, most would have expected a very different response. In fact, it would have been acceptable and even required, for the son to be stoned to death for dishonoring his father. This is when we must recall why Jesus told the story to begin with. Jesus used this parable to explain why he welcomed and embraced sinners. The story is meant to reveal the heart of God, therefore the father in the parable does not act as one would expect a first-century Jewish patriarch to behave. Instead, Jesus used the father in the story to illustrate the character of our heavenly Father.To understand the link between the father in the story and God we must remember two things. First, the father in the story allowed his rebellious younger son to have his inheritance, leave his home, and squander it on sinful self-indulgence. No respectable man in Jesus’ audience would have permitted that, but God is not bound by our cultural expectations. He gives us the freedom to choose our path—even if it leads to self-destruction. Likewise, Jesus invited many to follow him, but he also allowed many to walk away. Second, no respectable Jewish man would publicly embarrass himself by running to embrace a rebellious child. The father’s love in Jesus’ story, however, far outweighed his anger or even his honor. This is what so many of us, like Jesus’ original audience, fail to recognize about God. We think he is driven by anger, or holiness, or the need to magnify his own reputation. While there is some truth in each of these, Jesus wants us to see that overwhelming and filling all of these aspects of God’s character is his love. While you were still a long way off, it was not God’s anger that led him to embrace you. While you were still a long way off, it was not Jesus’ desire for honor that led him to accept a humiliating death for your sins. Above all else, it was his love. And if you are still a long way off, remember that it is God’s love, not his anger, that you will receive when you return. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 15:11-24 EPHESIANS 2:17-21 ROMANS 5:10-11 WEEKLY PRAYER From John of Damascus (676 – 749) Master and Lord, Jesus Christ our God, you alone have authority to forgive my sins, whether committed knowingly or in ignorance, and make me worthy to receive without condemnation your divine, glorious, pure and life-giving mysteries, not for my punishment, but for my purification and sanctification, now and in your future kingdom. For you, Christ our God, are compassionate and love humanity, and to you we give glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and forever and ever. Amen.

Father Richard describes how practicing contemplation moves us beyond dualistic thinking:  

I used to think most of us begin with contemplation and a unitive encounter with God and are then led through that experience to awareness of and solidarity with the suffering in the world by some form of action. I do think that’s true for many people, yet as I read the biblical prophets and observe Jesus’ life, I think the reverse also happens: first action, and then needed contemplation.  

No life is immune from suffering. When we’re in solidarity with people facing pain, injustice, war, oppression, colonization—the list goes on and on—we face immense pressure to despair, to become angry or dismissive. When reality is split dualistically between good and bad, right and wrong, we too are torn apart. Yet when we’re broken, we are most open to contemplation, or nondual thinking. We’re desperate to resolve our own terror, anger, and disillusionment, and so we allow ourselves to be led into the silence that holds everything together in wholeness.  

The contemplative, nondual mind is not saying, “Everything is beautiful,” even when it’s not. However, we may come to “Everything is still beautiful” by contemplatively facing the conflict between how reality is and how we wish it could be. We must face dualistic problems, name good and evil, and differentiate between right and wrong. We can’t be naive about evil, but if we stay focused on this duality, we’ll become unlovable, judgmental, dismissive people. I’ve witnessed this pattern in myself. We must eventually find a bigger field, a wider frame, which we call nondual thinking.  

Jesus doesn’t hesitate to name good and evil and to show evil as a serious matter. Jesus often speaks in dualistic images; for example, “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). He draws a stark line between the sheep and the goats, the good and the wicked (Matthew 25:31–46). Yet Jesus overcomes these dualisms by what we would call the contemplative mind. We must be honest about what the goats fail to do, but we can’t become hateful, nor do we need to punish them. We keep going deeper until we can also love them, as Jesus did. 

Beginning with necessary, dualistic action and moving toward contemplation seems to be the more common path these days. We see this pattern in Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. Such people enter into the pain of society and have to go to God to find rest for their soul, because their souls are so torn by the broken, split nature of almost everything, including themselves.  

The most important word in our Center’s name is not Action, nor is it Contemplation, but the word and. We need both action and contemplation to have a whole spiritual journey. It doesn’t matter which comes first; action may lead us to contemplation and contemplation may lead us to action. But finally, they need and feed each other.  

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Five for Friday Skye Jatheni

1.”I often wonder if religion is the enemy of God. It’s almost like religion is what happens when the Spirit has left the building.”- Bono, Lead Singer of U2I have shared this quote before, but Bono touches on a perennial topic here. Of course, everything depends on how you understand religion. Religion is a bit like a cup that carries coffee to me.  The cup needs the coffee and the coffee needs the cup. A cup without coffee is pointless and deserves to be moved on from, yet some people cling to it because it once had a good experience of coffee in it. Coffee without a cup is a mess, it spills everywhere and burns us, and it becomes a desperate experience to hold the coffee in our own hands. All said, I agree with Bono.  I just would take the metaphor in a different direction.  Religion needs Spirit or else it is like an empty coffee cup, and Spirit needs Religion because it paradoxically needs a finite little cup for us to experience it. 2.”There is no part of the world, no matter how lost, no matter how godless, that has not been accepted by God in Jesus Christ and reconciled to God.”- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran PastorBonhoeffer was the first pastor and theologian I ever heard who gave a full treatment to the New Testament idea of the “reconciliation of all things.” It is a topic that I believe is avoided and not fully taught in Western Christianity because it completely challenges the entire framework.  Western Christianity seems to be beholden to the idea that some things or people are saved and others are damned, some are reconciled because of what they have done or prayed while others are choosing their own perdition. In full honesty, when I did church work, I was reprimanded and told not talk about it or teach it. Anyways, here is what Paul says in Colossians 1:15-20… “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” I swear, it feels as though the reconciliation of all things in Christ is a taboo secret that should never have become such a taboo secret. 3.“The Christian of the future will be a mystic or they will not exist at all.”- Karl Rahner, German Jesuit TheologianNot an Evangelical, not a Pastor, not a Theologian, not a Catholic, not a Baptist, not an Eastern Orthodox, not a Methodist, not a Lutheran, not an Activist, not a Politician, not a Biblical Scholar, not anything like those things. If the Christian of the future is not encouraged to experience or taught how to experience God in all things and all things in God, if they are not romanced by the mystery of the Presence in everything, then they will not exist at all. Rahner writes about this topic in The Mystical Way in Everyday Life. 4.”When the intellect attains prayer that is pure and free from passion, the demons attack no longer with sinister thoughts but with thoughts of what is good.  For they suggest to it an illusion of God’s glory in a form pleasing to the senses, so as to make it think that it has realized the final aim of prayer.”- Evagrios the Solitary, Desert Hermit from the 4th CenturyThis one stopped me in my tracks this week. The idea that the demons would stop attacking a person with evil thoughts, and begin attacking them with seemingly good ones is so insightful. A few weeks ago I remember reading about some other mega-church pastor who was found to have sexually abused a minor decades earlier.  During his tenure, he was known to often say, “God told me he wanted me to be famous to make Him famous.”  If that doesn’t scream narcissism within a “pastor” then I don’t know what else does. What I enjoy about the early Church desert monasticism is that it was something like the opposite of celebrity culture today, which has unfortunately also infected the church world.  The early Church seemed to be aware of the temptations of riches, reputation, adoration, etc. and warned people deeply against wanting those things. The further I dive into the desert monastics, the more I think that their wisdom is desperately needed today for the sake of our generation’s spiritual formation. I guess, if I think about it, this whole 5 on Friday newsletter began as a result of my thinking that the ancient, deep, and wide wisdom of the Christian tradition was being overlooked.  In a way, this weekly newsletter is very much about sharing the underappreciated wisdom of the Christian tradition. 5.”Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”- Paulo Friere in Pedagogy of the OppressedI believe Moses and Jesus would agree.

Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom—freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from these. 
—Rowan Williams, Holy Living 

Author Cassidy Hall considers the paradoxical freedom she experiences through contemplative ritual:  

Routines and rituals can also meld together. The morning cup of coffee becomes a sacred process of movement and pauses, senses and stillness. The evening walk shifts into a meditative trance of watching the ducks in the nearby pond. My routines become rituals the second I sense an internal bow to the moment’s entanglement with holiness, with mindfulness, with love, wonder and awe. In ritual, I am rooted and invited to dive deeper into the expanse of myself and my own unfolding. The mindful shift of acknowledgment takes me into more spaciousness, questions, and curiosities. Without my routines and rituals—and my routines shifting into rituals from time to time—I don’t think I’d be as alive and awake to my own personhood.…  

Ritual also frequently offers me some inexplicable sense of freedom. While traveling to Trappist monasteries, I often felt a strange sensation of freedom. Hearing the bells calling the community to prayer seven times a day felt like a homecoming. The hours of work combined with prayer gave me a sense of rhythm that soothed me. The irony—of rituals feeling like a loving freedom—is not lost on me. When ritual comes as an invitation, a choice to engage or not engage, limits are expanded because freedom is present. And from this place, where ritual meets freedom, our relationship to self, others, and the Divine can be continually deepened. [1] 

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams considers the importance of a rhythm or “rule” of life in Benedictine spirituality:  

The idea that all of time can be sanctified—that is, that the time we may instinctively consider to be unproductive, waiting or routine activity, is indispensable to our growth into Christian and human maturity. How we spend the time we think is insignificant is important. It is not only the well-known Benedictine union of laborare and orare [work and pray], but the wider commitment to a life under “rule,” a life that takes it for granted that every aspect of the day is part of a single offering.… 

Christ’s human life is open to the divine at every moment; it is not that God the Word deigns to take up residence in those parts of our lives that we consider important or successful or exceptional. Every aspect of Jesus’ humanity and every moment of his life is imbued with the divine identity, so that if our lives are to be images of his, they must seek the same kind of unbroken transparency. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

When you worship Me in spirit and truth, you join with choirs of angels who are continually before My throne. Though you cannot hear their voices, your praise and thanksgiving are distinctly audible in heaven. Your petitions are also heard, but it is your gratitude that clears the way to My Heart. With the way between us wide open, My blessings fall upon you in rich abundance. The greatest blessing is nearness to Me–abundant Joy and Peace in My Presence. Practice praising and thanking Me continually throughout this day.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

John 4:23-24 (NLT)
23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Additional insight regarding John 4:24: “God is spirit” means he is not a physical being limited to one space. He is present everywhere, and he can be worshipped anywhere, at any time. It is not where we worship that counts, but how we worship. Is your worship genuine and true? Do you have the Holy Spirit’s help? How does the Holy Spirit help us? The Holy Spirit prays for us (Romans 8:26 – And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.), teaches us the words of Christ (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.), and tells us we are loved (Romans 5:5 – And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.).

Psalm 100:4 (NLT)
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
    go into his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him and praise his name.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 100:4: God alone is worthy of being worshipped. What is your attitude toward worship? Do you willingly and joyfully come into God’s presence, or are you just going through the motions, going to church without surrender and connection? This psalm tells us to remember God’s goodness and dependability, and then to worship with thanksgiving and praise.

Mystic and theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) writes of the contemplative practice of making time to “center down”:  

How good it is to center down!  
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! 
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; 
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,  
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still  
    moment and the resting lull.… 
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?— 
    what are the motives that order our days?  
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go?… 
Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.  
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes  
    of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind— 
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart  
    makes clear.  
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are  
    answered,  
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of  
    our daily round 
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.  
How good it is to center down! [1] 

Spiritual director Caroline Oakes writes of the impact of a faithful practice of “centering-in”: 

The reason the gospel writers made a point to include their many accounts of Jesus returning to the presence of God was not so that those hearing their message could marvel at how centered in God Jesus was. The gospel writers were offering those who would hear their message, then and now, an invitation to experience that power ourselves in ways that are real and relevant to our day-to-day lives and relationships.  

Active, engaged, world-changing contemplatives since the desert mothers and fathers of the third century have realized how life-transforming, even world-transforming, that gospel invitation is.  

And we can too….  

The spiritual journey begins with a pause, a centering-in-God pause, and over time becomes a constant and ceaseless prayer, an honoring of and a connection with the Divine in you that awakens your essential self…. 

This returning to our center again and again is a kind of in-and-out, in-and-out movement, like breathing: breathing in, we gather strength and calm, maybe an insight, maybe a sense of an injustice needing to be righted, and then breathing out, we go back out in to the world to live into what we’ve been given and what we’ve received…. 

When you engage in any one of several centering practices that are available to us today, practices in which you can just be, alone, in quiet, in awareness of your innermost self with God, then over time, something holy and extraordinary happens in ways that … we can’t imagine or foresee. The closeness of your inner, relational life will be changed, to yourself, to others, to God, and to the world around you. Your relationship to your own life will shift subtly but profoundly. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

My children make it a pastime of judging one another–and themselves. But I am the only capable Judge, and I have acquitted you through My own blood. Your acquittal came at the price of My unparalleled sacrifice. That is why I am highly offended when I hear My children judge one another or indulge in self-hatred.
     If you live close to Me and absorb My Word, the Holy Spirit will guide and correct you as needed. There is no condemnation for those who belong to Me.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Luke 6:37 (NLT)
Do Not Judge Others
37 “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.

Additional insight regarding Luke 6:37: A forgiving spirit demonstrates that a person has received God’s forgiveness. If we are critical rather than compassionate, we will also receive criticism. If we treat others generously, graciously, and compassionately, however, these qualities will come back to us in full measure. We are to love others, not judge them.

2 Timothy 4:8 (NLT)
8 And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.

Additional insight regarding 2nd Timothy 4:8: Whatever we face – discouragement, persecution, or even death – we know we will receive a reward with Christ in Heaven.

Titus 3:5 (NLT)
5 He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

Additional insight regarding Titus 3:4-6: All three persons of the Trinity are mentioned in these verses because all three participate in the work of salvation. Based upon the redemptive work of his Son, the Father forgives us and sends the Holy Spirit to wash away our sins and continually renew us.

Spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton describes a “rule of life” as key to experiencing the reign of God: 

Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We think that somehow we will fall into transformation by accident.  

Jesus had something to say about this. He used parables to picture a person who had searched long and hard for something very valuable and very special. In one story the prized item is a piece of land; in another it is a valuable pearl [Matthew 13:44–46]. In both stories, the merchant has been looking for this prize all his life, and when he finds it, he doesn’t hesitate. He sells everything he has so that he can buy what he has been searching for.  

Both the field and the pearl are metaphors for the kingdom of God—that state of being in which God is reigning in our life and [God’s] presence is shaping our reality. The kingdom of God is here now, if we are willing to arrange our life to embrace it….  

Christian tradition has a name for the structure that enables us to say yes to the process of spiritual transformation day in and day out. It is called a rule of life. A rule of life seeks to respond to two questions: Who do I want to be? How do I want to live? … [or] the interplay between these two questions: How do I want to live so I can be who I want to be? [1]  

For pastor Ken Shigematsu, a rule of life is not a “one-size-fits-all” solution: 

A monastic rule of life can help us learn what it means to live so that we are attuned to God in our everything. A life that does more than pray sporadically, but is itself a prayer to God.… 

Having a set of deliberate practices also allows us to build on our strengths and shore up areas of weakness. If we are experiencing a failure of self-control, we might deliberately practice fasting…. If we find ourselves overcommitted and distracted, engaging in a daily rhythm of ten or twenty minutes of silent prayer that centers us or meditating on a brief single passage in Scripture (lectio) may be a helpful practice.  

On the other hand, if we have a naturally contemplative bent and find ourselves spending a disproportionately large amount of time in private prayer and solitude, adding another way of praying may not be helpful. In fact, we might consider decreasing the amount of time we spend in formal prayer and perhaps enter into practices of justice or service so we can grow as a contemplative in action….   

Ultimately, a rule can enable us to live our lives, as Thomas Kelly writes, “from a Center, a divine Center … a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity.” [2]  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Let Me show you My way for you this day. I guide you continually, so you can relax and enjoy My Presence in the present. Living well is both a discipline and an art. Concentrate on staying close to Me, the divine Artist. Discipline your thoughts to trust Me as I work My ways in your life. Pray about everything; then, leave outcomes up to Me. Do not fear My will, for through it I accomplish what is best for you. Take a deep breath and dive in the depths of absolute trust in Me. Underneath are the everlasting arms!

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 5:2-3 (NLT)
2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God,
    for I pray to no one but you.
3 Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.
    Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 5:1-3: The secret to a close relationship with God is to pray to him earnestly each morning. In the morning, our minds are more free from problems, and then we can commit the whole day to God. Regular communication helps any friendship and is certainly necessary for a strong relationship with God. We need to communicate with him daily. Do you have a regular time to pray and read God’s word?

Deuteronomy 33:27 (NLT)
27 The eternal God is your refuge,
    and his everlasting arms are under you.
He drives out the enemy before you;
    he cries out, ‘Destroy them!’

Additional insight regarding Deuteronomy 33:27: Moses’ song declares that God is our refuge, our only true security. How often we entrust our lives to other things – perhaps money, career, a noble cause, or a lifelong dream. But our only true refuge is the eternal God, who always holds out his arms to catch us when the shaky supports that we trust collapse and we fall. No storm can destroy us when we take refuge in him. Those without God, however, must forever be cautious. One mistake may wipe them out. Living for God in this world may look like risky business. But it is the godless who are on shaky ground. Because God is our refuge, we can dare to be bold.

Monastics should diligently cultivate silence at all times. 
—St. Benedict, Rule, chapter 42 

For Richard Rohr, silence is a foundation upon which we can build our lives: 

Silence is not just that which happens around words and underneath images and events. It has a life of its own. It’s a phenomenon with an almost physical identity. It is a being in itself to which we can relate. Philosophically, we would say being is that foundational quality which precedes all other attributes. When we relate to the naked being of a thing, we learn to know it at its core. Silence is somehow at the very foundation of all reality. It is that out of which all being comes and to which all things return.  

Silence precedes, undergirds, and grounds everything. We cannot just think of it as an accident, or as something unnecessary. Unless we learn how to live there, go there, abide in this different phenomenon, the rest of things—words, events, relationships, identities—become rather superficial, without depth or context. They lose meaning, so we end up searching for more events and situations which must increasingly contain ever-higher stimulation, more excitement, and more color to add vital signs to our inherently bored and boring existence. Really, the simplest and most stripped-down things ironically have the power to give us the greatest happiness—if we respect them as such. Silence is the essence of simple and stripped down.   

We need to experience silence as a living presence which is primordial and primal in itself, and then see all other things—now experienced deeply—inside of that container. Silence is not just an absence, but also a presence. Silence surrounds every “I know” event with a humble and patient “I don’t know.” It protects the autonomy and dignity of events, persons, animals, and all things.  

We must find a way to return to this place, to live in this place, to abide in this place of inner silence. Outer silence means very little if there is not a deeper inner silence. Everything else appears much clearer when it appears or emerges out of a previous silence. When I use the word appear, I mean that silence takes on reality, substance, significance, or meaning. Without silence around a thing, which is a mystery, it can be difficult to find a meaning that lasts. It’s just another event in a sequence of ever-quicker events, which we call our lives.  

Without silence, we do not really experience our experiences. We have many experiences, but they do not have the power to change us, to awaken us, to give us that joy or “peace that the world cannot give,” as Jesus says (John 14:27).

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A Foundational Practice 
  
I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit. —Thomas Merton 

Father Richard emphasizes the beautiful freedom that arises when we place contemplation at the center of our lives: 

I believe that the combination of human action from a contemplative center is the greatest art form. When action and contemplation are united, we have greater beauty, symmetry, and transformation—lives and actions that inherently sparkle and heal, though the shadow is still present.  

Contemplation waits for the moments, creates the moments, where all can be a silent prayer. It refuses the very distinction between action and stillness. Contemplation is essentially nondual consciousness that overcomes the gaps between me and God, outer and inner, either and or, me and you.  

The reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most of us, even and most especially in religion, are experts in dualistic thinking. And then we try to use this limited thinking tool for prayer, problems, and relationships. It cannot get us very far. The irony of ego “consciousness” is that it always excludes and eliminates the unconscious—which means it is actually not conscious at all! Ego insists on knowing and being certain; it refuses all unknowing. Most people who think they are fully conscious (read, “smart”) have a leaden manhole cover over their unconscious. It gives them control but seldom compassion or wisdom.  

We are led forward by brightness, a “larger force field” that includes the negative, the problematic, the difficult, the unknown—that which we do not yet understand, the Mysteriousness that God always Is. Brightness does not exclude or deny anything. 

We cannot grow in the great art form, the integrative dance of action and contemplation, without a strong tolerance for ambiguity, an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a willingness to not know—and not even need to know. This is how we allow and encounter Mystery. 

Of course, we can only do this if Someone Else is holding us as a great Lover, taking away our fear, doing the knowing, and satisfying our desire. If we can allow that Someone Else to embrace us, we will go back to our life of action with new vitality, but it will now be smooth, One Flow. It will be “no longer you” who acts or contemplates but the Life of One who lives in you now acting for you and with you and as you (see Galatians 2:20)! 

Henceforth, it does not even matter whether we act or contemplate, contemplate or act, because both will be inside the One Flow, which is still and forever loving and healing the world. Christians would call it the very flow of life that is the Trinity. We “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) inside of this one eternal life and love that never stops giving and receiving. This is how we “die by brightness and the Holy Spirit.” [1] This is the greatest art form.  

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Sarah Young

Let My Love seep into the inner recesses of your being. Do not close off any part of yourself from Me. I know you inside and out, so do not try to present a “cleaned-up” self to Me. Wounds that you shut away from the Light of My Love will fester and become wormy. Secret sins that you “hide” from Me can split off and develop lives of their own, controlling you without your realizing it.
     Open yourself fully to My transforming Presence. Let My brilliant Love-Light search out and destroy hidden fears. This process requires time alone with Me, as My Love soaks into your innermost being. Enjoy My perfect Love, which expels every trace of fear.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

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.

Psalm 139:23-24 (NLT)
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 139:23-24: David asked God to search for sin and point it out, even to the level of testing his thoughts. This is exploratory surgery for sin. How are we to recognize sin unless God points it out? Then, when God shows us, we can repent and be forgiven. Make this verse your prayer. If you ask the Lord to search your heart and your thoughts to reveal your sin, you will be continuing on “the path of everlasting life.”

1st John 4:18 (NLT)
18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.

Additional insight regarding 1st John 4:18: If we ever are afraid of the future, eternity, or God’s judgement, we can remind ourselves of God’s love. We know that he loves us perfectly (Romans 8:38,39 – “38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”) We can resolve our fears first by focusing on his immeasurable love for us, and then by allowing him to love others through us. His love will quiet your fears and give you confidence.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. —Matthew 5:4 

Father Richard dedicated many years of his ministry to working with men, emphasizing the importance of grieving.   

On men’s retreats, we always emphasize grief work. There’s a therapeutic, healing meaning to tears. Undoubtedly that’s true, even as we study what’s in tears. We speak of salt in tears but now there’s evidence of washed-out toxins. Is not weeping, in fact, necessary? Beyond that, of course, Jesus is describing the state of those who weep, who have something to mourn about. They feel the pain of the world. Jesus is saying that those who can grieve, those who can cry, are those who will understand.  

Many Christians think we know God through our minds. Yet corporeal theology, body theology, indicates that perhaps weeping will allow us to know God much better than through ideas. In this Beatitude, Jesus praises the weeping class, those who can enter into solidarity with the pain of the world and not try to extract themselves from it. Weeping over our sin and the sin of the world is an entirely different mode than self-hatred or hatred of others. The “weeping mode” allows us to carry the tragic side, to bear the pain of the world without looking for perpetrators or victims. Instead, we recognize the sad reality in which both sides are trapped. Tears from God are always for everybody, for our universal exile from home. “It is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted” (Jeremiah 31:15).  

That might seem ridiculous, and it is especially a stumbling block for many men in our culture. Young men have often been told not to cry because it will make us look vulnerable. So, we men—and many women too—stuff our tears. We must teach all young people how to cry. In the second half of my life, I understand why Saints Francis and Clare cried so much, and why the saints spoke of “the gift of tears.” [1]  

Essayist Ross Gay describes the gift he experienced when his father opened to this “weeping mode” later in life:  

My father … started crying on the regular right about the time he got to be my age. Who knows exactly why: his much younger brother died about this time. As did his beloved uncle. He developed diabetes. He was getting older. Who knows what else. Either way, he was changing, and he would weep at TV shows or bad movies, my brother’s wedding, the right song. Lifting his glasses to wipe his tears, as he did at the end there. I can almost picture it. His soft face kind of shining, the freckles like seeds on the surface of the soil. He might have even smiled a little bit when he cried sometimes, my father. He was falling apart, becoming his most radiant, his most needful. And little did I know, he was showing me how to do the same. [2]  

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Skye Jethani 5 For Friday

1.
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

• Leonard Cohen, Canadian Poet and Songwriter
   
  This is cruel, ironic, and true.  I do not understand the alchemy or the mathematics of why.  The best artists are always tortured artists in some capacity.  Perhaps it is because they are most willing and honest to the experience they are having.

Cohen reminds me of something comedian Pete Holmes says about artists: “The artists are simply reporting back to the rest of us how they see reality.”

Of course, we can always disagree with the artist and how they see the world, but that is exactly why the appreciation of art is such a subjective experience.

2.
“Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.”

• James Baldwin, American Author and Civil Rights Activist
   
  Lawrence Kohlberg, the psychologist who studied the stages of moral development, broke the stages into three larger units…

Pre-Conventional, Conventional, and Post-Conventional Ethics.

Pre-Conventional Ethics are selfish and oriented completely around the individual and their needs.  It is only held in check by or critiqued by the Conventional.

Conventional Ethics rely upon obedience to a set of rules defined by a community and its needs.  The Conventional is only held in check by or critiqued by the Post-Conventional.

Post-Conventional Ethics are more universal and timeless and deal with the ramifications or consequences that affect everyone and everything, not only the self and the community.

I think that what James Baldwin is talking about here is the shift from Conventional to Post-Conventional.  It is always the prophets of a society who shift to Post-Conventional and can critique the community and its ethics (hopefully) from a place of love.  It takes serious courage to speak out against one’s society, but at the same time, one feels a sense of responsibility to the whole world to speak out against a sick and unhealthy society.

3.
“In this (Sixth Dwelling) the soul discovers how all things are seen in God, and how He contains all things within Himself.  This is of great benefit because, even though it only lasts a moment, it remains engraved upon the soul.  And it also causes great confusion in showing us more clearly the wrongness of offending God, because it’s in God Himself-I mean, while dwelling within Him-that we do all this wrong.”

• St. Teresa de Jesus (St. Teresa of Avila) in Interior Castle
   
  This week I finished my fourth reread of Interior Castle.  My first time was somewhere around 2011, then again in 2014 (when it actually “clicked” for me), then during Covid in 2020, and just now over the past month and a half.  I am starting to have such a familiarity with the text that I can see the benefit of knowing a text so well and across multiple translations.

This time, though, the second half of the book stood out in a way that it did not before.  The first half is heavily focused on humility and self-awareness, while the second half is more focused on types of prayerful experiences and the insights gleaned from them.

Toward the end of the book, Teresa talks about the insight of “seeing all things in God and God in all things” and how that radically should change the way that we understand sin and grace.

Essentially, we all do “wrong” within God, and God with “grace” continues to carry, sustain, and hold us.  The intimacy and the deliberate love of God, even amid our self-harm and destructive behaviors, should give us pause.

4.
“It is Christ whom we follow, who led no armies, founded no empires, killed no one, and called peacemakers the blessed children of God.’ The cross is a symbol of self-giving love, not of military conquest.”

• Jim Forest, American Writer and Peace Activist
   
  If the cross is picked up and made into a symbol of conquest, if it is painted on tanks, drones, and atomic bombs, that does not mean it has “Christianized” war or sanctified the violence.  What it means is that it has been hijacked and made into propaganda for the sake of some new Babylon.

I remember the story of a pastor who was brought up on stage to pray for literal tanks and to bless F16s.  It caused him to have a radical shift in his consciousness and awareness of God’s perspective toward instruments of war.  The pastor was Brian Zahnd, who in many ways I confess I look up to.

5.
“What labels me, negates me.”

• Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher
   
  Soren Kierkegaard must have been an Enneagram 4.

Kierkegaard saw through the human tendency to label others to dismiss them.  You and I are not conservatives, or liberals, or patriots, or rebels, or rich, or poor, or what-have-you.  We are far more complex than any singular identifier or title.

However, we must admit, that it is easy to broadstroke and try to sum up one another with a label that helps us to group people as either “with us” or “against us.”

Perhaps this is why St. Paul says, “There is neither male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free.  For all are one in Christ.”  The Christian religion is not another title, label, or adjective to set people apart from others.  Rather, the Christian religion is supposed to be the great unifier, it is supposed to help us all to find solidarity and connection with everyone else (even our enemies).

So let us be mindful of labels that separate and discredit others, and pay more careful attention to the Spirit which unites.

CAC friend Mirabai Starr founded the online grief community, Holy Lament: The Transformative Path of Loss and Longing. It is a space for people to experience grief together:  

What I often say about my work with grieving and bereaved people is that it’s much more about transformation than about consolation. There are other places you can go to feel better, but to me grief is not a problem to be solved or a malady to be cured. It’s a sacred reality to be entered. For so many of us, there’s an opening to our soul’s innate birthright, I would even say, of our longing for God that often gets covered over by everyday life…. When we experience a profound loss, it strips us of those coverings … granting us special access to a profound loving intimacy with the divine…. 

Death is complicated and powerful. It’s that threshold space that we get to experience sometimes between this world and a larger reality that we’ve always intuited to be true…. It brings us into sacred space whether we like it or not. But there are many other losses besides the death of a loved one: that breakup of a relationship, … a serious health diagnosis that changes everything, an injury that reweaves the way life used to be. I guess any kind of loss that involves the death of who we used to be is a powerful catalyst for this kind of encounter with the sacred that I’m speaking of.… 

We’re an extremely grief-phobic culture, and it doesn’t help to have the religions on top of it saying, “Go this way. There lies transcendence. You can meditate your way out of your pain. You can pray your way through to relief from suffering. In fact, you can bypass it all together if you buy into this set of beliefs or practices or faith claims.” The combination of grief illiteracy in the culture, and the emphasis of the patriarchal religious structures to get us to rise above the messy realities of our humanity, is a recipe for avoiding grief.  

Starr experienced how individual loss allowed her to enter into collective belonging: 

What I experienced when my daughter died was two things. One was that nobody could possibly know what I’m going through right now. But quickly on the heels of that was, “Oh, every person ever who has experienced the death of a child knows.” I was realizing in the bones of my own body … that there had been mothers throughout time whose children had died and mothers right now [whose children are dying]…. We all belong to each other. In some ways that was the first time I ever took my seat in the web of interbeing—when I realized that I belong here and we belong to each other. Even if right now it was my turn to be held by that web, I couldn’t imagine it yet, but I knew somehow, someday I would be able to do some of that holding of the other mothers to come. And I have and I do.  

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Rest with Me a while. You have journeyed up a steep, rugged path in recent days. The way ahead is shrouded in uncertainty. Look neither behind you nor before you. Instead, focus your attention on Me, your constant Companion. Trust that I will equip you fully for whatever awaits you on your journey.
     I designed time to be a protection for you. You couldn’t bear to see all your life at once. Though I am unlimited by time, it is in the present moment that I meet you. Refresh yourself in My company, breathing deep draughts of My Presence. The highest level of trust is to enjoy Me moment by moment. I am with you, watching over you wherever you go.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Psalm 143:8 (NLT)
8 Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning,
    for I am trusting you.
Show me where to walk,
    for I give myself to you.

Genesis 28:15 (NLT)
15 What’s more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.”

Additional insight regarding Genesis 28:10-15: God’s covenant promise to Abraham and Isaac was offered to Jacob as well. But it was not enough to be Abraham’s grandson; Jacob has to establish his own personal relationship with God. God has no grandchildren; each person must have a personal relationship with him. It is not enough to hear wonderful stories about Christians in your family. You need to become part of the story yourself (see Galatians 3:6-7 – “6 In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” 7 The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.).

Collective Lament and Confession

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill call on Christians to embrace the path of lament, which includes confession. 

In his book Mirror to the Church, Emmanuel Katongole reflects on the Rwandan genocide…. Before the Rwandan genocide, the majority of Rwandans were Christians. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Easter weekend, [Katongole writes,] “Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together…. The most Christianized country in Africa became the site of its worst genocide.” [1] ….   

Reflecting on the Rwandan genocide, Katongole says, “The resurrection of the church begins with lament.” [2] This is difficult for many Americans and others living in Western countries to grasp. Our culture teaches us to embrace a triumphalistic and success-oriented posture. Thus we avoid lament. Americans are prone to move quickly to try to fix things, and often we need to lament, mourn, and grieve first to fully experience and understand what has taken place. In cases of injustice and atrocities such as genocide, the only real response we can have at first is to lament. Scripture teaches us that we can’t move toward hope, peace, transformation, and reconciliation without going through sorrow, mourning, regret, and lament…. 

Lament is a demonstrative, strong, and corporate expression of deep grief, pain, sorrow, and regret. Lament and repentance deal with issues of the heart. They pave the way for outer change. Lament is a personal and corporate response to many things: evil, sin, death, harm, discrimination, inequality, racism, sexism, colonization, oppression, and injustice. It is about mourning the painful, shameful, or sorrowful situation, about confessing sin and complicity and sorrow, about calling God to intervene and to change the situation. Finally, lament is about offering thanksgiving and praise to God, knowing that God will intervene and bring change, hope, and restoration. 

These laments by Kim and Hill offer ways for Christians in the United States to acknowledge and grieve injustice:  

We lament the exploitation and destruction of black lives and communities; the abuse of basic human rights; and systemic injustice, expressed in policing, judicial, educational, economic, social, and other systems and structures…. 

We lament corruption among politicians, police forces, and bankers; military interventions and the militarization of society and police forces; uncaring government agencies and big business; and urban poverty and homelessness….

We lament the nature, extent, and effects of white privilege, nationalism, xenophobia, and racism; the unwelcome shown to refugees and asylum seekers; and the fear, anxiety, and suffering experienced by undocumented migrants.  

We lament the treatment of women in society and church…. We lament gender inequalities, the discrimination and harassment women suffer, the sexualization of women and girls, and the domestic violence many women suffer daily.… 

We lament the colonization, devastation, and assimilation of First Nations and indigenous peoples, and the role Christianity has played…. 

We lament the silence of the people of God about many of these things. We lament the complicity of the church in many of these things.  

This practice of lament is necessary if we are to experience healing and hope and transformation.  

The Unexpected Hero

Jesus’ parables were usually marked by a surprise; a twist that forced his audience to rethink a basic assumption they held about God, the world, or themselves. In his story about a man beaten and robbed on the road, the first character to pass by is the most respected in Jewish culture—a priest. The second character, a Levite, is also admired but slightly below the priest on the social hierarchy. With these two characters, Jesus had primed his audience to expect the hero of the story to be someone below the Levite. Perhaps an ordinary Jew without much religious training. That would have been surprising enough, but Jesus’ introduction of a Samaritan as the hero was downright offensive.Jews hated Samaritans. They were viewed as apostates who had abandoned the true faith of Israel for heretical teachings. This made them even worse than gentiles whom the Jews commonly regarded as “dogs.” The hatred between Jews and Samaritans, which had smoldered for nearly 1,000 years, was still burning in Jesus’ time. Jews had destroyed the Samaritan temple, and around 6 A.D. the Samaritans retaliated by scattering human bones in the Jewish temple during Passover, defiling it so that worship was prevented. Remember, Jesus told this story because of a question asked by an expert in Jewish religious law. He wanted to know what it meant to obey the command to “love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18). In the minds of most Jews, a Samaritan was automatically disqualified from being considered law-abiding because they did not share the Jew’s theology and view of the Old Testament law. For Jesus, therefore, to make a Samaritan the hero of his story was simply unthinkable. It’s difficult for us to understand how offensive and shocking Jesus’ story would have been to his audience. Imagine asking your pastor what it means to be a good Christian and having him respond with a story about a merciful Muslim. Or, imagine the repercussions if a politician was asked what it means to be a true patriot and she pointed to an undocumented immigrant. In a way, that’s what Jesus was doing. He wasn’t just affirming a Samaritan, as scandalous as that would have been. He was also attacking the pride and self-righteousness of his fellow Jews.The parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t just about religious law. It’s not simply about answering the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ story was also about deconstructing assumptions and the cultural categories we use to elevate ourselves and devalue others. Likewise, we must ask how we have allowed our culture’s categories and labels to influence how we see ourselves and others. A follower of Christ is not identified by a label, social rank, or religious position, but by the love she shows others. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:29-37 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-3 ROMANS 2:25-29 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) Lord, we pray this day mindful of the sorry confusion of our world. Look with mercy upon this generation of your children so steeped in misery of their own contriving, so far strayed from your ways and so blinded by passions. We pray for the victims of tyranny, that they may resist oppression with courage. We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit.We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue, or rest content to have our ease at the price of other men’s sorrow and tribulation.We pray for all who have some vision of your will, despite the confusions and betrayals of human sin, that they may humbly and resolutely plan for and fashion the foundations of a just peace between men, even while they seek to preserve what is fair and just among us against the threat of malignant powers.Amen.

In her book Liberation and the Cosmos, CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes constructs imagined conversations between varied ancestors and activists in faith. Here she envisions a conversation between educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) on the healing power of tears: 

Bethune: Lament is needed as a ritual of cleansing and preparation for what is yet to come. It is a step in the process of liberation that was never completed…. The generations that have followed slavery have been crying throughout their lifetimes; they have just chosen to do it on the inside. Their spirits are riddled with the salt of unreleased tears. 

King: The whispered hope that echoes through every wail and cry of anguish is that the troubles of this world are not the end of the story. Now we see through a glass darkly and not face to face [1 Corinthians 13:12]. This generation is inundated with twenty-four-hour news stations that bring the pain of the world into your living rooms. Yet, your lives in Western societies seem to go on unchanged. You are inundated with news of disaster and death, yet even in your compassion, you seem distanced and detached from the grit and horror going on in the world.… We have forgotten the gift that lament can be.… 

Bethune: That is why my call to the next generation is to reclaim the possibility of real joy through the healing practice of lament. I am suggesting that we weep with those who weep, that we moan over the harm done on our behalf and by our hands…. We are urging the next generation to allow lament to act as a release valve for pent-up rage and generational frustration, to use lament as a teaching device for the children, and to allow the time of comfort that follows lament to knit the community together despite its differences…. I promise you that tears can be revolutionary.…   

King: It is the lament of the community that leads to healing. It may seem that you are few in number, that you don’t have the strength or means to overcome systems of oppression and death. All you have are prayers, faith, and courage. Yet, with this alone and the God who never leaves us alone, you must act.  

Communal lament opens the possibility for healing stories to be told. Through Bethune’s voice, Holmes points to contemporary versions of “griots,” traveling oral historians and storytellers from West Africa:  

Bethune: The call for lament is not an invitation to moping or sadness. It is a call for ritual reorientation. With or without tears, lament is a communal act of cosmological engagement. Ancestors on the continent of Africa knew this…. There are griots among you in this new generation. They are poets, drummers, preachers, and singers. They are found in every walk of life, and they are waiting to write and share the stories that defy the conspiracy of silence that pervades this present age.  

A Failure of Compassion

Sometimes Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan is taught in a manner that frames compassion over and against devotion to the Old Testament Law. This view holds that the priest and the Levite who passed by the man in the ditch were prevented from helping him, even if their hearts were filled with empathy because religious law forbids it. This understanding of Jesus’s story would make the Old Testament Law the problem—a reading some traditions are eager to accept. But is this accurate?Priests and Levites served at the temple in Jerusalem on rotating shifts. In Jesus’ story, it is clear they had just completed their time at the temple because they were “going down the road” indicating the declining elevation away from Jerusalem. Some speculate that the priest passed the man on the road because he appeared dead, and priests who touched a corpse were ritually unclean and could not perform their duties at the temple. However, because he had already completed his temple service this should not have prevented him from helping. The Levite faced a similar decision. While also bound by laws of cleanliness while serving at the temple, there was nothing preventing the Levite from helping the man now that his rotation in Jerusalem was complete. Like the priest, however, he also ignored the man in need. For both men, it was not devotion to religious law, but a lack of compassion, that prevented them from helping the man. The problem in Jesus’ story is not God’s Law, but the cold hearts of religious leaders who ought to know better. We should not read Jesus’ story without thinking about the modern-day priests and Levites in our own culture—religious people who use the appearance of devotion to God as an excuse for not showing compassion to those in need. I was disheartened by a conversation with a pastor a few years ago who reported his church members objected to the church’s plan to send relief funds and supplies to Syrian refugees. Such aid, they said, was the first step toward the resettlement of Muslim refugees in their community. In other words, a desire to protect their faith was their excuse for not practicing their faith.This same tendency is now evident as the United States is being rocked by protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Although more Christians of all backgrounds are engaging in the call for reform than ever before, some are still reluctant and using their faith as the reason. Rather than recognizing the ongoing reality of racial injustice and assisting their neighbors of color in need, some white Christians are quick to dismiss the movement as “political” and therefore a distraction from their commitment to the gospel. In other words, they are using their devotion to God as a reason for not helping their neighbors who are suffering. Jesus did not affirm religious devotion as an excuse for apathy, and neither should we. Like the priest and Levite, God’s law is not what prevents us from helping our neighbors. Our problem is not our faith, but a tragic failure of compassion. Here’s a simple truth: If you believe your Christian faith prevents you from helping those in need, you’re doing it wrong. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:29-37 JAMES 4:17 1 JOHN 4:18-21 WEEKLY PRAYER From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.