My loved ones and I were spontaneously constructing our own Psalm 107 as the news forced its way into our consciousness today. I know many of you are tuned out; the daily process of deception and destruction is hard to watch. So you might be distressed I am bothering you with “political stuff.” But I have to remind you, the 1% and their minions in government have taken the power in their hands and we are slowly being bled of our money and morals in the U.S..
Yet we persist. We are a circle of hope and we did not expect the government or the wealthy to save us – at least those of us who have been reading the Bible.
So we moved with Psalm 107’s refrain today in our litany of despair and frustration. We thought of each other and took heart as we joined in:
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress
Sisi and Trump. Click pic for Al Jazeera
Sisi
My friend Jonny was up in arms. According to a report released by Egypt’s presidency, the meeting today with President Sisi was Trump’s sixth since 2016, reportedly more than any other leader. “Human rights groups have accused the Egyptian regime of carrying out widespread and systematic torture of political prisoners, silencing dissidents and using death sentences to settle scores. Sisi’s government has vehemently denied the allegations.” [CNN]
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress
Bibi
My wife and I sat down at dinner after watching Israeli elections returns for five minutes and said, “I’m not sure we are doing enough for those dear Palestinians we met when our delegation visited.” Trump advocates a permanent annexation of the Golan Heights, moves the embassy to Jerusalem, and essentially meddles in the Israeli election by campaigning for Netanyahu. Bibi essentially calls for a one state, Jewish nation which Haaretz calls apartheid in the making. Even the Wall Street Journal sees problems [WSJ].
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress
Barr
Meanwhile, Attorney General Barr went to Congress and would not answer some fairly straightforward question. People ranted. [Rantt]
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress
Obama blamed again
As part of his Sisi press conference, Trump again blamed Obama for inventing the policy of separating children at the border and putting them in cages, while he righteously stopped the policy.
Maybe you think NPR is a fake news outlet. But here is what they immediately said about Trump’s remarks:
“Trump’s false claim that child separations were carried out by the Obama administration has been frequently refuted.
‘The Obama administration did not do that, no. We did not separate children from their parents,’ former Obama domestic policy adviser Cecilia Muñoz told NPR in May 2018. ‘This is a new decision, a policy decision put in place by the attorney general,’ which Muñoz said ‘puts us in league with the most brutal regimes in the world’s history.’
It was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions who instituted the ‘zero tolerance’ policy at the Southern border in April 2018, which resulted in children being separated from their parents who were taken into custody for criminal prosecution.”
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress
I sat at dinner and lamented how I had seen a collection of mind-boggling leaders in my day. Maybe I have been one at times, myself. I was tempted to despair, especially since I know so many young people in the grip of the insanity (and I paid a lot more taxes on less income due to Paul Ryan’s tax give way “reform”).
But then I looked over at my dear wife, noticed the good food on my table in my nice house, recalled the wonderful note Howard put on our Coordinating Group’s check-in this morning, remembered how lovely it was to be with Rachel earlier in the day, admired the courage of one of my clients, enjoyed the unexpected public love from one of my friends – the wonders piled up as I gave thanks for Gwen’s signature brussel sprouts.
I can say with confidence:
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
Be at rest. God is with us, and with the world through us. Miracles are happening every day.
The Seminarian’s Cohort held an interesting exploration last month on a perennial subject in the church: “outsiders” and “insiders.” Sometimes the boundaries of the church are too thick and our area too constricted. Sometimes the the boundaries are too porous and undefined. So the subject of who’s inside and who is not is always interesting to those who want to be in and are bumping into the barriers to entry they perceive. And it is always interesting to people who are in and feeling threatened by newness or the loss of what they hold dear. The subject was also interesting to the Bible writers who were also forming community around the revelation of God — an enterprise that always implies that some people are moving in a common direction with God and others are not.
Here is a paraphrase of a key section of 2 Corinthians which has been used by defenders of holiness to explain their sense of the church being a new Israel on the way to the promised land and needing to be pure from outside influences. It tells us that insiders should be separate from outsiders and entry into the church means a deep commitment to becoming and staying separate.
The big temptation for God’s people has always been idol worship, being deceived, and thinking dark is light and lawlessness is righteousness. In Jesus, God has fulfilled an ancient promise to walk among His people, once in Jesus and now in His Spirit. We are the temple of God. That makes us innately holy and we dare not forget that. We need to separate ourselves from unholiness. Our goal should be to perfect holiness out of reverence for God. — 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1
Here is a paraphrase of a key section just before the previous one in 2 Corinthians which has been used by people who think the Body of Christ is intrinsically porous and has, as its main cause, including people from all the nations. It tells us that insiders remain on the earth for outsiders, persistently invade their territory, and urge them to enter into faith.
The love of Christ urges us on beyond our boundaries. We have a resurrection viewpoint we did not have before. So we see everyone as a new creation to be realized in the love of Christ. This is the basis of our new life: in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. — 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
The call to insiders and outsiders to accept one another
The dividing lines in the church (and in our culture, by and large) follow the contrasting principles derived from these verses. On the one hand there are ethics based on taboo, shame, security, tribe and tradition. See this article of the religion of Trumpism from last week. On the other hand, the dominant ethic is “do no harm,” based on freedom, democracy, individualism, self-reliance, and progress.
Paul, while solidly one end of the spectrum, personally, worked throughout his whole ministry to keep insider-oriented people and outward-focused people in the love of Christ. In Romans 14 and many other places, we see him trying to knit the two perspectives together. Here is another paraphrase:
Accept those whose faith depends on strong boundaries, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. When it comes to eating meat sacrificed to idols, some believe in eating anything, others won’t eat idol-tainted meat or any meat. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has accepted them. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Those who find it hard to stand will be made strong in the age to come. And those who think they stand tall may find that their certainty was misplaced when they meet the judge. — Romans 14:1-12
My Christianity was inspired by radicals who were committed to fleeing the death of the world’s ways and perfecting holiness, namely Francis of Assisi and John Wesley (as well as all those people in the Jesus Movement). Unlike other monks and missionaries. my mentors were interested in getting their holiness into the lives of others, not cloistering it away for themselves. Very early on, I felt an aversion to “reactive separatists.” Gwen and I summed up what we thought the Bible meant with the term “invasive separatism.” Our term is simple. It means we know who we are and we intend to live in a community that understands what God has made them. It also means from that place we shine whatever life we have and give whatever gifts we’ve been given.
When I first watched the TV series A.D. Kingdom and Empire I was excited to see the writers displaying great understanding about the subject of insiders and outsiders. As the series shows, the Jews who became Christians had spent a lifetime perfecting holiness. Then the Holy Spirit demanded all sorts of change and acceptance. The way the script portrays the Apostle Paul is especially good at showing this perennial challenge. The fanatical Jew becomes a fanatical Jesus follower. The more conservative and communal original disciples have to decide whether they can accept their former persecutor into the fold on the basis of his unusual experience with Jesus. Even more, Gentiles and Roman persecutors receive the Holy Spirit and receiving them an insiders seems taboo enough to make a person queasy. In the following clip, the ultimate symbol of an outsider, the Roman centurion Cornelius, is sent as a messenger to Peter who is compelled to accept him.
That’s us on TV!
Circle of Hope, although certainly turned toward “outsiders” has a lot of dialogue like those shown in the TV series. Social action people protect our morality against the powers that be and fight people who won’t do justice as they see it. Circle of Hope purists are suspicious of and resistant to change or just blithely set in their ways. Immigrants who are banging on the walls of the nation do not always find a place in the church, easily. The oldest rituals are maintained, like Sunday meetings at 5 and 7; just last week the pastors had to argue that other meetings are also “public meetings.” Radical Christians sometimes shake the dust off their feet because they are tired of our uninspired compromises.
The Cohort soon realized that we had a subject that was much larger than we anticipated. Most of the time we don’t have much consciousness about people who are not “us” even if we just made the most recent rendition of “us” last week! When we got to thinking together, we had some important revelations to collect. Here is a sampling:
The call to the church to be separate is central to inclusivity. If there is no substance, just diffusion, there is no “in” in inclusion. If we pay attention to being inclusive too much we can undo what we are actually talking about. We want to welcome people into our life together with Jesus. If we protect people from the pain of change, thinking that is kinder than helping them over the boundary, we can leave them alone, “free” to be unconnected.
True alternativity requires self-awareness about the inevitable exclusion someone will feel. Unlike the present philosophy running the world, we do not believe that individual identity is a starting point. Inclusion is not granting the justice of everyone’s personal godhood or even assuming the personhood they bring to body will find a place to rest. They’ll certainly find love and acceptance, but a relationship with Jesus and his people is all about transformation.
People need to choose. We can make that easier. There is a call from God to every person in our not belonging. That means when we realize we are out, that painful experience calls us into something else. We have to choose to be in. The question is, “Can you accept belonging?”
People are filled with shame and naturally feel issues about how to attach and how they are not accepted or acceptable. There is really no way to avoid excluding someone, since they have already been excluded, at some level, long before they get to the church. Our strong desire to not be responsible for excluding anyone or making them feel bad can be self-serving and unhelpful.
We may need to reteach our long-held assumptions stemming from the process of reconciliation outlined in Matthew 18. The process of inclusion includes carefrontation. So much of what people fear is confrontation. Our world daily reinforces how depressing constant confrontation can be. Our resistance to adding to confrontation unwittingly leaves people out, since we won’t deal with their experience of being unreconciled because it might confront them and hurt them.
We noted that our document about atonement explanations is a characteristic, generous way we do theology that allows the several ways the Bible describes the work of Jesus to be OK. We encourage people to develop, and to assume the fluid nature of their faith. Some people may need a careful, boundaried period (like people in recovery, or people who have experienced trauma). Others may relish the ability to have different elements of themselves dialogue in safety about what are often mutually-exclusive thoughts. This kind of acceptance is reflected in the movement we note from Earth to Wind to Fire to Water along the Way of Jesus.
Fascinating subject, isn’t it? We just scratched the surface. Once again, daring to bring up subjects that are too big for us to handle helped us to trust God and not lean on our own understanding. At the same time, our dialogue demonstrated just how much confidence God has built into us — and we know stuff, too!
Everyone in the church wants to be in a healthy church. And the promise of Jesus is His church will be full of healthy relationships filled with love – the kind of love He showed us on the cross and continues to give us through the Holy Spirit. We all want love.
But the church is filled with you and me, so we have to admit that we are on the way to love; we have not mastered it. We have to work at it. It is easy to look at the church and see places where our love is not all that might be expected from Jesus followers. What’s more, in a church like Circle of Hope, which is committed to embracing whoever wants our attention, we have all sorts of unbelievers, unfinished and downright wicked people who might be part of the mix at any given moment. So we contain lots of people who know very little about the Lord’s love. As a result, relationships in the church are not going to work out right all the time; we’ll have to keep making them. Otherwise, we might look like this church building:
It would be better to look like Matthew 18:
“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. — Matthew 18:15-22
The passage is a little working doc for how to act out forgiveness and maintain reconciliation in the church. I want to highlight one part of it today: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” That teaching is a fundamental antidote to the disappointing lack of love in the church.
When I was at the Watermark Church meeting last Sunday, the speaker told us we should have a 24 hour rule – if you need to work something out with someone, don’t let it go for more than 24 hours and don’t spend those 24 hours talking to a bunch of people about your bad feelings. As the passage says, including others in the process comes after you have failed to work things out person to person, individually. Likewise, if you are hearing some gossip or ill will about someone, you should ask the person who feels hurt if they have talked to whoever has sinned against them or just offended them. Plus, you should remind them that you will not be keeping their gossip or slander secret.
That’s all great in typical situations. But let’s be clear. As one of my readers pointed out, there are people in relationships from which they need to be rescued. Where there is violence or abusive domination, a person cannot be left on their own to take steps they cannot take. This post is not about that sin. I always err on the side of helping such a victim escape before we even consider getting into what this piece is talking about — perpetrators and victims have even lived in my house! Even then, I know there is more discernment to receive about what God is doing and my power versus the perpetrator’s power is not how the world is saved. And, ultimately, the abused and the abuser stand before God, just like me, and any judgment I have about their situation is provisional.
Hope Network | Neuro Rehabilitation | BIAMI Blog Post: Triangulation – What Is It and How Does It Apply to the Role of Caregiver
Triangulation
A 24-hour rule would be very useful to combat what social psychologists call “triangulation” in relationships. There are well-worked theories about this common experience, since it is one of the aspects of the workplace that undermines morale and creates a lack of safety. Triangles are even more dangerous in church, where relationships are often more intimate, or at least people think they should be.
The spiritual and emotional health of a church and its effectiveness in mission is directly dependent on how often triangulation occurs and whether or not it is tolerated by leaders. Triangulation names an experience with which we are all likely acquainted. It occurs when two people don’t speak directly to each other. Jesus tells us to let our “yes” be “yes” – to speak honestly and forthrightly – no subterfuge, no fear. When we are not following Jesus, two people may try to mediate their concerns through a third party. Cell Leaders and pastors are tempted to be that third party all the time. When triangulation is tolerated, it produces gossip, rumors, inefficient practices, factions, misunderstanding and victimization. It creates an unsafe culture and an ineffective process.
It is easy to imagine why Jesus had to teach his disciple crew about how to stay reconciled. The disciples undoubtedly had habits that did not produce open, honest, fearless love relationships, just like the rest of us. They probably experienced stereotypic situations just like Stephen Karpman pictured when he defined his famous “Drama Triangle” in the 1970’s. Karpman’s three roles are easy to spot in an unhealthy triangle:
Victim–Victims blame and fault others (or situations), but not themselves; they don’t typically take responsibility for their own lives. They show up as angry or pathetic, in response to perceived injustice. They send out a vibe that says, “Help me. Rescue me. Need me. Be with me. Love me. Organize me,” to all rescuers within range. They may exaggerate the level of harm they’ve experienced to gain pity or sympathy from a rescuer. The victim’s guilt or blame is the fuel that keeps the drama-triangle cycle spinning like a flywheel.
Stereotyping does not help much, so remember that Matthew 18 is centered in prayer and is about discernment, not objectivity or judgment. A victim may also be the challenger every system needs. And helping someone who feels injured work out their issues is exactly our specialty. That doesn’t mean we let them lead the whole cell or congregation before they have some consciousness about their process.
Persecutor–In order for there to be a victim, there must be a persecutor. The persecutor can be a person, circumstance, event, or thing. Persecutors become the target of the victims’ need to blame something outside themselves for their problems.
Again, this is a label to help define a common situation. There may be actual oppression going on, not just projection of inner turmoil by a “victim.” Conversely, “persecutors” often feel like they are victims of an accuser’s ire or criticism. They are tempted not to listen, as Matthew 18 prescribes, because they feel some injustice and use their privilege or power to silence the victim.
Rescuer–The rescuer thinks of themselves as the hero of the drama-triangle story. Rescuers see it as their role to help the helpless, and feel their motivation is pure. Quite often these people are extremely helpful in difficulty. They are friends. But often they are tempted to swallow the sin happening between people like they are Jesus protecting the church from a grenade. They often don’t view victims as capable, so they act in their stead, often without realizing the full consequences of intervening. Sometimes they rush to protect others’ vulnerabilities because they’re reluctant to face their own.
We are definitely called to rescue the perishing. We are definitely wrapped up in what others are doing in the body of Christ, of which we are all an intrinsic part. There should be no implication that we shouldn’t get involved. It is how we get involved that makes a difference.
How the Drama Triangle Works
Here’s how the system of triangulation starts: a victim approaches a rescuer with information about what a persecutor has done. The rescuer might be their friend, their mate, and in the church it would not be surprising if they looked for a person in power to rescue them, like a cell leader, team leader, or pastor.
If the rescuer is a pastor, their compassion and sense of justice may be stirred. So they may try to use their power to protect the victim. They may take the problem to a meeting. They may have a one-on-one with the persecutor to confront them or try to elicit a confession. They may try to sabotage or exact revenge on the persecutor, who by this time may be getting “tried” by semi-public opinion. A lot of time can be eaten up in this kind of drama.
A rescuer often enjoys the rush of being important in the middle of it all. They feel like they are building community and healing sinners. That might be true. But it may also be true that their need to be useful, or valued is what they are really all about. They may relish the power or precedence that rescuing affords them. They may just enjoy hearing and even spreading rumors or being in on secrets. Or they may like presiding as a judges effecting justice while appearing holy and above the fray.
Is it any surprise that triangulation can bring organizations and their productivity to a standstill?
3 Ways for Leaders to Reduce Triangulation
Make Matthew 18 the way the church functions. The leaders need to make it plain that we follow Jesus, not the difficult and often unconscious ways we relate. Violators will not be prosecuted, unless they are committed to sin. But they will hear a lot about Matthew 18!
Help victims participate in reconciliation. Whenever a victim approaches you, start by asking if they have already spoken to the persecutor. If not, instruct the victim to do so and report back on the conversation. Reporting back is important because otherwise the conversation between victim and perpetrator likely won’t happen. If the victim persists in trying to get you involved, and they might be persistent or even manipulative, here is what you might say:
I value our relationship and the one I have with who you are talking about. I do not think it is right for me to be in the middle, so please stop now.
What you’re sharing with me has little or nothing to do with me, and I feel uncomfortable. Please take this where it belongs.
This type of conversation is unproductive, and I would like you to take the Matthew 18 way to handle it.
Offer to facilitate some mediation. If the victim feels uncomfortable having the conversation directly with the persecutor, you could, on rare occasions, offer to sit in on the meeting to help support better communication in the future. When you attend this meeting, be sure to act as a facilitator, not a rescuer. If you pass judgment or take sides, the other two parties won’t be as inclined to own and resolve their issues. The drama triangle will continue or a new one will emerge.
4 suggestions for “step two”
People do not know how to reconcile and live in peace, that is evident. So it should not surprise us if we get involved in the second step of the Lord’s process. A “rescuer” is often one of the “first responders” when there are relational problems in the church. So they may be called in to make the process work. There are many things to learn about making and keeping peace, so I would never presume to sum it up in a blog post! But here are a few things that might help a conversation about conflict end up in community.
Name the conflict. If you’re facilitating a meeting between members of a drama triangle, ask each party to name the conflict. You could even write it down so they can both face it rather than just face each other. This might create enough detachment to get away from personal criticism. However, this is a mature way to talk and some people might be incapable of it. Be patient but frank.
Help the parties listen with curiosity. It is hard to be curious and angry at the same time. Help the victim first, then the persecutor develop an interpretation of the presenting event from the others’ perspective. What were they thinking? What did they feel? What would you have done in the same circumstance? The victim’s and persecutor’s curiosity might defuse their anger long enough to see the conflict from another perspective. They can then direct their curiosity toward how to resolve the conflict.
Ask for a commitment. Victims and persecutors get some sense of power from criticism, even though that criticism can cause cancer in the body of Christ. There is a positive way to see it, however. Criticism could be seen as a commitment put in negative terms. Rather than “You are a liar” try “I value the truth.” Some people say that if we want to know what we really care about, check out what we criticize and convert it to a commitment. When we are listening to someone else rant, tell them to what value it sounds like they are committed. That might reduce the toxins in the atmosphere.
Insist on requests. If an injured party can’t own what they think and feel and ask for what they want, anything they say probably makes the relationship worse.
Staying out is better than getting out of the Triangle
It will always be tempting to play the part of victim, persecutor, and rescuer in the next relationship drama. We may get triangled at times. We’ll live. Jesus has provided a way out and he will be with us all along the way. The Lord is deeply invested in his love casting out fear and creating the alternative community for which he gave his life and in which he lives.
Leaders, in particular need to help everyone stay out of triangles by encouraging direct address and refusing to play any of these roles, as tempting as they may be. Any of us may be asked to play the role of rescuer every day! It may feed our frayed egos to say yes. But every day we remember not to play we help save the church from the divisiveness that ruins the wonderful heart of love everyone wants and needs. Reducing triangulation leads to an increase in accountability and an increase in the healthy responsibility people need to develop for their own behavior, thoughts and feelings as well as their responsibility to nurture the love in Jesus in the church.
Thanks to CO2 for the business angle and general outline for this post.
At the CAPS International Conference, Marcus Rodriguez treated our workshop to an entertaining, enlightening and encouraging gallop through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, focusing on “radical acceptance” – one of the many skills DBT uses. This therapy is under the cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) umbrella. It was originally created to help with borderline personality disorder. Now it is used to help with a variety of other conditions. It is a very organized way to teach people to change when their behavior is damaging relationships and even threatening to destroy them.
DBT teaches clients four sets of behavioral skills under the headings: mindfulness; distress tolerance; interpersonal effectiveness; and emotion regulation. But, whether we are ill or not, as Marcus demonstrated, we can all benefit from adapting and incorporating the skills into our lives.
Christians use DBT, Buddhist-leaning or not
For some people, applying DBT skills might seem sketchy, since many of the skills are straight from the Buddhist playbook. You might know that I’ve suggested elsewhere how Christians can be friends with Buddhists. But appreciating the strengths of Buddhist or DBT philosophy doesn’t mean we overlook the core elements that could undermine our faith in the name of reducing our suffering. There isn’t much in any psychotherapy models which a Jesus follower wouldn’t need to adapt.
DBT represents some of the real differences between Jesus and Buddha. The Buddha said, “Look not to me, look to my dharma (doctrine).” The Christ said, “Follow me.” The Buddha said, “Be lamps unto yourselves.” The Christ said, “I am the light of the world.” Yet contrary to the original intentions of both, some later Buddhists (the Pure Land sect) divinized Buddha. And some later Christians (Arians and Modernists) de-divinized Christ.
Peter Kreeft sums up the differences nicely. He says,
On this crucial issue—the diagnosis of the human problem—Christianity and Buddhism seem about as far apart as possible. For where Buddha finds our desires too strong, Christ finds them too weak. He wants us to love more, not less: to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength. Buddha “solves” the problem of pain by practicing spiritual euthanasia: curing the disease of egotism and the suffering it brings by killing the patient, the ego, self, soul or I-image of God in humanity.
No Christians using DBT think they are doing this, I suspect. But the modality comes from that playbook.
It is easy to say that many Christians are better Buddhists than they are Jesus followers, since they practice law-keeping designed to squash their desires before they result in sin, often at the cost of their soul. They kill their souls in order to not face the shame of needing new life. It would be better if they followed the Buddha’s example and sat under a tree until they were enlightened – that is, enlightened in the way Paul hopes: that
“the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:17-18).
In that same hope, I offer three DBT skills that everyone could practice that will increase our capacity to gain a spirit of wisdom instead of rolling around in our unquestioned behaviors that lead to sin and ruptured relationships.
Mindfulness
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. – Philippians 4:8
“Mindfulness” has a lot of definitions. For Marcus, it begins with stepping back from your normal thinking pattern and noting how you are enacting the pattern. That’s also known as mentalizing. Other teachers say mindfulness means living one’s life more in the present moment, instead of allowing oneself to be hijacked by the past and the future.
Marcus instructed us to bring to mind a situation about which we felt deeply, but which was not changing and not likely to change because of something we could do to change it. We closed our eyes, or stared at a focal point, breathed in and then breathed out the sentence we had constructed to describe the situation. We were told to simply note the fact when our minds wandered, thank ourselves for noticing, and return to our practice.
Our teacher was helping us to get a feel for how we could step back and look at automatic behaviors we need to change using this crucial DBT skill. For instance, if you’re entangled in your thoughts, you might think/feel: “Susan is really nice. She’s such a great person. I wish I were more like her. I should ask her if she wants to go for coffee sometime. I’d like to get to know her better.” Being mindful, you get some space to reduce the extraneous thoughts and observe, “There’s a thought that Susan is such a nice person.”
We would all like to pause, check in, identify our emotions and consciously make healthy decisions. Try it. It might surprise you just how little you are thinking and feeling about what you are actually thinking and feeling. This mindfulness is a lot like what Paul is suggesting to the Philippians, isn’t it?
Reality Acceptance
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. – Romans 15:5-7
This skill focuses on accepting our daily experiences and working to accept the more painful events that have happened. Marcus had many colorful examples about how fighting reality only heightens our suffering, like, “Beating up your pillow all night does nothing but make the bed sweaty.” He had a ready excuse to practice this skill during our workshop, since he needed a projector and was not provided one. That reality frustrated and embarrassed him. He said, “Instead of telling myself, ‘My life sucks’ I have to remind myself ‘It is what it is. I will get through it. Breathe.’”
This spirit of acceptance is what Paul recommends to the Romans as they face the divisions in their church. But it also applies to accepting the divisions we feel in ourselves. DBT requires a hard won discipline of living in whatever is materially real in the moment, free from desires and guilt. For Jesus followers, a grateful acceptance of being accepted by Jesus is required, but the results are similar, I think. Our faith is constantly accepting God is with us in Jesus, and accepting that controlling our desire to control cannot really save us. Faith is cooperating with the One who can save us!
Nonjudgmental Stance
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God. – 1 Corinthians 4:3-5
Marcus was concerned that we learn the difference between a judgment and a fact. Negative judgments tend to boost our emotional pain. So when we’re angry, irritated or frustrated, we should pay attention to what judgment we are making or we will just make things worse. “I hate Philadelphia because it rains so much” is different from “I had hoped it would not rain today.” “My partner is an idiot,” is different from: “I worked another long day and when I got home my partner asked, ‘What are you making for dinner?’ I am angry about this and disappointed he’s not making an effort to help.”
Being less judgmental doesn’t eliminate our pain, but it might take it from an 8 to a 5. If we practice the “radical acceptance” Marcus was teaching us, we might move the needle from 5 to 3. Radical acceptance does not mean agreeing with what happened, or approving, excusing, absolving, allowing, resigning, or wallowing in suffering. Radical acceptance simply means we acknowledge the facts of our lives without judgment — we often fight reality instead. That fighting only intensifies our emotional reaction. We might fight reality by judging a situation, saying “It should or shouldn’t be this way,” or “That’s not fair!” or “Why me?!” Fighting reality only creates suffering. DBT people say, “Pain is inevitable in life; suffering is optional.”
The idea we can choose our way out of suffering is where we see how much Buddhism impacts DBT. It leans toward shutting down the desires and leading us to find a place of nothingness where “should” or “want” is irrelevant. For disordered people, this ability is priceless — and most of us could use a dose.
But we do not need to adopt the core premise of Buddhism to make use of skills that help us pay attention to our reactions so we can manage to make the choices we prefer. I think all the Bible verses I quoted are teaching variations on that theme, among other things. We have to learn new skills to be new people in Christ. The big difference, as Kreeft pointed out, is always about how we see where we started and where God is in the process. Then we can commit to an understanding of both our joy and suffering. Do they only have the meaning I assign them in the moment? Do they have no meaning at all? Or are they doorways to eternity?
The Youth Climate Strike happened last Thursday. Many Philly high school students walked out of class to make a point. I was with them at noon at the new Love Park. Others came later, after school, to be part of a global day of action coordinated by teens to get adults to combat climate change. Here are Politico’s pictures from around the world.
The movement was sparked by 16-year- old Greta Thunberg from Sweden, whose nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize (!) was recently leaked. @GretaThunberg tweeted “Tomorrow we school strike for the climate in 1769 places in 112 countries around the world. And counting.” Here is her Wikipedia page — rest assured, my friend, you still exist if you do not have one yet.
The high school people made it work
Sabirah Mahmud is a lead organizer for Philadelphia Youth Climate Strike. She experienced the effects of climate change first hand when she visited the relatives in Bangladesh and got caught in a flood.
We had our own Gretas and a few Garths leading Philly’s strike. Sixteen-year-old Sabirah Mahmud was the lead organizer of the local demonstration. She’s a sophomore at Academy at Palumbo High school (along with Zach Sensenig).
Mahmud says she wants to go to medical school and travel the world, but last October’s United Nations report on climate change makes her wonder if she’ll ever get the chance. Catastrophic floods and fires could become commonplace in 12 years, among other terrible things, according to the report — that was the mantra at the protest: TWELVE YEARS! The teens can’t wait and the planet can’t wait until today’s students are old enough to vote, let alone run for Congress. The world needs to take dramatic steps to reduce greenhouse-gas pollution by 2030 NOW!
It is commonly thought by 2040, the amount of energy required to power the world will likely be around 50 percent higher than it was in 2012. Coal demand is expected to grow 0.6 percent every year between now and then. Last year was especially bad for carbon pollution: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere climbed above 400 parts per million (for the first time in millions of years). Meanwhile, the Living Planet Index projected that the Earth could lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020. No serious activist thinks the Paris climate accords, feted by governments, are enough — and that was before Trump pulled out of them (according to Foreign Policy).
The speakers said they’d heard from older people in power that radical plans like the Green New Deal would wreck the economy. (Here Vox explains the GND). The younger people countered, often fairly hysterically, “If you’re not planning for a future with climate change, what future are you even planning for?” As we were meeting, they got everyone to text government officials to demand their action and support for radical change. They also called on the City to turn down plans to expand a Philadelphia Gas Works plant in South Philadelphia to produce liquified natural gas.
In Wellington New Zealand, one student’s handmade sign read, “Climate change is worse than Voldemort.” In Sydney, Australia, a banner read, “The oceans are rising, so are we.” (according to Euronews).
More and more people are being mobilized.
During our go around at the Good Business Oversight Team meeting last Thursday morning, Greg said his favorite compassion team was the Watershed Discipleship Team, who have a rather large vision they are whittling down to some actionable goals for saving our ecosystem.
They are not alone. The Sunrise Movement was represented at our protest. They are the same people who orchestrated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ appearance during their occupation of Nancy Pelosi’s office. I must say, as a person who has always loved high school students, I am thrilled to be led by them in this effort. This is one old person they are not up against.
But they are certainly up against some OLD people! The Sunrise Movement also filmed their meeting with Dianne Feinstein, 85, who has been a Senator since I was 38 (she is worth about $94 million dollars BTW). Her dismissive response to young, but assertive, Magdalena went viral and hundreds of thousands of people have watched it. She responded to the passion of her visitors by debating the specifics of the resolution they were pushing and showing contempt for their audacity in thinking they had something to offer her wizened self. Twenty-nine-year-old, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal resolution met with the same reception from old people in the House, only it was from Steny Hoyer (79) and Nancy Pelosi (78).
These officials are just too old to be leading during this perilous time and they just won’t stop — Trump (72) may face off with Biden (76) or Sanders (77)! The kids are afraid these old people are going to move as slow as old people do, doing what they’ve always done, fighting their old battles while Philadelphia neighborhoods are flooded and poor people keep getting asthma from unchecked pollution. In the coming 2020 elections 21 of 33 Senators up for a vote will be 65 or older. Euronews quoted a 15-year-old who was striking saying, “If we don’t do something, it’ll be our lives affected, not the 60-year-old politicians! We need action.”
XR Philly with their easily- understood message.
Some people are springing into action. I ran into Daoud Steele, who has been part of South Broad meetings in the past. He wondered if we might rent space at 1125 S. Broad for meetings of Extinction Rebellion (XR). Last November that group came to prominence when it organized the largest civil disobedience protest seen in the UK for decades, which culminated in the occupation and closure of five bridges in central London. Since then it has grown rapidly and XR branches have sprung up in more than 35 countries.
Deep Green Resistance [DGR] is an even more aggressive organization. It is largely based on the book of the same name by Lierre Keith, Aric McBay, and Derrick Jensen (2011). Their principles start where the environmental movement leaves off, claiming that industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology can’t fix it, and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it. To save this planet, we need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy.
I doubt the Lord was that thrilled with all the anger, threats and lust for power shouted into the mic. Conversely, I suspect he was sad over how many teenagers could come to an event dedicated to saving their lives and stand in little groups chatting and ignoring the whole thing. But he has never let normal human reactions keep him down or make him hopeless.
I think Jesus was happy to see young people doing what young people should do. He was pretty young, himself, when he was instructing his elders in Judaism, undermining the authority of the temple, and turning the other cheek to Rome — which has confounded the powerful and heartened the meek ever since.
I think he was delighted to have people in the United States waking up and doing something. The U.S. is the second largest CO2 polluter in the World, and the first per capita. Daoud and I wondered if the country were entering a cancer-like process in which we were now accepting we had the disease and could have a public grief process and maybe be healed. Meanwhile, the president tweeted on January 28
“In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? [sic] Please come back fast, we need you!” (Here is the Daily Show response).
So there are obstacles. One sign said, “You can’t comb over climate change.” Yet people in power are certainly trying to do so — as in Andrew Wheeler of the EPA. But hope matters. That’s why we stick together as a Circle of Hope.
That brings up the final thing Jesus probably liked about the climate strike: the kids circled up. They threw off being autonomous, DIY, self-reliant/lonely people in front of their screens, got out into the air on a great, spring-like day, and tried to love each other, love the planet and have a common purpose. They had a lot of the trappings of the church! They just needed a Savior who wasn’t their cause or themselves. But that will come.
I was wandering back from Center City this afternoon and walked into the surprising green horde descending on various bars and frats from the colleges in University City for St. Patrick’s Day Eve. One young woman shouted drunkenly into her phone as I passed, “Why did you call at 4? Everything started at noon!” As I told my Instagram crew, I began to feel a bit naïve when I saw a sign on the door near 30th St. that said this bar was a stop for the “Erin Express.” Then I got to Drexel and saw the bus! (below) That was right after I began noticing what the green T-shirts said. One young woman’s was “Let’s get fucked up!” One young man’s was “Shake your shamrocks.”
So I had to put at least a tiny antidote into the sea of Irish nationalism and Patrick desecration in my neighborhood. I offer you a version of a message I delivered after my wonderful pilgrimage to Ireland and beyond over ten years ago now. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Light a fire!
Patrick on the Hill of Tara
When we were in Dublin that summer, we took a very interesting history walk, lead by a young college woman studying history at the famous Trinity College. We learned, among other things that “Dub-lin” means “black-pool” in some Viking language, the Vikings being among the many people who have oppressed the Irish, not to diminish the oppression of the British, which our guide made sure we heard about. Being oppressed was the story the guide had to tell over and over, and she seemed to have sort of a chip on her shoulder about it.
She also seemed to have a special interest in educating the Americans in her group, since there are more Irish people in the U.S. than in Ireland, but nobody seems to know anything about them. Elementary school children are filled with nonsense about the Irish: they find leprechauns, they chase pots of gold, they find three-leaf clovers, they are superstitious, they dance jigs and they tell tall tales (well, that last one is probably true). The advanced kids know that they often march in parades around March 17, which is St. Patrick’s Day. That’s the day you have to wear green or you might get pinched. The first St. Patrick’s Day parades weren’t in Ireland, they were in the U.S. to demonstrate Irish political power. The first one in Philly was in 1771.
My guide did not take kindly to the fact that Irish people are more known for drinking Guinness and eating Lucky Charms cereal than for James Joyce or even the real St. Patrick. She sneered at Americans, well known for living off the candy of sound bites and sixty second ads rather than chewing on the complexity of a long narrative.
So that means my subject might be a little challenging if you are an American. It is a long narrative. It is much easier to pile into Fado or Plough and the Stars and have a drinking party on St. Patrick’s Day than to understand the 4th century believer called Patrick. More fundamental to my purpose, it is easier to have a thin veneer of Christianity, a little fragrance of faith — a spritz, than to follow Jesus like Patrick.
What I have to say concerns the story of Jesus getting to the Irish people and changing the course of their history. It is a great story. But the reason I want to tell parts of it is that it has a lot to say about how the history of each of us and how our present day can and should change, as well.
Like my Dublin guide seemed disappointed in her patrons, I think quite a few of us feel a little disappointed when we give people a tour of our faith. We think people have the wrong impression of us Christians, like my guide thought people misunderstood the Irish. We feel kind of oppressed by how people think and how they don’t care to understand us or Jesus. If you sometimes feel like you are surrounded by resistant oppressors, then Patrick’s story may give you some encouragement and instruction. He kind of came from nowhere, was something of a nobody, but he faced up to the powers of his day and he made a big difference.
Patrick is the slave who came back to convert his masters
One of the most phenomenal things about Patrick that most elementary school students are not taught is that he was a slave who came back to convert his masters.
Patrick was born on the west coast of what is now Scotland or Wales. He was probably the son of an old Roman-connected aristocratic family who were nominally Christian. When he was about sixteen, he was captured and carried off as a slave to serve one of the many kings controlling sections of Ireland, probably in the north around what is now County Mayo. Patrick worked as a herdsman for six years.
Fortunately, we have a couple of things Patrick wrote; and he writes that his faith grew in captivity. He began to pray the prayers he had learned as a child many times a day. One day he had a vision and heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home. Later on he heard that his ship was ready. Fleeing his master, he travelled to a port, two hundred miles away, where he found a ship. The ship apparently went to France, first, where Patrick studied to be a pastor. After various adventures, he returned home to his family, now in his early twenties.
Patrick recounts that he had another vision many years after returning home:
“I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: “The Voice of the Irish.” As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea—and they cried out, as with one voice: “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.”
He decided to go back to Ireland and give his life to bring Jesus to his former masters. This is an important thing to note: the revelation of Jesus comes with Patrick from out of nowhere; it comes from the slaves. This might encourage people like us who sometimes feel like the opposition to Jesus is strong and our message has no power. I think Patrick should be especially encouraging to people who work in the cubicles, and feel enslaved to the bosses. Your hiddenness is OK. If there is any fire where the powers that be don’t expect it to be, it will be noticed, eventually.
By the time Patrick died, thousands of people had been baptized and Ireland was on its way to being a predominantly Christian place. Even today it is among the most faith-driven places in Europe, which has, by-and-large, gone post-Christian.
Patrick-like people can’t stay hidden under a sea of Guinness
We have to appreciate the hiddenness of the truth about Jesus. Jesus himself only expected people to hear who had ears to hear. He did not work hard to get world fame or more hits on his website. God came as a baby to a poor family. John says that Jesus was not even recognized by his own countrymen who were looking for the Messiah! Patrick went back to Ireland with this same sense of humility. He seemed to think, “The message is hidden in the creation and I will reveal it. But at the same time, I am also a creature, so it may be hidden in me.” Paul writes about it this way:
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”—
but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
Patrick had spent his formative years out on a hill in Ireland. When he walked back in to the village to tell people about Jesus, he didn’t come in a motorcade. He probably had leaves in his hair from sleeping out in the woods and may have looked like some kind of Ent. Like other Celts, he had a strong sense of God’s presence in creation — he met God there and relied on God there. The Druid religion had an ancient history, drawing on the study that built Stonehenge and manipulated spirits. Rather than bringing something no one had ever considered before, Patrick brought a definition that people needed for what God is doing in the world. The wisdom was hidden and he was telling people where it is.
In our era, like in Paul’s and Patrick’s, the rulers of the age are seeking truth in striking ways – in particle colliders and in market regulation. But, like in Paul’s and Patrick’s age, they continue to crucify the Lord of glory. It is given to us to tell the story of Jesus and demonstrate his presence with us.
Patrick-like people build a fire
Gwen and I were on our pilgrimage and following a path that would take us to the holy sites associated with some of the notable figures of Celtic Christianity. The first big stop was the Hill of Tara. Just to be honest, this was our first big day of traveling around in a car, keeping to the LEFT, and my driving about put Gwen over the edge. By the time we got back to Dublin and were eating Indian food, I thought she might take the skewer from her kabob and kill me. But it is all part of the journey.
I’d always wanted to stand on Tara and look across to Slane. Both Tara and Slane were central sites of the Druid cult. A year after Patrick arrived, the high king, King Laoghaire (leheera), was holding the annual assembly on Tara. Patrick wanted to convert the king, at best, but at least he wanted permission to travel and to do his missionary work among the kingdoms. He wasn’t getting a hearing so he decided to participate in the assembly. The king’s magicians had warned King Laoghaire that he needed to do something about Patrick or his message would overturn the established order. They were right. The king didn’t do anything and the order began to be overturned on Easter in the year 433.
Once a year all the nobility and shamans came to Tara to light the fire. The idea was that everyone else was supposed to douse their home fire and it would be relit from this one, central fire. It so happened that this ritual coincided with the Easter that year. On Holy Saturday, Patrick lit his own fire on Slane, across the valley from Tara but in plain site. The point was clear. The true light that enlightens everyone had come into the world of Erin.
King Laoghire was incensed. He sent some men to bring him Patrick dead or alive. Patrick was already headed toward the king. When the king’s men got to the spot where Patrick was, however, all they saw were a few deer. Or, as Paul might say, their unbelief had blinded them. The story goes on to tell of a miracle-working power encounter between Patrick and the court magicians which eventually got Patrick permission to work out his mission.
It is a great story and a great deal of it is probably even factual. But the truth of the story is a little deeper than the facts, which is true of the Bible and true of the whole story of the spread of faith in Jesus. Patrick’s audacity did not just come from his courage. It came from a sense that it is inevitable that Jesus will be seen. He is hidden, not absent. The fire on Slane just made the obvious more obvious.
Likewise, the story of Patrick and his band being disguised from their killers as deer, is another example of being hidden. You might not see them, or they might even be hidden from you, but that does not mean you won’t be meeting up with their faith in your own backyard. The Celtic church Patrick founded believed that creation bore the imprint of God so deeply that all you had to do was scratch the surface and you would find Jesus. Like God came to earth in Jesus, the earth reached out to welcome him; creation and the Creator were made for each other. So taking back Tara for Jesus was less a shift in political power and more an unleashing of nature to retake what had been corrupted.
Patrick’s Jesus is still hidden today
On the hill of Tara today is a relatively recent church building. The building is no longer used as a church, since the whole site has become a secularized national park. There is a statue of Patrick, of course, but there is also something else going on that surprised us.
Gwen and I decided to pay two euros from my sabbatical grant (God bless the Lily Foundation!) to take in the program in the church. It is our habit to go into church buildings and soak in the quiet and pray, whenever we come across an open one. So we went into this little building and had the place mostly to ourselves. We were there near the end of the day, since we got lost getting there, of course. A busload of Japanese tourists had just left. So we were soaking up some quiet in a very beautiful interior when the guide came in to say the presentation was about to begin.
We had the strangest experience! We had not noticed that they had installed blackout shutters to roll down over the stained glass. They flipped a switch and the room came to life, mechanically, until we had been plunged into the dark. A video presentation began about the ancient burial and ritual mound of Tara. The church had been de-churched, the hill had been un-Patricked and the government was sponsoring a recovery of Gaelic history by speculating on how the mysterious burial mound had been used. There was no mention of Christians at all, even though they had sanctified the mound for 1700 years.
The blinds came down and we Jesus-followers were re-hidden! If you go across the valley to the hill of Slane, where Patrick lit his fire, there is an even bigger tourist site devoted that much larger mound. I felt oppressed. I had just been communing with Jesus, remembering the work of Patrick, when the church was taken over by pagans celebrating human sacrifice and sun worship on the hill of Tara
I kind of felt sorry for Patrick, still on the hill, but surrounded by people replanting ignorance where he had shed light. What’s more, the M3 motorway is about to plow through he Tara valley so when you look at Slane you’ll see a freeway.
I felt sorry for us, too, since we are increasingly surrounded by people committed to putting Jesus in a museum along with all the other belief systems they are sampling. We’re also surrounded by the freeways and global warming of their dominant faith in unbridled economics disconnected from earth and God.
By the end of Lent, maybe we’ll know who Jesus really is
Patrick looks a bit forlorn up there in the painting, doesn’t he? He’s up on his hill praying for Ireland. But at the same time, I think he is looking like he is in touch with earth and sky. He is in a thin place where he is making a connection with God. Alone, vulnerable, hidden, misunderstood, opposed. But at peace and bringing something to his moment.
The Celts had a great appreciation of verses like “the rocks will cry out if you don’t praise God.” They knew that the truth had been hidden in the earth from ages past. Even the Druids with their ghastly rituals on Tara knew something of the wisdom planted in creation. Jesus revealed it in full. Jesus revealed the ignorance and rebellion of humans and the goodness and plan of God. Patrick and others were followers who revealed it as they followed Him. It didn’t matter if they had their own power, God had the power.
Jesus himself, like this scripture shows, came to the hill of Jerusalem like pilgrims had for centuries to celebrate the Passover, now at the end of our Lent. Many people recognized him and honored him. To most he was hidden. He was opposed by the powers that be who put down their shades.
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. — Luke 19:37-42
It is sad how Jesus remains hidden to so many. It is sad how the shades are coming down to hide even what has been known. Jesus weeps over our darkness. But at the same time, faith will keep springing up. Even the stones could reveal the truth about God redeeming us through Jesus! I suspect one may be talking to someone right now on some hill as they look out over their city.
You may seem hidden as a believer where you live. Circle of Hope may seem like a hidden little church. It may seem foolish, going out to do some small act of goodness to reveal Jesus. What you say may seem pitiful. What you bring may seem very weak. Don’t despair and don’t stop. God repeatedly prefers to reveal his glory in the pitiful, hidden things placed in his hands.
“As we move along our pilgrimage through this life, we learn to carry joy in one hand and suffering in the other.” I heard that truth in one of the many enriching events I experienced last week. Then our Daily Prayer entry reinforced it as our pastors got us started on our Lent journey:
The experience of God’s love and the experience of our weakness are correlative [they move together like a team]. These are the two poles that God works with as he gradually frees us from immature ways of relating to him. The experience of our desperate need for God’s healing is the measure in which we experience his infinite mercy. The deeper the experience of God’s mercy, the more compassion we will have for others. – Thomas Keating in Invitation to Love
It is so true! Read the quote again and let it sink in — just like we were doing at the Lent retreat last Saturday.
Home of Father Keating near Snowmass. CO
They make Lent sound so easy
Father Keating’s words seem somewhat obvious, don’t they? — that is until we move from his great teaching and into the next moment of our day! In that next moment someone or something is very likely to jostle our hold on joy in one hand or and kick us into the automatic, suffering-grabbing reactions we’re holding in the other.
If I were on retreat in Snowmass, Colorado (as I intend to be someday!) with a beloved leader like Father Keating and other privileged people who could afford such an experience, the correlative experience of love/joy and weakness/suffering would undoubtedly make as much sense as it does right now as I am writing about it in the quiet of my study. But I must add, when I was driving to the Sunday meeting not long ago, feeling late, I suffered another of the million potholes in Philly right before someone pulled out in front of me. That moment exposed my weak hold on joy and my hyper-awareness of the injustice I suffer.
While Father Keating and other luminaries have been invited into my spiritual home for a long time, their light is easy to dim. They make spiritual disciplines like Lent, seem kind of easy. But they aren’t. So I am writing today to see if I can encourage you to give it all another go, like I am. It would be lovely to always stroll along with a nice awareness of carrying correlative things that God will use to grow us up. But I admit that is not always my immediate post-pothole response. I expect Lent to be just as challenging. It is a call to experience the potholes and cutoffs of life as opportunities to gain resurrection, as invitations to love. Stick with me a bit longer and maybe you’ll feel like that invitation is more likely than it seems.
Psalm 63 makes Lent look a bit harder
Spiritual maturity takes time and effort. It’s the journey of a lifetime. In Psalm 63 [our song] the anxious psalmist says, “My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” As he turns to prayer in his desperate condition he feels joy and love. That’s one hand. But at the end of the psalm he is back to facing the weakness and suffering of being threatened by someone who seeks to destroy him, who he has to fight for his life! That’s the other hand.
No one is seeking my life (except maybe the dismantled EPA); other than that, my prayers are a lot like Psalm 63. For instance, just this past weekend the plumber was at our Pocono home (our personal Snowmass). On the one hand that retreat place brings me endless joy and is often filled with love. On the other hand, the plumber discovered a rock from our symbolic mountain had dislodged a sewer pipe! The foundation of our house is threatened and it will cause unknown suffering to fix it. Can we carry such joy in one hand and suffering in another and trust God to grow us up through the journey?
I think we will make it again, just like I think you will make it through Lent again. That is, unless some crisis breaks your sewer line and you keep pouring crap under the house. A lot of spiritual teachers seem surprisingly unfamiliar with crap. I think that’s because, unlike a lot of us, we’re hearing from them after they’ve already got the pipe fixed. My pipe has to wait for a thaw to be fixed. I hope I am helping you thaw in relation to Lent, so you can get started.
Some days of this Lent WILL be easier
Happy lottery winner.
I think it is easy for all of us to feel weighed down by the suffering we are carrying. When I go into a Sunday meeting, sometimes it looks like we are all kind of hunched over to one side, some of us almost dragging our knuckles on the ground, weighed down by the weaknesses and suffering in that hand. But then something happens that reminds us that we have another hand waiting to be filled.
Things happen like this. Last week NPR reported how Mike Weirsky, who is unemployed and recently divorced, purchased lottery tickets at a QuickChek in Phillipsburg, N.J., right across the Delaware River from Easton, PA. Then he was distracted by his cellphone and left the tickets on the counter. He said, “I put the tickets down, put my money away, did something with my phone and just walked away.”
As the time for the drawing neared, he looked around his house for the tickets for hours. He could not find them! So he went back to the store to see if they had them. To his surprise, he somebody had handed them in the day before. The cashier “made me explain what I bet and what the tickets were, and she handed them to me, and I walked out.”
Then, during the snowstorm Sunday before last, Weirsky got around to checking his numbers — and realized he was holding the winning ticket. He’s going to take a lump sum payout of $162 million, buy a new truck, and then listen to his lawyer. Snowstorm, divorce, unemployment and who-knows-what-else in one hand; in the other hand, winning lottery tickets. I’m not sure his winnings will provide all the joy he desires, but I am still happy for the guy.
I think Lent is also a bit like winning the lottery. On the one hand, Lent accentuates the suffering, of course — the whole season ends with a crucifixion! But in that big other hand, Lent also leads to resurrection! I heard a couple of stories from the retreat last Saturday that were like stories about winning the spirituality lottery. I’m still feeling like I found my lost ticket myself. After some encouragement from Gwen to try imaging prayer, I returned to the interior “spiritual landscape” that was so important for me 30+ years ago, expecting that my ticket to that joy was unrecoverable. But, to my surprise, the Spirit gave me an encouraging little gift that raised my sights away from my dry and weary land and into the stars. That’s a handful I am carrying with me on my Lent journey.
I’m praying you can also feel God with you as move along into your true self: joy in one hand and that pesky-but-redemptive suffering in the other.
Ethan Hawke plays the disintegrating Pastor Ernst Toller of First Reformed.
Like other screenplays Paul Schrader has written (like The Last Temptation of Christ), part of me wishes I had never seen First Reformed. But I also can’t get its questions out of my mind. I think it might be the perfect movie to start off Lent 2019.
That is, it is perfect if you want to make the best use of your snow-covered Pennsylvania landscape for its stark shadows, deep cold, and demanding requirements. That landscape would be a perfect setting for the feelings of this movie, especially when the piles of snow get dirty. First Reformed is a trip to the dark side of one man’s spiritual journey — and your spiritual landscape may have a hint of his journey, as well. There is no music here, just the unnerving hush of the sound design. The camera seems to be looking for ghosts all the time, exploring some metaphysical absence. One reviewer said it reminded them of a poem by Robert Lowell recording an 18th-century preacher’s feeling that “the breath of God had carried out a planned and sensible withdrawal from this land.” Ethan Hawke as Pastor Ernst Toller stares into the same abyss.
The perfect movie for Lent
This film might be perfect for Lent if Lent is about discernment — about listening for God’s call, about waiting for God’s presence, and about an irrational hope for resurrection. Even though the austerity of the film’s vision wore me down, I could not help but worry whether Toller’s disintegration was leading to an ecstatic awakening or abysmal despair. Schrader is better at despair than hope, but he apparently wrested the script out of his hands before he cut us off from hope completely.
The film might be perfect for Lent 2019 because it is so odd to see a film about the church as it is. It is a scathing but also sympathetic and realistic view. We have craggy Ethan Hawke with his bad haircut grappling with doubt, hopelessness and a crushing sense of guilt — an alcoholic punishing himself with self-examination in his empty-but-historic church building. On the other hand we have Cedric the Entertainer playing Joel Jeffers, his plump, well-dressed counterpart — the pastor of a megachurch called Abundant Life Fellowship that owns the First Reformed building and calls it “the gift shop.” He is sunny, unreflective, pragmatic and caring to Toller’s suffering, self-condemning, wild and isolating. Together they are the church. Schrader wants us to learn how to hold joy and despair in each hand.
The film might be perfect for Lent 2019 because the reality that loosens Toller’s grip on the unreality he is trying to maintain is global warming. What would Jesus actually do in the face of something that needs action or faces humanity with death? It is the first-world problem that cannot be solved with a clever advertising campaign or an updated OS. Schrader writes film-school screenplays so discussing what happens in the movie is not the same as a spoiler alert, so I will tell you a bit. Toller is mourning the loss of a child and the end of a marriage. An affair with the Abundant Life choir director has ended awkwardly. His physical health is deteriorating along with his mental state. Then, right when I was tempted to switch to some more amusing Netflix offering, a young woman named Mary is introduced into the story and asks Toller to counsel her husband, Michael, who is an environmental activist recently released from prison in Canada. Mary is “great with child” (of course), and Michael (as in the leader of God’s angelic armies, of course) can’t bear the thought of raising a child in the face of ecological catastrophe. I know many people who are finding or losing faith in the face of a pile-up of tragedy and crisis in their lives like snow drifts from a changing weather pattern.
One of the reasons the film stuck with me (like I can remember what happened, unlike after I enjoyed The Incredibles) is that there are many ways to describe what is happening to Toller after Mary and Michael push their way into his isolated life.
Is he having a midlife crisis? It certainly looks like one, but that seems like too weak a description.
Is he having a psychological breakdown? Some unhinged things definitely happen – like a surreal out-of-body experience in which Mary and Ernst are flown from bright stars down to an overflowing tire dump.
Is it a political awakening? He can’t help but agree with Michael that the country and the church are completely missing the point as they refuse to fight the oil companies and persist in turning faith into a fantasy.
Or is it a religious reckoning? Toller’s merciless journal and his awakened displeasure in being part of a church for which he did not sign up would lead us to think that.
Mr. Schrader doesn’t suggest that these elements are mutually exclusive. Instead, he shows how they are the barbed wire the pastor wraps around himself in the end. What we don’t know is whether the scourging cleanses or just kills.
Cedric Kyles (the Entertainer) as Pastor Jeffers of Abundant Life Fellowship
Schrader’s relentlessly hopeless view of humanity is always hard for me to bear. In some way I don’t want to be talking about his movie at all, lest some poor refugee from the land of fundamentalism or Calvinism might watch it and the film ends up being like barbed wire piercing their already-tender spiritual flesh. Be careful!
But it may be the perfect movie for Lent this year, since the writer, ultimately, is calling us to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith, which has always been a basic use for Lent. It is a call for alternativity to a Church that succeeds at marketing and succeeds at laundering the ill-gotten gains of post-capitalism but which can’t stomach actual spiritual struggle and can’t stand up in the face of climate catastrophe, among other things. It can’t even talk about reality without folding into political camps or dividing up according to the ways of the world. It is so interested in self-preservation it would never go to the cross, lest that adversely impact its market share. And that is just a bit of how the film calls for alternativity, just like Lent.
I did not want to have the dialogue with the movie. It is just too hard. Then I realized I probably did not want to face Lent again, either. It is also rather hard. And part of the hardness of it goes back to the terrifying observation from Robert Lowell that “the breath of God had carried out a planned and sensible withdrawal from this land.” I don’t want to face the reality or even the possibility of that. But that is exactly the kind of observation Lent calls for, isn’t it? So I think I’d better observe it.
If we aspire to alternativity and not merely to Cedric-the-Entertainer-like Christianity designed mainly for people committed to consumerism as their primary faith, then we need to start with the ashes of our empire dreams and personal salvation fantasies. Lent may not do that for you yet because you have never considered Lent seriously. I usually follow a sentence like that with, “And that’s OK if you haven’t considered it,” because I wake up every day with hope in God’s goodness, and you may yet consider it. But it is objectively not OK if you do not consider the loss of everything. Because not considering the death and resurrection of Jesus and not heeding the call to leave death and enter life could kill each of us and kill the whole world, which we might be quickly accomplishing.
People are secretly preoccupied with the topic of shame. Sometimes it is a secret even to themselves until someone confronts them with it! 25 years ago in Christian circles, John Bradshaw wrote Healing the Shame That Binds You and sold over a million copies. [Well-known PBS speech]. Now Brené Brown comes out with Daring Greatly, sells a million copies, and is #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. [Famous TED talk]. One would think we’ve never heard of this topic before! In 25 years, someone will probably discover it again for the first time.
The pastors have been reading The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves by Curt Thompson, whose hand I was pleased to shake after a great presentation a few years ago [A summary video]. Thompson is a psychiatrist interested in the intersection of neurobiology and Christian spiritual formation who has studied how the brain reacts to shame—and why we struggle to move on from it. His favorite verse of the Bible is probably Hebrews 12:2: [We must fix] our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus “disregarded, scorned, thought nothing of the disgrace of” the shame of being stripped naked and killed in the most brutal, public way the powers-that-be could devise. At that moment, God effected the ultimate turnaround in history, and humankind’s future was reopened to its past, in which Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed.” The Trinity performs the ultimate remix when Jesus scorned the scorn of the Cross.
What is shame?
Most of us probably think of shame associated with that embarrassing public event, the humiliation of which lived on — like the time I lost my prized baseball cap down the outhouse and, with tears, pleaded with my Mom to retrieve it. The truth is, most shame takes place inside our heads dozens of times every day, not in the public events we fear. It’s silent, subtle, and characterized by the quiet self-condemning conversation that we’ve learned since we were kids. It even crops up in our dreams. For instance, my final dream of last night had me climbing up a wall of some kind and perilously walking on top of it toward an important destination only to look back after I had made it to notice someone going out a gate. I felt a little embarrassed even in my dream!
Thompson has some fascinating research to describe how shame activates the parts of our brain at the deepest level: the flight or fight system. Stress tells our system to slow down. Shame does that even better, activating circuits in the right hemisphere and temporal lobes, where we perceive emotion. That’s why a simple roll of the eyes can have such a powerful impact on us whether our intimate says anything or not. The smallest communication might shut us right down! Shame dis-integrates us from others. When our connective systems go offline, they are often quite difficult to reboot. [I wrote about this]
We all experience this disintegration. It is probably the experience we fear most deeply: our horrible, deserved aloneness. Evil promotes our temptation to take that feeling to its horrible end, until we are devoured by it. That is why it is so significant that Jesus scorned the shame, was again naked and unashamed in the face of the most contemptuous way he could be treated, and demonstrated how a new creation could begin.
Stations of the Cross at St. Paul’s on the Green Episcopal Church, Norwalk, CT, Tenth Station by Gwyneth Leech
What can we do to allow God to heal our shame?
Ultimately, we must learned to scorn the shame with Jesus. Taking up our cross daily means talking back to the stories shame nurtures in our head about our flawed, despicable selves who are unloveable. For instance, I often encounter people in counseling of one sort or another who deflect a compliment. Sometimes I stop the dialogue and ask, “What just happened?” My friends can often identify a “scorn monitor” in their head who rejected the compliment because it did not correlate with their low opinion of themselves. I often take the place of the rest of humanity by affirming that “we” don’t agree with the scorn monitor and Jesus undoubtedly doesn’t. We have to at least doubt the shame, if we cannot stop it from talking.
The best way to break the power of cancelled sin is by telling our stories, including our shameful ones, in community. The first verse of Hebrews 12 alludes to that “great cloud of witnesses” from chapter 11 that allows us to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Who is this “great cloud?” It is not only the great examples from the transhistorical body, it is the people in my cell and the trusted friends in Christ I develop.
If we name things we can tame things. Shame makes us feel an array of emotions we don’t like to acknowledge, let alone put words to in others’ presence. But when we do, we reduce our anxiety and open up the possibility of feeling love, joy and hope. Real community helps my true self get out of shame prison. I allow others to say, “Pay attention to this. You are the beloved of God.” This is not an easy process. But every story helps convince me that God loves me. Every time I expose my shame and the worst does not happen, I believe salvation is possible a little more.
It is what we do about shame that matters
The real issue is not whether we experience shame or whether we can stop it. We can alleviate our suffering with understanding and new behavior. But we are always going to experience shame, on some level. The question is what will we do in response before it leads us to disintegration?
We need to stay vulnerable. Evil is given no oxygen to breathe where vulnerability has the opportunity to live in a safe, predictable space. That’s why we long for Circle of Hope to be a “safe place to explore and express God’s love.” The cell is a shameless attempt to learn how to share ourselves without fear. I wish each meeting were like a magic pill so people would not flee back to their aloneness. But, over time, the discipline of building community fends off the reactions that deprive us of giving and receiving love. A cell even prepares us to overturn the shame that Jesus scorned on the cross! We often scorn the cells capacity to do that even when someone tells us it just succeeded! The church has a shame monitor too!
Shame’s nature is to divide, separate, isolate, just as evil intends. The healing of shame is not first about healing shame, but about becoming more integrated, more connected, move loving of one another; shame’s healing is the byproduct. In this healing and increased connection, we allow for greater, even more powerful creativity through connecting in community. We need others in order for our shame to be healed and for us to have the chance to move past it—and we can move past it, even if some remnant follows along behind.
The other day I was watching International House Hunters, where I learn a lot about life these days. In the episode, an apparently divorced mom was ready to send her one son off to college. She appeared to be nearing fifty years old. Although she did not have a lot of money to spend, she decided to quit the job she hated and move to Merida, Mexico. She bought a fixer-upper outside of town and started her life over as the only Anglo in her whole village. She said life was too short to wait until one was ready to live it. Hers is a second half of life story.
Also last week, my fiftysomething friend said on Facebook: “I was reunited with some old friends this weekend to celebrate a birthday. I am also thinking about a sweet brave friend in Philly who we lost last week. Life is short. Don’t sweat the small stuff. LIVE.” That represents some second half of life philosophizing.
The second half of life
What is the second half, maybe we could call it our second act? It is a discernible transition in life that people all over the world note. Mid-life has significant characteristics. We sometimes call the entry into that part of life a “mid-life crisis.” Richard Rohr, who wrote a book about it, calls it the time to “fall upward.” The transition into the second half is the time when we face the limits of our capacity, now that we have tested it and probably failed to achieve our idealization of ourselves, and must face the limits of our lifespan, now that our bodies start to tell us we’re definitely not twentysomethings anymore.
The term “second half” implies some kind of dualism: a before and after, this or that, obsolete and improved, foolish and wise. But that’s more of a “first half” way to see things. The second half is more about embracing our inevitable development and not avoiding the suffering that will lead to our wholeness. We had to build the house, so to speak, before we could consider leaving it. We had to learn to drive the car, so to speak, in order to ask Jesus to take the wheel. We could miss the beauty of our second half altogether if we avoid the necessary suffering of entering it. But we will be pushed hard to give in to maturity, regardless.
Signs of the “mid-life crisis”
As a result of this inevitable transition, we either solidify into a withered caricature of the unique self we have been building, or we become more spiritual, more self-giving, more of a leader, and more comfortable with the ambiguities and joys of being our true selves. Dolly Parton is an interesting mix of both possibilities. I saw an interview with her in which she boldly said she was committed to the caricature that is her trademark, be it ever so withered, as you can see, above. She even had surgery to maintain what she could of the persona she created. But she has also developed her spirituality. She’s not just being a country music legend; she is also a champion of early childhood literacy, through her Imagination Library. Every month, that nonprofit program mails a free book to more than a million children — from infants to preschoolers. In 2018 they reached 100 million books donated.
however we navigate it, we are going to grow into a new season of life. The pressures we face at the beginning of that season are so well known, we can make a list of typical feelings or reactions, such as:
Desiring to quit a good job.
Unexplained bouts of depression when doing tasks that used to make one happy.
Changing or investigating religions, churches or philosophy.
Change of habits. Activities which used to bring pleasure now are boring. Unable to complete or concentrate on tasks which used to be easy.
Excessively buying new clothes and taking more time to look good.
Wanting to run away to somewhere new.
A desire or obsession to get into physical shape.
Irritability or unexpected anger.
Leaving family (mentally or physically) or feeling trapped in current family relationships.
Looking into the mirror and no longer recognizing oneself.
Our lives are guaranteed to include bumps and surprises. At some point we will face loss; we will encounter a “stumbling stone” — that we cannot power, finesse, or manage our way through, that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. It is best to meet this time of life with creative suffering. There is going to be some kind of suffering, regardless.
At midlife, our suffering, inside or out, helps us leave “home” — that stationary place where we are most comfortable — and drives us toward the necessary encounter with the self and with God, who loves to walk through our suffering with us. That suffering helps us deconstruct the persona (or the person we wish we were and want others to see), and to acknowledge and welcome our shadow side into the dialogue. As a result, we have the hope of emerging into later adulthood and blossoming into our full, true selves in Christ. In the second half, suffering becomes more of a friend than an enemy, if we are going to plumb the depths of our new capacity. Richard Rohr says, “I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day.” That kind of prayer is taking the example of Jesus seriously:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! – Philippians 2:5-8
There are second half people who show us how to suffer creatively
A great example of moving into the second half, albeit not entirely successfully, is King David. The painting by James Tissot, above, captures the moment of his midlife transition, just before his dissatisfied boredom is distracted by the sight of Bathsheba from his upstairs portico. Tissot, himself, is another interesting example, since, at age 49, he was caught up in the revival of the Catholic church in France, changed the focus of his art, and spent the rest of his life creating the paintings of Biblical events I love so much.
After David unified the land of Israel under his rule, he grew discontent. He had done most of what he set out to do. He’s king. He’s got power and accomplishment, influence and comfort. He feels sure of his identity as God’s chosen king. He sits back. Is that all there is? Here we go.
In the spring he sends off his army under the command of others to complete military campaigns. This tests his faith, since in the past he had lived on the edge as a general and learned to trust God for every breath. He came far trusting God. Now how does he trust God? His “shadow” is lurking in the recesses of his success.
Usually in our forties, we are ready to face a similar struggle, but we may not get to it until we are older (or the children we bore in our late thirties are older), or we have retired, or we get divorced, or we lose our job. Laura Ingalls Wilder quit teaching when she got married and helped her husband on the farm. Their first half was very difficult, including the death of a son, the partial paralysis of her husband, loss of the farm buildings through fire and the great depression. She was well into her second half when her daughter, Rose, encouraged her to write a memoir about her childhood. She spent many years improving it. It wasn’t until she was 65 years old that “Little House in the Big Woods” was published. She wrote other “Little House” series, including the last one that came out when she was 76.
Often the mid-life struggle percolates up because we are bored or burned out – maybe even too accomplished or too settled. We can, like David, lose touch with the very essence of what made our lives fulfilling. We might still be perfecting the outside, like Dolly Parton, unable to give up the rush and power of performing. We might meet the dark side of what made us a brilliant young person, like Columba. We can drift from a present-tense relationship with God and lose touch with what is sacred in our day-to-day routine. It’s time to move into the second half with some consciousness, or maybe fall upward.
When David comes to the shocking revelation of what his reactions mean, he reconnects with God. He reconnects with holiness in the everyday routine of his world. Psalm 51 reveals the restoration of David’s relationship with God. It shows his tenacious hold on his belief that God is present; God is good; God redeems.
Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise. – Psalm 51:15-17
The psalm shows a crucial acceptance of paradox: “I am king and I am powerless to save the baby. I have committed an unforgivable sin yet I can be forgiven. My former life-sustaining pursuits and way of faith were a prelude to this deeper, contradictory, way of life.” Mature adulthood includes anxiety, doubt, and paradox. In the face of all this newness, sometimes shocking and often unwelcome, the second half of life is the time when our creative suffering comes up with our deepest contributions to the Lord’s cause.
Some of us may be “early bloomers” like Martin Luther King, who summed up the challenge of maturity well in his famous “I have a dream” speech. Right before he gave the ringing conclusion about his dream, he said,
“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulation…You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive….Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.”
King was only 34 when he wrote that and he only had a few more years to brilliantly live out his creative suffering. But in those years, he showed Jesus-followers, especially, what it means to pay attention to the promises of wholeness in Christ. Our lives are guaranteed to include bumps and surprises – most likely, we will be on an interesting journey during our “mid-life.” It is best to meet this time of life with creative suffering, so when we leave the home we had to build for ourselves in this world, we will be welcomed into the home Jesus has prepared for us in the next. In Christ, suffering is redemptive. As we can see all around us, immaturity is common and cheap. The costly wholeness of life in Christ, becoming our true selves, is a gift worth whatever creative suffering we endure to receive it.
