Category Archives: Spiritual direction

It is revenge week: Check your marriage and other loves

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Marriage and Family, Spiritual direction, , , , , ,

I have been shocked, at times, by married couples who are committed to revenge. For instance, I discovered part of the engagement ritual for over 50% of millennials includes making a pre-nuptial agreement — for one of my clients, at least, it was to pre-game the inevitable vengeance they expected when they divorced.

Bush vows revenge. Click for video.

I wondered this week if such habitual revenge might be the American way. After all, it is 9/11 week and we paused to remember the thousands of people killed that day — and we’ve begun to remember who-knows-how-many first responders and others who were poisoned by the air they were encouraged to live in. What’s more, we endured the president trying to insert himself into the day as if he did something heroic in 2001– even if he did, no one would believe him at this point.

It is the week we are encouraged to reset our mind on revenge. Pete Hegseth connected the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11 to the present debacle in Iran, while quoting scripture inaccurately, saying the Pentagon is “ever vigilant” to “enemies who hate us.”

“We’re still sending terrorists where they belong—to hell. And tankers to the bottom of the ocean where they belong, and we are ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The economic pressure tightens every day.” – the gospel according to Hegseth

The ex-president, mayors, and billionaires came out to NYC so we could again be persuaded the 8 trillion dollars spent on the first 20 years of the Wars on Terror and the 900,000 people lost amounted to appropriate revenge.

Here in Pennsylvania, insult is added to injury since Senator Fetterman increasingly becomes some kind of Republican because he is convinced Israel’s ongoing genocidal revenge for the October 7, 2023 attack (by the ever-vengeful Hamas) on Israeli citizens is warranted. Maybe he is scared — if some politician questions the right of Israel to use overwhelming force in the cause of justice/revenge, they might be attacked by AIPAC. Although some Hasidic Jews are speaking out against it all.

It is obviously not just Americans who are vicious. I have Britbox now, so I know that one of the most popular shows is another remake of A Woman of Substance. The blatant theme of that story is revenge – what it does to ruin love and why the heroine does not care to be distracted from her purpose in spite of that fact.

Pray as you go

I wish everyone, especially married couples, would listen to the Pray as You Go session we heard as we walked on September 10. “Love your enemies” is what Hegseth should be quoting. If one cannot master the Sermon on the Mount she can skip the rest of the Bible until she does.

I loved the sweet song they offered. I might have altered the chorus to plead with God directly: “Lover of enemies, even the children of your Father, who can’t love their enemies, teach us to love.” Here is the link, if you want to try it out: [link].

The enemy is not in faraway Iran where we can bomb them from Las Vegas. The enemy is not just the Emma Harte in your life vowing to destroy your family. It is also the person you are love the most, who hurts you the best and arouses the temptation to take revenge. Let’s not give in, even if it seems normal.

Marriage is the lab of loving enemies.

Don’t get me wrong, I see people who have delightful mates who love them deeply even though they see them without rose-colored glasses.

But I am saddened by the many people I see who have been wounded, betrayed and even abused, deeply or slightly, who feel it is only right they should get even. Have we all been influenced by the War on Terror?

It is sad how petty we can be. We are tempted to monitor how we are being wounded, betrayed and abused in the most minute way. I hear people say,

  • “I know I am going to make them mad at me,”
  • so they are predisposed to to be hurt
  • and so feel justified to “get even”
  • even before anything has happened!

Their mate is under surveillance! What in the world is “even” in a relationship anyway? I can understand developing reciprocity, but let’s not measure it.

On our neighborhood group chat the other day, a wife suggested her husband should not go out and talk to the person shaking our windows with the bass they were blasting because, “There are too many  hateful, crazy people out here!” So much for all you need to love.

Let me say again, being hateful to someone hateful results in more hatefulness. Assuming others are crazy before you know them is craziness. Keeping your sweet, religious husband from talking to strangers is stealing his joy. Avoiding the possibility of conflict or the work of reconciliation will not bring peace.  We need to build love, sanity, joy and peace person by person, if necessary. Right? Marriage is a basic place to do it.

Is revenge how we “stay safe?”

Revenge is about control and certainty — my own power to keep myself safe. We can see how nations failed to succeed at that in Afghanistan and Gaza. I regularly see the same goal unmet by married partners who won’t give up on it. These are a few questions I had this week when I thought about that:

  • Can’t such a person see they are making their mate afraid to commit some tiny infraction? Whatever they do is scrutinized. “You did not say anything after I weeded the garden.” or “You left your socks out.” A lot of sentences include “you.” And a lot of them imply, I need to be able to rely on you to not mess up what I require — or else.
  • Do you really need to correct things your mate says? They seem to be in a competition for who is the rightest, as if being right will protect something. I am usually in a small group of married couples most weeks. It is common to have one partner tell a story and the other one to edit it. You need to defeat their sentence?
  • Do you really need a pre-nup? One person said they were afraid to get married if they couldn’t nip the potential revenge in the bud. I am sad if it was already budding during the engagement! I am almost positive the relationship is going to have a high hurdle of mistrust to overcome on the way to a harmonious life together. You hired adversarial, U.S. lawyers to preside at your pre-marriage ceremony?
  • Aren’t you spreading hopelessness when you can’t forgive you partner for not healing your childhood wounds? I was musing about someone wanting to “be found” last week. That desire is kin to being “seen” and “known” — experiences most people want. But digging in your heals in front of various doors to intimacy until you are satisfied your partner has met your demands may not be the best way to receive what you need. Certainty-or-else seems like a recipe for relationship disaster.

We have a lot of ways to get even. Therapists call them “micro aggressions” when they are relational paper-cuts getting infected. Sometimes the aggression goes nuclear and activates the pre-nup! Unfortunately, a lot of us think that’s just normal life.

Preoccupation with getting and being even, staying safe, exercising control undoubtedly has many good reasons behind it; none of the reasons create trust and deepen love. We might want to start unraveling it by considering how the U.S. society has been promoting revenge for the past 25 years. Maybe we’re trained for it.

Some of your fear about being invaded and your commitment to preserve first-strike capabilities might be in league with The War on Terror. But any hint of relational terrorism in a marriage sets off the cycle of revenge everyone is already afraid of.  To be happy, we could at least not meet revenge with revenge. At best, we could love our enemies.

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It is John Chrysostom Day! Get to know this famous leader in the early church at The Transhistorical Body.

Being found: Six things we can do to get there

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Marriage and Family, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction,

I have a love-hate relationship going with my memory of the entry closet of my childhood home. I remember it fondly because it was the first place I was given the privilege of painting (which might have been as soon as I could hold a brush in my situation). So it is symbolically a place where I was trusted and counted worthy.

But before I was painting it, it was a place I would hide. I think one of my earliest  memories is hiding from my mother in the closet and waiting for her to find me. We weren’t playing hide and seek, I just disappeared. And she did not come to find me. I waited for what seemed like a long time in the dark before I peaked out the door. I could hear her voice in the kitchen talking on the land line. I came up to her and pulled on her dress. She looked down at me and did that sweeping up, “Shoo!” gesture and whispered, with her hand over the mouthpiece, “Go play.”  I started to say, “But you did not find me.” But she had already straightened up and was laughing that wonderful laugh of hers. So I just went to my room to look around at the toys again.

I don’t think I ever told her about that. But as you can see, I never forgot that one small moment of being lonely, invisible, and not worth finding. It is no wonder we all seem to have shame sticking to the walls of our inner selves. The tiniest things collect and build up like plaque.

Maybe your mate wants to be found

I thought of myself not long ago when a woman was lamenting how her husband seemed uninterested in “finding” her. She used the word. And she was not the first to do so. So many partnered people have trouble when they feel their partner leaves them alone; they are like babies in the crib who woke up by themselves and aren’t sure someone is coming to get them. We really want our mates to meet us there. It feels like they should do something about this attachment issue that keeps popping up. Some of us might get anxious because we don’t want to risk the possibility that they won’t find us and will never share the deep fears and loneliness we might carry.

I hope you will be found by your loved ones. But I am not counting on it. I hope you will be sensitive enough to find people, even find yourself. But I would not be surprised if you had already blown so many opportunities to do that, you’re not sure you should make any promises.

The movies don’t help. Those people are getting found all the time! We love watching it happen — why else would we watch the Hallmark Channel so religiously? The first example that comes to my mind is “Dear Even Hansen.” That might be because I’ve seen a few choirs of young people giving their hearts to singing the main song: “You Will Be Found.” The hope of being found is apparently a universal feeling, so this song has been sung around the world a few times. The other side of the song is moving, too, so people feel terrible when they realize they didn’t look for someone before they got left alone. The the song has made a lot of people cry.

But I think the song promises too much. You might not be found and need to do something about it yourself. What’s more, everyone might be waiting for you to show up rather than looking for you, or might be kind of paralyzed by the idea you might not want to be found by them, or might not be too aware or even able to notice you’re gone. You might need more than what humans can provide. Wonder about those things as you listen to the song. I provided the lyrics for you.

Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

Well, let that lonely feeling wash away
Maybe there’s a reason to believe you’ll be okay
‘Cause when you don’t feel strong enough to stand
You can reach, reach out your hand

And oh, someone will come runnin’
And I know they’ll take you home

Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
And when you’re broken on the ground
You will be found

So let the sun come streamin’ in
‘Cause you’ll reach up and you’ll rise again
Lift your head and look around
You will be found

You will be found
You will be found
You will be found
You will be found

The message most people latch onto when they hear Evan Hansen sing is “You are not alone.” For all you people feeling alone even though you are in good relationships, I can say “You are not alone” – maybe you are not together with your loved one the way you wish you were, but there is more than your wishes. And for those of you who didn’t find someone who needed you, you are not alone, either. We all carry a lot of shame, but that doesn’t mean you are alone with it.

What we can do to be found and find

I remember thinking my mother decided not to find me and just left me alone. That hurt. I did not ask her about her motivation, but surely she could not have been unaware I was gone somewhere! – after all, she could hear me stealing candy from the cupboard a mile away! When I finally went out and pulled on her dress and got an irritated, “I’m talking on the phone!” That fact did not undo my feeling.

Your adult loved ones might be just as difficult. Dealing with your mate’s attachment issues can feel perilous, but it is so helpful if you do!  Here are a few things to notice and try if you’d like to feel found and like to feel adept at finding people.

1) See one another. In my opinion, Mom should have put down the phone and given me some loving eye contact. That might have demonstrated I was important and not just a nuisance. Same for mates; they need validation and reassurance.

She also could have kept track of me. It is OK to keep track of your mate; you’re not impinging upon their freedom or losing your own if you do. You might need to negotiate how much closeness and how much distance your relationship needs in order to get to your “happy medium.” But you’ll probably be happier if you try.

I have known a few people who say, “I think I will be happier if I don’t try. That kind of noticing is way too much to ask.” In that case the song would be “You are alone.” Because everyone is working out how to attach their whole life. They at least need to be seen.

2) Be yourself, not God. If someone asks to be seen it does not make you God, as if you could be all-seeing, all knowing and the answer to someone’s prayers. Don’t say “No” because you already think you will fail. Everyone fails. You’re probably good enough, even if you are facing a need in your partner that demands more than you have.

Facing the “demand” is what a lot of people mean when they talk about “showing up.” You stop hiding and risk finding. Just don’t take on all those expectations as if you are responsible to succeed at them. Just keep moving into your true self.

3) Listen. Listening for someone matters. They might be making a distant noise in their closet. If it seems too demanding to be so intense, your heart might need to get bigger. All intimate relationships grow our hearts. For instance, a client assumed his wife was self-reliant, but she was really a person who had to fend for herself because no one else did. She would say how needy she was and then behave like she was not needy. It was easier to relate to the unneedy one. But she was left feeling the ancient feeling of being left alone she hated so much. He learned to listen better and to move into what he heard.

4) Try not to hide. When I expected my mother to find me when she did not have a clue about what I’d decided to to, it was a recipe for not getting what I wanted. Fortunately, I did not hide in the closet every day trying to train her to find me on demand! But it would not be surprising if you and I were stubborn enough to try something like that.

We feel it is unjust to have to change rather than someone else changing. “Others seem to get found, why shouldn’t I be cared for like that?” If we just suffer the injustice of it all, the person who is loving you the best they can becomes someone who just holds out on you, but all the while you’re the one in the closet. It may pain you to do so, but you may need to come out and make yourself known, rather than insisting someone else has to do the work.

5) Make sure someone is listening. It takes quite a bit of humility to ask for what we really want. When you dare to do it, be sure to help the one you’re asking hear you. If I say, “I want to feel found. I want you to see me” in a way they can’t hear, that’s not really their fault. If I am just hurt and angry and I make them seem like a fool or a fiend when I tell them, their defenses will spring into action. Then we won’t be on the subject of what I am really hoping any more. We need to help people hear us now that we are adults. The crib is long gone. Being weak in a strong way is rarely a good  way to get what we need.

6) Be found by God. Jesus is well known for saying he is seeking the lost in order to give them life and joy. So there is ONE person who is interested in finding you. There is a hopeful verse in Jeremiah about this big part of God’s love:

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.  I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity. — Jeremiah 29:11-14

I love “I will be found of you.” The best way to be found by some one is to be found of them. You are more likely to be found if you let them see you and struggle gracefully with them. To be fair to Evan Hansen, the movie goes on to teach just that. He needs to let himself be known and go through the pain of being accepted as he really is. He gets way down the road to being his true self, as a result.

Artists like the people who made “Dear Evan Hansen” keep coming up with ways to tell the parables of living in love because 80% of us are preoccupied with how to be known and loved and how to know and be loving every day. We’re the sought seekers we were created to be.

Jesus will face your shame with you

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Spiritual direction, , , , , ,

My most-recent favorite book is Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame (2023) by Fr. Stephen Freeman. Freeman is an archpriest in the Orthodox Church in America so, for me, he adds an interesting lens to look at life in Christ. I admit I am more familiar with the “Orthodox” church of the first 500 years of Christianity than I am with the one growing up in the United States, so I am enjoying his helpful reframing of how we understand shame through informed by some very old theology with some psychology thrown into the mix.

Jesus enters our shame

The Bible beautifully describes how Jesus is healing our toxic shame and teaching us to endure the reformative and sometimes transformative value of our natural shame responses. Freeman says:

The drama of salvation is described in this divine reversal: God has come among us in Christ, emptying Himself of His glory. Instead of glory, He enters into shame—even the shameful death of the Cross. And entering into that shameful death, He destroys death and ascends in glory. He conquers death by death. He overcomes shame by shame.

That summary may sound a bit foreign to your ears, not because it is foreign to the Bible, but because most American Christians have been taught Jesus came to solve our sin problem. We’ve been taught that sin leads to death rather than death leads to shame and then sin. But look at two iconic pieces of scripture on the subject and see where the Bible starts the discussion:

I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting. — Isaiah 50:6 (RSV)

Jesus is the suffering one Isaiah was talking about. He did not hide from the shame we experience, like we do. Many newer English translations trade the word “shame” here for “insults,” keeping the experience about abuse from oppressors. But the older versions are more correct, I think. Because there is an inner experience of injury to the soul the Messiah is entering as well as an outer. The Orthodox Jewish Bible expands it well for us:

I [Moshiach] offered My gev (back) to them that deliver blows, and My lekhi (cheeks) to them that pulled out [the beard]: I hid not My face from kelimot (humiliations, shame) and rok (spitting, saliva).

Paul makes it clear that the Savior‘s main target for our redemption is our shame. Jesus frees us from our slavery to death and sets humanity on a corrected course toward the fullness of our glory. Jesus left his joy and freedom behind in order to become small enough to fit into our shrunken humanity, bound by the shame of our bondage. He did not dominate us with his splendor

but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
     he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. — Phil 2:7-8

So please dial down the punitive theology

Since the lawyers and governmental types took over theology in the 1600’s, the preponderant image of the Lord’s work on the cross has been penal, meaning it is a courtroom drama. It says we are sinners who deserve to be punished and only God can stand in for us. He takes our blame because someone needs to be blamed. The most important thing is: who is right and who has rights.

The substitution analogy is not useless. But it breaks down if you push it too far, since it would mean the work of Jesus was about God not being able to let injustice pass unpunished, so he punished himself (or, as some object, abused his Son). What’s more, the actual perpetrators of sin do not receive the “justice” warranted since someone else took it. The Bible does paint the substitutionary atonement picture in serval places, but I think it was meant to be more metaphor than logistics. Paul, in particular, thinks law, in general, and the Mosaic Law, in particular, is a tutorial for something greater, not an everlasting rubric, since Jesus is the definition of the law and the law is love.

Rather than just solving the problem of sin and the resulting guilt, Jesus is entering our shame. In our era people have solved the problem of sin by acting shamelessly. Donald Trump is the flowering of that method. I have often said that Larry David was the prophet of that new “freedom.” But even though people have tried to change the subject, shame keeps bubbling up. My clients keep revealing to me how our trouble with shame will never be “rediscovered” after this generation is done with its version of fig leaves; it is an ongoing, core experience everyone has been weathering since childhood. It is setting the course of our relationships and coloring how we see ourselves. Freeman says,

We are unaccustomed in our culture to thinking of sin and shame as sharing a connection. We have been formed and shaped in the world of guilt and punishment. If we experience shame, we suppose, it is because other people are seeking to shame us. Thus we are likely to imagine that the shame in our lives is external, the result of social ills. If we fix society, our shame will disappear. This is not a surprising approach, given that our habits have long been directed toward sin as an external problem. But other people, regardless of our situation, are not our problem. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” He must not have spent much time alone.

We are carrying the problem — and it is not just about doing the right thing or not. Our problem is about not being in right relationship with God, ourselves and others. Our lack of communion with God leaves us ashamed of our fraudulence and incapacity.

It is death that shames us

Back when I was a boy Baptist, sin was that main topic. There was a list of things in the back of the hymnal we were to do and not to do if we intended to be a heaven-bound Baptist. The covenant included being “exemplary in our deportment” (which in our church included not dancing, smoking or card playing), and  abstaining “from the sale and use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage” (which is self-explanatory). Our leaders had been influenced by the “holiness doctrine” that purported to perfect us and we determined to be pure. I was ashamed of not being pure and I was not that bad before I was given the assignment!

The theology was so much about me choosing, the whole thing became more about my holiness than God’s! It took a long time to learn the Adam and Eve story is not about “You idiots, you disobeyed God and now you will be punished forever when you could have had the  Garden of Eden!” It is more about “You poor people! You got out of communion with God. You turned your backs and now you are dying. You were meant to live forever.” My shame was not about my inability to do everything right. It was about being out of communion with God. With my non-Christian clients I can help identify the shame, which is often hidden under self-destruction or avoidance. But it is hard to cure it if one goes at it on their own steam, even when your therapist loves you! Freeman says:

Sin is much better understood as disease, fatal in its consequences. Sin, in a form of shorthand, can be described as “death at work within us.” At its most fundamental level, sin is the rupture of communion. We were created for a life of communion with God. In our sin, we have severed that communion and become strangers to God. Indeed, we have become strangers not only to God but to creation, to other people, even to ourselves. In an interesting side note, the secular shame researcher Gershen Kaufman describes shame as “broken communion.” Shame itself is not sin (or even sinful). Rather, it is an emotional signal that accompanies severed communion. It is, therefore, one of the things that sin feels like.

In John 6, Jesus teaches us about the mystery of communion with Him.

 “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. . . . Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” — John 6:51, 53–56

I think my childhood teachers taught on these verses. But I think they were mainly talking , as usual, about how Jesus would raise us up on the last day if we trusted in his work on the cross. For me, and many others I suspect, most of what was happening in the mind of my teachers happened in the past. The communion ceremony was like the pledge of allegiance to the Christian constitution more than an emblem of the present communion we were experiencing and deepening. As I remember, if one didn’t “take communion” it usually meant they were too ashamed of themselves to dare. Ugh.

The shame of not being qualified to take communion due to sin and shame turns the Lord’s teaching on its head, doesn’t it? Jesus invites us to live, not die — the fact that we may be as good as dead right now is his main interest. No matter how much we think our good behavior or genius will keep us alive, we are all going to die — that is, we will be given over to the death we prefer if we do not commune with Jesus and live forever with him. Freeman says:

We were created to live in communion with God. His life is our life. When we read about the creation of Adam, we see that he becomes a “living soul” when God breathes into him. Without the life of God, we are dead clay. The warning regarding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not a threat of punishment; rather, it is a warning that eating of it will result in death. To break communion with God by ignoring His commandment is to live as though we had no need of God. It is to spit His breath back at Him and demand that we live alone. The result is death, and with the alienation of death, we enter into its companion: shame.

Communion with God is a breath by breath, moment by moment, day by day, year after year experience of discerning and moving with the Spirit. Not doing that is the essence of sin and the seed of the frailty and worthlessness we experience as shame. I do think people perfect their capacity to be OK with their shame. But I say human life without God is, in the end, no life at all, even if some people purport to be happy with their self-selected nothingness.

If you sit down with your frailty, worthlessness or nothingness, you might feel an intolerable shame well up in the silence. Memories, faults, criticisms, or scorn might start collecting. Jesus will enter that place in you just as he willingly and lovingly entered humanity. His presence is divine therapy that heals our shame. As Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

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Today is Aidan of Lindisfarne Day! Connect with him at The Transhistorical Body.

 

Swimming in the Mercy: The everyday experience of hope

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , ,

Lynn Bauman’s poetic rendition of Psalm 103:11 warms my heart:

As the heavens reach beyond earth and time,
we swim in mercy as in an endless sea.

I need to hang on to that deeply hopeful picture! Don’t you? Read it again and feel it. May that deep, old biblical truth ascend as new Christian memes lose their strength.

I am longing for sayings like this to descend:

“Only God can turn a mess into a message, a test into a testimony, a trial into a triumph, a victim into a victory.”

And

“I know God has a plan. I pray for direction to follow it, patience to wait on it, and knowledge to know when it comes.”

I don’t think those hopefully-descending proverbs are evil. And I can honestly say they have generally proven true in my life — unlike for many other people I know. But they are more based on outcomes than connection.

I object to the way those cliches reduce hope to something that must be proven. They beg skepticism: “What if the mess does not become a message?” and “We got divorced and it still hurts.” and “I lost my leg in Jordan and I am impoverished as a result.” You may be kinder than I am, but televised stories of trials that turned to triumph often feel a little thin or strained to me. And, what’s more, neglected children learn to turn their trials into triumph because there is no one taking care of them. They only trust themselves, not some parental God. They often spend a lifetime proving they are worth caring about. They hear “turn a trial into a triumph” and there first reaction may be “One more thing to do.”

What’s more, I personally object to the idea that God has a specific “plan” as if she were making sure we get to her preferred outcome: the right job, the safe neighborhood, the healthy family that all “prove” God is good (and us, as a result). Even more, I dread the denial I am called to master in response to terrible outcomes that must be “part of  God’s plan” for me — while Kim Kardashian gets rich. People who have chronic illnesses or some unapproved identity can, indeed, take some comfort that this was somehow God’s plan for them,  but most people don’t have that kind of willpower. Isn’t that why the Barbie theme song was such a hit?

The mercy is not about me

My commitment to wait on the Lord is not the source of my hope. My passionate acts of goodness and faith do not necessarily result in hope. I can’t really manufacture hope. The Lord is my hope.

For God alone my soul waits in silence,
    for my hope is from him. — Psalm 62:5

Now you’ve read that line. Try waiting in silence for 30 seconds.

Thanks. Now I want to reinforce what the Psalm says. We are not the source of our hope. I  dare not apply my meager sense of what outcome I need in order to have it.

Even though we are not the source of hope, the source is deep within me. It flows to me with unrestrained abundance. It is so endless it would be more accurate to say I am deeply within it. The Mercy is like an ocean.

Maybe we are all like the proverbial little fish who just heard a rumor and swam up to his mother and asked, “Mama, what is water? I have to have it!” We are immersed in mercy like that, the everlasting, living water of hope. We don’t lack hope because we are doing something wrong so it is far away, or because we are waiting for what we expect to be fulfilled some day in the far future and just need to be pateint. We lack hope because it is so close, like air, or like a feeling, such as love. It is more intimate than our own sense of being.

As the heavens reach beyond earth and time,
we swim in mercy as in an endless sea.

Maybe The Mercy is more real than we presently are

Cynthia Bourgeault in her book Mystical Hope, describes the “embodying fullness” in which we live as “the Mercy.” Mercy is the water in which we swim. Mercy is what we know of God and the light by which we know it.

I adopted “Mercy” as my main prayer when I got used to the Jesus prayer: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” As I was riding my bike through town, avoiding car doors, potholes and pedestrians, I realized one day that the curses rising up in me, which added to my frustration and sense of alienation, could be replaced with a one-word prayer that turned me toward my center, toward a realization that I was still in the water, still swimming. Now I am likely to face a distressing or even hope-draining moment with “Mercy!” So much better.

Bourgeault explains “the Mercy” so beautifully:

When we think of mercy, we should be thinking first and foremost of a bond, an infallible link of love that holds the created and uncreated realms together. The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional – always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which we live and move and have our being.

Just like that young fish looking for water, we “’swim in mercy as in an endless sea.’ Mercy is God’s innermost being turned outward to sustain the visible and created world in unbreakable love.” We see that so clearly as Jesus turns himself out on the cross and God turns creation inside out to return him to life.

The interpreters of the work of Christ keep looking for words to describe what they experience. Paul says:

Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. — Romans 5:5

The basic work of the Christian ends up being a quest for the “water,” for an everyday, moment by moment experience of The Mercy.

It only sounds easy

Preachers often get up front and give the congregation a lesson in CBT: how to change you mind and thought patterns to get a Christian outcome. Some people get the lessons and many others get the shame of never effecting the perfect outcome. Either way, we are kind of in charge of making our own hope or responsible for the lack of it. The Jesus way is much deeper than what we can already do, if we just try hard enough.

If the narrow way of living in mystical hope were easy, we’d all be hopeful. It isn’t easy, but it is possible. The more we experience it, the more we get used to our true selves. Instead of living in a world run by scientific principles waiting to be proven again, or worse, a nobody-in-charge universe run by whoever manages to get into power, we become aware that we are “inside a warm-hearted and purposive intelligence, a coherence” of which we are part of the expression. We live in the creation of the Mercy.

Instead of God as a distant “other” we are restored to God as our “source and substance, the ground of our own arising, the foundation of our hope.” I want to talk more about how we might experience this reality in the coming weeks, since, for me, once experienced, it is undeniable and irreplaceable — and we really need it these days.

As I wrote that sentence, I was on hold with Citibank, which bought my credit card from Barclay’s, which did not process a fraudulent purchase for $15K (!!) before they unloaded me. Then Citi did not follow up after I called them. Now i was starting over a month later! Welcome to 2026. The climate-change-induced storm last week left a log from a dead tree in my back yard. The brazenly-corrupt Donald Trump is still president and desperate to undermine the elections which people think are their only hope.  Yes. I am turning into my irreplaceable source of hope as I write. It feels good. The turn is energizing. God is my hope.

So for now, I will leave you in hope. Whatever energy you exercise striving for some outcome you hope for would be better used for turning in to hope and swimming for joy in the Mercy. Then, when whatever outcomes emerge, miraculous or not, you can swim right up to them.

[Part One of this series: Mystical hope in a deteriorating world.]

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Today is Flannery O’Connor Day! Get to know her and her wild God at The Transhistorical Body.

Kayfabe: Does this key ingredient of WWE explain Trump?

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

Traveling makes you think

We took a road trip to Monticello. My grandson bought an oversized nickel as a memento. The preservationists who maintain Thomas Jefferson’s lifelong rehab project posted a sign on the way up the mount to remind us we were entering a “sacred” space. Jefferson’s star-studded, science-driven plantation is an altar for the religion of America.

The mansion overlooks Charlottesville. That’s the city lately famous for a torch parade, the white supremacist march on August 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and alt-right activists stormed through the University of Virginia campus. They chanted antisemitic and racist slogans as they marched around Jefferson’s statue. The spectacle served as a prelude to the violent “Unite the Right” rally the following day.

Jerry Falwell Jr Says Donald Trump Offered Him Education Secretary Job

Not long after we left Charlottesville, we approached Lynchburg, VA, home of Jerry Falwell Airport and Liberty University, where the Moral Majority was born in the 80’s — that movement mobilized millions of politicized Evangelicals to combat what it viewed as the moral decline of the United States, championing traditional family values and heavily influencing postmodern American politics. (Falwell Jr., above, played the champion when dad died, but missed the morality). On the way there, I shouted as we turned a corner, “Look at that Confederate flag!” It was huge. Someone bought a gigantic flagpole and some company made an enormous flag to threaten me. The Christian radio station nearby had just aired a serious news story featuring Mike Johnson saying the Congress needed to pass the SAVE Act and he intended to attach it to a budget reconciliation bill soon.

The Thomas Jefferson impersonator at the Monticello Theater, had pointed out that in 1824 only 6% of the population was eligible to vote (white male landowners) and only 3% voted. Trump is now trying to get voting back to white people, at least. I think he can find many supporters in western Virginia.

Then WWE chairman Vince McMahon has his head shaved by Donald Trump and Bobby Lashley after losing a bet in the Battle of the Billionaires at the 2007 WrestleMania in Detroit, Michigan.

Monticello took some Kayfabe

Yes, traveling makes you think. I started connecting dots, like Jefferson and UFC.

Trump’s birthday fight on the White House lawn was a lesson in performative domination with the goal of ginning up support for his white-centered dictatorship [see Stephen Miller last week]. I learned a new word when I was wondering what he was trying to do by tearing up the White House grounds for a mixed martial arts arena. A.I. took the spectacle seriously, and even called it “historic” when I looked it up:

UFC Freedom 250, a historic mixed martial arts event held on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14, 2026. The unprecedented spectacle celebrated both the United States’ 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s birthday, and drew national headlines as a major, high-stakes sporting event.

A.I. sounds like a publicist for UFC. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is an American MMA promotion company based in the Las Vegas metro. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, a “premium sports” and entertainment company formed in 2023 by the merger of the UFC and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). WWE is a majority-owned subsidiary of The WME Group (William Morris Endeavor), the world’s longest-running talent agency. Ponder that.

Swallowing Jefferson’s Frenchified Monticello as a sacred space, was a bit like rolling over for what WWE/Trump does, and maybe it’s like what most Evangelical church members are doing most of the time. They all take some “kayfabe.” [Check out this scholarly article].

Kayfabe is the tacit agreement/code professional wrestlers keep as they present staged matches, scripted rivalries, and predetermined characters as completely genuine even though they are fake. The term originating as secret carny slang to keep audiences in the dark, as in “Keep the kayfabe.” Postmodern kayfabe is used to maintain emotional immersion in the fiction rather than strict deception. Maybe you know all about this.

Like I noted, in the era of social media, kayfabe has evolved. Rather than attempting to fool the audience, postmodern kayfabe functions as a type of psychological storytelling where fans are in on the secret but willingly suspend their disbelief to enjoy the narrative. The term has also bled into mainstream culture, often used to describe performative political theater or calculated, winking online behavior.

At Monticello we were asked to play our part in the same story Jefferson enacting when he lived there. He is the Declaration of Independence writer who owns slaves. We overlook the slaves, even though we know they exist, in order to keep his shrine in Washington D.C. making sense. He is the UVA founder where a white supremacist mob rolled over people protesting the domination he enjoyed and employed. We overlook how he managed the white supremacist Constitution so he always looks enlightened.

Jefferson was not as expert or as self-conscious as Trump and his followers are when it came to kayfabe, of course. I never knew how much Trump was practicing it until I wondered about that bizarre UFC fight. I may be the last person in the country who finds such a thing odd.

It is not just politics, it is the church

The term has increasingly crossed over into mainstream culture. In everyday contexts, “kayfabe” is used to describe a tacit agreement to pretend that something is real, sincere, or competitive when it is actually performative—often used to describe political theater, marketing, or corporate posturing

Trump’s first election was straight out of the pro wrestling playbook. Voters knew it was fake, but they loved it. [See this article from The Guardian]. They knew he was playing a character (he kept talking about himself in the 3rd person!) and they knew who they were in the story. Here is a representative fan homage:

WWE is a hybrid form of sport, street fight, ballet, spectacle, and soap opera that defies easy categorization. Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame.  His WWE pedigree influenced his political campaigning style. It developed his boisterous, over-the-top character. The way he argues, insults and makes crass remarks all make perfect sense in the context of Trump the WWE entertainer. Trump’s pro-wrestling role is a celebrity who is a “no bullshit” straight talker who gets things done better than anyone else

Naomi Klein (2017) claimed that pro-wrestling is “invisible as a cultural force to most liberal voters.” I am one of them. My ignorance might go back to my father, who would not allow pro wrestling from KTLA, Channel 5, on his TV because it was all fake — which we doubted. We could, however, watch roller derby because we all knew that was staged. Now I am supposed to play along and help enact simulated emotions to produce alternative realities as if life were WWE. It’s a leap.

I can’t really do kayfabe. It is intrinsically unChristian, of course, but I also didn’t encounter it early enough, I think. I didn’t even play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Kayfabe now describes a form of audience engagement that involves, in the first instance, a willing suspension of disbelief within which performers, promoters and the audience, ALL “keep kayfabe.” For the latter, keeping kayfabe involves the active choice to participate in “performance conventions” such as cheering the “face” and booing the “heel.”  In doing so, fans do not simply pretend to be fooled by the “game;” rather, in the new kayfabe, everyone is invested and involved in the playing of the game itself — Magic: The Gathering (MTG) with flying folding chairs, perhaps.

To refer to the “real” of wrestling today is to refer to backstage politics, writers’ rooms, booking decisions, and corporate judgments about who has star potential, who is popular in the locker room, or who is unpopular with management. It is a kind of real that, strangely, even contradictorily, embraces the fake. When it leaks into everyday life,  newscasters always talk about the strategies of politicians and who is winning the latest contest rather than informing the listeners about the substance and consequences of what is going on.

Politics and church have largely followed suit

To enjoy WWE, fans must not only be aware of the inner workings of the business (the off-camera, backstage processes) but also able to construct hypotheses about them when they lack knowledge. The whole thing has become an active, collaborative relationship, a co-production in which fans both create and sustain kayfabe while simultaneously dissecting it, parsing the elements that construct the performance with a discerning eye on how well performers “follow the rules of the performance practice and play their role” and “read through the fiction to glean hidden truths.” If this sounds to you like conspiracy theories being monetized, you might be right.

Part of the fan’s participation becomes “a game of prediction and interpretation to which they apply their understanding of wrestling techniques, character histories, performers and WWE as a company.” For instance: Why did the bookers decide upon that outcome? Does the fact that the wrestler is “selling” the leg (acting as if it is injured) mean the match “finish” will involve that limb? Did an aggressive “promo” signal a “heel turn” by a “face?”  It seems like anything can be “gamified” these days  to increase fan devotion and profit.

So it was not surprising that at his post-2016-election thank-you rallies, Trump was able to level with his voters about the manipulative nature of his campaign tactics. When he referred to the redundant “Lock her up!” chants at his events, Trump now laughed with his supporters, telling them, “You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’ Screaming ‘Prison! Prison! Lock her up!’ I mean you are going crazy!” The chants, he told them, contemplatively, “plays great before the election. Now we don’t care.” Far from his revelations undermining their enthusiasm for his Presidency, Trump’s supporters laughed along – after all, only marks truly believed all that stuff even if, while self-conceived smarts, they too chanted along.

That last point is the key to understanding Trump’s appeal. The country (and the church) may be more WWE, UFC, gamified, prediction addicted, and back-room cynical than you think.  Politics happens like pro-wrestling — the chance that Mitch McConnell is actually dead is more interesting than his actions as a Senator or the future of the democracy. In WWE the smarts differentiate themselves from the imagined marks (the people who actually believe WWE is a contest). Nevertheless, the “smarts” retain the “overt knowledge that the core wrestling narrative relies, to a significant degree, on their successful performance as dupes not in on the con” – that is, the capacity to suspend disbelief is predicated upon the collected audience playing the part of a “true believer” sports spectator. To retain its “dramatic appeal” pro-wrestling requires smarts to perform as marks when attending events. Just like Marco Rubio (and Lindsay Graham, RIP) act like they are taking Trump seriously, a successful WWE event or Trump rally requires its attendees cheer and chant, performing their role as supporters-who-believe in their own exposition of smart fandom.

The evangelical church has always been a step away from such carnival, since the carnival works better than actual faith to draw a crowd and fill the plates. One of the reasons it is hard to make a Christian in the U.S. is the thin line between willingness to disbelieve and actual faith. The atmosphere is filled with Christians who picked up Trump just like they  picked up Jesus. They were in it for the feels and vicarious sense of power, not the truth.

When Kelly Conway blithely talked about alternative facts, it was exposing kayfabe. When Paula White compares Trumps “sufferings” to that of Jesus, it is performing kafaybe. She actually stated, “No one has paid the price like you have,” likening his experiences to being “betrayed, and arrested, and falsely accused.” Furthermore, she has publicly declared that “to say no to President Trump would be saying no to God”

People on my feed shake their heads and say “Trump lives in his own world.” True. When he talks about Trump in the third person, he is talking about his persona, his WWE Hall of Fame persona. What he does as the real Trump may be lost on him at this point, I don’t know. But “his own world” is shared by millions who live in “their own world” with him. They are perfecting the unreality which accompanies the world we all share.

As we came home over the Walt Whitman Bridge, we snapped a picture of our smoke-dimmed home town. Canadian fires are climate-change induced —  some facts are difficult to undermine. As the smoke started rolling in last week, the president got on TV to repeat his lie about the 2020 election. He said that China had meddled because it obtained voter registration info that anyone with enough money can purchase legally. He did not hit anyone over the head with a chair, which probably would have garnered even more attention, but he did implicitly call on us to “keep the kayfabe” with him as the world burned.

The super-analog Proverbs in the Bible includes this one: Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment (12:19).

Faith is the little night light that burns in a sick room

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , , ,

I spent part of last week studying the life of Abbe Huvelin (1838-1910). I was creating an entry for The Transhistorical Body where he will appear on July 10. Just like his life and teaching influenced many of his contemporaries, he is sticking with me.

I am especially taken with his persistent admonition to keep it small, focus on love, and listen for the presence of Christ instead of listening to the voice of fear in us or listening to the powerful voices from the world threatening suffering if we don’t conform. He held out his little light as a local priest instead competing for prestige among the high-flying Parisians giving birth to “modernity” during his lifetime.

God in the small things

I suppose it is strange source of meditation, but a text from one of my friends is stuck in my mind. So few things stick (like the plot of Disclosure Day), I take the things that do stick  seriously.  Maybe I should be telling you about some atrocity, or last Saturday’s protest – and there will be time to speak up, but I think you might be better served if I share the small blessing of our text exchange about peonies. She offered to populate my garden and I accepted her gift.

Let’s just pause for a second. Aren’t flowers great? If you don’t stop and appreciate flowers, what kind of person are you? And isn’t it great that I have this new friend who takes an interest in my new garden? I have flowers and I have this friend. Life is good.

I wrote to her: It is Rod. I did not get the peony. Tomorrow OK?

I knew it would be fine if I did not get the pot off the porch when I said I would. But I like the little niceties between friends, so I texted an extra mile. I know people who hate receiving texts and calls. But I am not among them. I like attention, and I like attending. It makes me happier and more one with God, who made us by intending us, and lives from an intention to love. Such attention to loved ones seems in short supply in the world; I am moved to contribute.

It only seems like the world is ungenerous

She answered: Not a limited offer!

Those four words are sticking with me. For one thing, I can see the look on her face — that wry, but warm smile. But even more, I know she wrote that exclamation with commitment! She could have said “No problem,” which implies dealing with people is usually a bother. Instead, the first thing she thought to say came right out of the eternity in which she lives. I don’t know her as well as I will, yet, but I already imagine I could call on her to do whatever I needed, and she would do it if she could. She is not a limited offeror.

She continued: Tomorrow is fine; we’ll be away, but the plants are out for you.
(They look dead, but aren’t)

I have no idea how to plant or grow peonies, yet, Maybe they will sprout in my place, maybe not. But I enjoy the little effort I am making to get them and plant them. And I like the idea of planting something to see if it will grow.

My friend has planted a little seed of generosity in me by putting them on her porch. I am trusted with her porch! Being generous heals the wounds of our fear-filled world.

A mystery-filled word, here and there

Abbe Huvelin was known for meeting someone and, in a very brief time, speaking or doing something that was exactly appropriate, though often unexpected. St. Charles Foucauld began his journey when, as a disillusioned young man, he went to the confessional at St. Augustin Church and Huvelin did not debate with him at all, discerning he would just get into a fruitless power struggle. He told him to kneel and confess and receive the Eucharist. That was the moment. The act of a loving, assertive person, who sees someone and calls out their best and truest self is like a miracle.

My friend was helping my discernment when she warned me about the spent peonies on her porch. Her word was: “They look dead, but aren’t.”

Each of us is surprisingly and prospectively alive and blooming, as well, don’t you think?

I got some encouragement and a a call from God, as you can see, from my friend’s text. She called me right out of the grave. I sometimes look and feel prematurely dead. But I am not. A friend, a plant, a word can push me in the right direction.

She concluded with: Happy fourth to you and Gwen.

I don’t think my new friend knows the extent of my political and theological views. At one point last week, my own wife said with a little exasperation, “You are a radical you know.” My friend might not know I am not going to have a traditional “happy fourth.” The happiest thing I did was find my way into the protest on Washington Square at 9am to Declare Independence from Billionaires! I feel alive when I’m doing that, even though sometimes the whole movement feels like it is on life support, and I feel the power the billionaires to blunt any opposition.

Regardless, I love the fact my friend took the time to type out good wishes to me. How cheerful! How ennobling! — I was worthy of a blessing! That little act was a pretty good protest in itself. It is the blessings that make the world — even if Peter Thiel thinks he makes it.

If you think this whole story is making a mountain out of a molehill, I say, “Absolutely.” Abbe Huvelin said:

Faith is the little night light that burns in a sick room; as long as it is there, the obscurity is not complete, we turn towards it and await the daylight.

When we turn toward that little light we can see in our darkness and respond to it, inwardly and out. That turning makes all the difference. We are never really short of opportunities to do that, are we? — surely not, as long as there are peonies! In the middle of my sick society I saw a little light in my friend and thank God it met the little light in me. Let it shine.

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Today is Jan Hus Day! Get in touch with your family-of-faith history at The Transhistorical Body. 

“the cure”: Olivia Rodrigo explores her view of self and God.

A life in the Spirit, Music, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , ,
Latest album cover: “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love”

Maybe I like Olivia Rodrigo because she says what is on her mind and dares you to do something about it. Plus, I like that she does not have any pretense of being profound — she knows she became famous when she was 17 and knows she is still figuring things out on her latest album.

I first caught up with her when I realized, “Hey, Olivia Rodrigo is Nini from High School Musical on the Disney Channel! (something to occupy grandchildren and Papa during Covid). I loved how talented she is — but when I heard her songs I really liked how hysterically brazen she is.

She is a strange kind of prophet as she analyzes her own dualities and takes down the presumptions and misconceptions all around her.

This quite often makes her depressed.

A mural on Melrose announced the new album

the cure

Today’s song “the cure” (#3 on Spotify recently) caught my attention for how it reveals things about the dialogue each of us is having inside and hints at how one’s view of God makes a difference.

About the song, she says, “It’s karaokable if you’re sad.” Try it!

“the cure” was first teased in May, when two lyric snippets were painted on Olivia’s wall mural in Los Angeles (above). She officially announced the song’s release the following day. She hosted an hour-long session of NTS Radio, where she played sad songs to tease her album, and ended her set by premiering “the cure” two hours early. The mural had fans in a tizzy. As you can see, Google calls it an L.A. tourist attraction. If I were out there, I would probably go see it, too.

Rodrigo has said quite a bit about how this song was written, since it is one of her favorites on the album — and maybe her favorite, so far, in her rather successful career. She says:

I remember trying to fit “I’m unraveled” into another song and thinking that was just a really perfect, poignant way of describing what it feels like to know someone really deeply and feel like, “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.” I think when you’re in a deep, intimate relationship, it just sort of feels like everything you thought you knew about yourself kind of comes unraveled, a little bit, and you’re just naked. I thought that was a really cool choice of word. I remember trying to fit it into this song, and it works perfectly.

I like how, in the verses, the lyrics are super specific. “Tally up the girls that he fucked ‘til I start to cry,” does it get more specific and dark than that? And then, the chorus opens up into this metaphor. There’s poison in my blood and you try to cleanse me of it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s who I am. I just like the dichotomy of those two living together.

She was a rather wise teenager, and she sounds more like Qoheleth all the time.

Her view of self

We have an internal dialogue going most of the day. The messages we speak to ourselves reveal our view of self (VOS) and affect emotions and behaviors. Most days, therapy includes inviting clients to identify and examine their self-talk (those internal messages) in order to see who they believe they are and so mitigate depression and anxiety.  If our self-talk affirms our worth and enhances our ability to endure or overcome life’s stressors, then we are more likely to have a healthy response to those problems. If our self-talk contains a distorted or destructive narrative, then it is much more likely that we will feel and act accordingly.

For instance, imagine sitting down for that first cup of coffee in the morning and just as you are placing the cup to your lips, you spill it all over the front of your clothing.  If your self-talk goes something like, “I can’t believe you did that!  Stupid!  This is going to be an awful day,” then your chance of carrying a lousy mood through the day increases. (VOS: I am a clumsy idiot). But if your self-talk sounds more like, “Oh no! I really love this shirt!  Better get some water on that and get a new one,” then you are probably going to feel temporarily annoyed but you will be able to move past the incident and not set yourself up to have a bad day. (VOS: I am a person who overcomes troubles).

Olivia is having a profound internal dialogue in her song.

All the pretty girls in the foreground of my mind
I thought I’d done enough, but they keep moving the line

VOS: “I’m not good enough” keeps playing in my thoughts. I’m competing with other girls to to be worthy of attention and love, but I never seem to make it.

I thought I found the antidote this time

VOS: I’m waiting for someone to find me and know me. If you love me, I am good.

And all the nights I spent fighting bad thoughts in my room
Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon
I thought I found the antidote with you

VOS: If I just had another person I would not feel so alone with my terrible self, talking back to the terrible self-talk I do and feeling defeated.

But my head is full of poison, and my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream, you tried hard to suck ’em out
And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure

VOS: My head, heart and body are yucky and out of control.

The chorus keeps repeating the dichotomy she is examining – great mentalizing! She’s not known for being a Christian, but she often sounds like one. Here she is considering her mind, her heart and her body and wondering why what feels like medication isn’t quite enough:

But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

VOS: I’m beyond relying on someone else’s love to make me someone.

Most of the time, the view of self that used to dominate us is still around, but smaller, as our new development takes hold. It has been fun to travel with Olivia Rodrigo as she matures in her art and psychological health. The realization above is one many people twice her age are still working on! — Who I am starts in me, it does not come from you.

I thought I found the antidote this time

But I’m unraveled (I’m unraveled)…
Why can’t it ever be enough? (I’m unraveled)
It’s not enough…

It will never be the cure
It’ll never be

VOS: Like she said in her interview: “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.”

She did heart, mind, strength and now soul as she unravels down into it. I think this is her favorite song on the new album because a new consciousness is being unveiled by love. Becoming naked at the deepest level reveals her own sense of “I am.” For her, singing about it solidifies her confidence in being herself. I appreciate her sense of wonder as she watches it happen.

View of God

Olivia is not singing a song about God, per se. But God is never far from her process, it seems. On the #1-played-song on Spotify, also from her new album: “stupid song,” she says:

Walking through the park with my head high
Past all the college girls and the drunk guys
And if there is a god, he’s the bond that’s between us two

She mentions God (or “a god” in this case) quite a bit in her songs. I love how she identifies the mystery of love in the bond she feels as God between them. She could be writing 1 John.

In the song of the day, “the cure,” she veers right up to the edge of God:

And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

She is bold enough to beg the question, “If this loving guy is not the cure, then what is?” I think her basic answer, so far, is: “The cure is being myself, troubles and all, and accepting my place in the world.” This is amazing for a 23-year-old! It might be easier for her, since she is worth $45 million.

But I get the impression she does not think she is, ultimately, the cure, either.

There has been a lot of consideration, throughout history, about the correlation between spirituality and health. One of the most interesting findings recently is how much of a difference your view of God can make in your well-being, especially your mental health.

Since many of my clients come to me because I am a Christian, we often get into their concept of God or their relationship with God. Many people are skeptical or distant when it comes to God because they have an entitlement mentality or a punishment mentality. They see God as either being out to get you, or God is there to give you whatever you want. Neither matches who Jesus reveals God to be, but they are common views. And neither view will make us pleased to keep getting to know God better.

Research demonstrates how much your view of God can impact your health. Over the past several years Baylor University has conducted several surveys on religion among American adults, and many scholarly articles have been produced using the data. The most recent survey revealed more on the connection between one’s view of God and mental health.

The general views of God fell into three broad categories:

  1. A “deistic” God. God is real, but He is not significantly involved in what happens on this Earth or in one’s daily life.
  2. A “punitive” God. God is angered by sin, is looking to punish sinners, and one has little hope of meeting His high demands.
  3. A “benevolent” God. God is good. He is closely involved in the world and in one’s daily life, and His involvement results in good things.

The Baylor University data showed how powerfully one’s view of God can predict the presence of mental health problems. Briefly, belief in a punitive God means more anxiety, paranoia, and other symptoms. Belief in a benevolent God is associated with fewer such  symptoms.

This effect holds true even in prayer. If one is unsure of one’s connection with God, or trying to avoid God (possibly out of fear), prayer only results in more anxiety. If one’s connection with God is secure, prayer decreases anxiety and related symptoms.

We will see where Olivia ends up. I hope she’s still making music when she is 30. It would be interesting to see what she thinks about this lyric then:

And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

I’d like to ask her then, “What do you believe to be the cure now?”

 

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The is Peter and Paul Day! Catch up with how the two influential disciples of Jesus became tied together in the history of the Church at The Transhistorical Body. 

U.S. Christians need a new story: Use Columba as an example

A life in the Spirit, Building community, Spiritual direction, The Mission, , , ,

Columba Day was June 9, but I think the famous “apostle to Scotland” needs a few more minutes in the spotlight. He may be even more Christian than we already thought.

His traditional story was passed down to us written within the general framework used for about 9000 years, now; it says the powerful deserve their power and have a right to acquire the excess we produce to use as they see fit, mainly to go to war and protect their own power. But if Columba’s story is retold within a Christian framework where individuals have freedom and communities are places for love and sharing, as we were created to experience, the story can be told more truthfully.

This 12th century drawing may be the oldest depiction.

Several of the famous stories about Columba (like how he stopped the Loch Ness monster) should inspire us to stand up to the monsters impeding the mission required in the present day. It is not just the warriors who “make” history. The community builders and family keepers, like most of us, are much more relevant. Like so many old stories these days, Columba’s story (and yours, probably) begs to be retold truer.

As you will see, how Columba stood up to the power-hoarding, private-property elevating people of his day should inspire us to stand up against the billionaires who are the newest perpetrators of an age-old fraud. In truth, cooperation built the world, not conquest. Columba was living according to his own version of the Jesus-inspired economic bill of rights.

I encourage you to make up your own mind about my retelling, since that is what historians do. They always have a point of view – and you do too, even if you think you have no view at all. The view from which the story of Columba is usually told is about how rulers duke it out to own the most and to keep their positions of dominance — and that’s the way it is. The tired, old story tells us we will be punished if we don’t conform, or at least cause too much trouble. But does it tell the whole truth?

Here is the traditional telling of a famous story about Columba (with bullet points!). It is usually titled:

The first copyright law

In 561, Columba secretly copied a rare, religious book belonging to his former teacher, Finnian. When a king ruled “to every cow its calf, to every book its copy,” war broke out over the stolen copy.

  • The Gift: Columba visited his old teacher, Finnian, in Ireland. Finnian had a beautiful new Psalter (a book of Psalms) which he let Columba use.
  • The Theft: Columba loved the book so much he secretly stayed up late at night in the church, copying it by hand.
  • The Discovery: Finnian caught Columba in the act when he was well on the way toward completion. He demanded that Columba give him the copied book.
  • The Refusal: Columba refused to give him the copy, claiming it belonged to him because his own hard work made it.
  • The Ruling: Both men went to High King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall to settle their dispute. The King made a famous ruling: “To every cow belongs its calf, and to every book belongs its copy.”
  • The War: Columba was very angry about losing his copy. He went back to his home clan and started a war against the King. Thousands of men died in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in 561.
  • The Exile: As a punishment for causing so much death, Columba was sent away from Ireland. He sailed to Scotland and started a new church on the Island of Iona, vowing never to return to his home and determined to fulfill the charge by his overseer to convert as many people as died in the battle.

Here is how the story might just as well have happened if the hierarchy had not put itself in charge of writing history. It could be titled:

The word of God belongs to everyone.

In 561, Columba set out to copy a psalter Finnian had locked away from the community-at-large — Finnian being like Gollum protecting his “Precious.” Columba discerned that such a book should belong to everyone, especially since books were scarce and literacy was the key to opening up new worlds. Finnian brought him before the authorities for stealing his book. When Columba lost the legal battle before the corrupt court, his clan rushed to his rescue. He escaped. Ashamed of the bloodshed he had caused, he exiled himself and gave his life to saving as many people in Jesus’ name as had been killed in his.

  • The Precious: As a trusted graduate of Finnian’s school, Columba was given access to a beautiful Psalter Finnian prized and kept away from the general public.
  • The Plan: Columba did not think the book should remain locked away and owned by Finnian. He wanted a copy to learn from and to share. So he secretly stayed up late at night copying it by hand.
  • The Discovery: Finnian caught Columba in the act. He demanded that Columba give him the copied book.
  • The Refusal: Columba refused, claiming the copy belonged to him because his own hard work made it, just like the Psalms belonged to everyone to whom God gave them, as well as to all the scribes, scrolls makers and teachers who passed them down through generations. Finnian’s position did not give him the right to own the Psalms.
  • The Ruling: Instead of resorting to violence, the men went to High King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall to settle their dispute. The King made a famous ruling: “To every cow belongs its calf, and to every book belongs its copy.” In this case that meant: “If you own the means of production, you control everything it produces. If you copy the book, you essentially work for the owner.” Note that Finnian did not author the book, he just owned it, a bit like A.I. collecting all the works of history (including this little piece of writing) and then charging you to access and use it.
  • Yet another battle: Columba was upset about losing his copy. He was also angry that he and others who needed the book were restricted to whatever pieces Finnian wanted to give them. He went back to his home clan in a rage and they jumped to his defense without being asked, since that has always been how nonbelievers settle problems, and since it was an excuse to take power from the king. Thousands of men died in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne.
  • Leaving home: As usual, whoever stands up against the status quo is shamed and scapegoated. Columba was made an outcast for being disobedient and causing conflict. So he determined to leave his homeland. A substantial group of men discerned what was really going on and set sail with him for parts unknown. They shook the dust of Ireland off their feet and went to build something new. Columba was ashamed his clan’s warfare, sad to be labeled as an unrepentant rebel, and lonely for his devoted family, but he went off to discover the fullness of what God had been doing when he first dared to quench his thirst for the psalter.

Columba’s new way

Click the picture to learn about a voyage that replicated Columba’s

When the band got to Iona they built a new kind of settlement on the rocky little island. It set the character of what would influence the whole area from then on (and until now!) – a community in mission, open and expansive, full of beauty, not closed and controlling. Iona became the “cradle of Christianity” in Scotland. It also served as a great lighthouse of learning.

It is telling that one of the most famous accounts of their mission includes Columba stopping the Loch Ness monster from devouring one of his comrades. He’s another hero travelling in a band like Frodo, who overcame the temptation of the ring of power, who did not become a new version of Gollum. The symbolic monsters of the past, like dragons, resemble the monsters of today, which guard their territory with fire from above or terrors from the deep and hoard gold.

The new community on Iona built a strong center for education. They copied rare religious and historical books by hand. Their beautiful writing and art changed early European history. By 800, the community began creating their masterpiece: the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript containing the four Gospels. It is still regarded as one of Ireland’s national treasures, celebrated for its intricate Celtic knotwork, vibrant colors, and inspired drawings. The book was moved from Iona to the Abbey of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, to protect it from Viking raids around 806. In 1661 it was presented to Trinity College in Dublin for safekeeping where it still remains and where I saw it.

It is telling that the mission which was sparked by a book became famous for a book. It is also telling that Trinity College has monetized their possession of the book by providing an “experience” which gives tourists a way to pay for as little time as possible with books and focus on their feelings about them. The College resemble Finnian. As usual, normal people get the sizzle while the owners get the steak.

The main characteristic that made Columba’s community distinct was their Celtic way of clan life enriched by the radical sharing demonstrated in the New Testament [An Anglican bishop considers how to make it work now]. Iona was egalitarian and planted new communities like itself. These days, “successful” churches, in general have no practical connection to its locale. It is a destination, a program, a product, not a collection of people who live and work together. The community on Iona was different. The missionaries did not conquer the Picts; they moved in with them, became friends, and shared their lives.

Columba is a leader like people in a long line stretching back to Jesus who refuse to live according to the rules of the domination system and the myth of redemptive violence.  Constantine may have co-opted the church, the early medieval church may have adopted the Roman model of governance and hierarchy and conquered the Celtic church in its name, but there are always people who see through the lies.

Trump may have co-opted the Evangelicals with the promise they will rule with him, but that unfulfilled promise is already part of the collapse of the latest regime, perpetrating the old fraud. I pray we replace it with a government which functions within a true economy, as a means to distribute the excess we create in an equitable and mutually beneficial way, a government inspired by the truth and love in Jesus and wherever else it can be found, not infected with the repetitive and damned self-destruction perpetrated by would-be kings. We all need a truer story to live by.

A song lights the way: Journey through dark times

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That beautiful blonde hair behind the the statement red head on the left is our treasure.

I will miss the day when my granddaughter no longer invites me to hear her perform with the Commonwealth Youth Choir. Their very existence moves me to tears, and then they start singing. I prayed they could feel and ponder their selections as they sang the other night. Their songs were showing us the way out and in.

The concert was a fine ending to a good day. We got up early and walked on the beach. Then we listened to Till We have Faces on the way home and finished it just as we turned into our street.

As I often explore with my clients, the good moments need to be elongated, shared and revisited. That makes them stick with us instead of slipping away into nothing. Especially these days, when every day seems to have a new indignity or bit of destruction to torment us (as if we didn’t already have enough), we need to dwell on what is good.

So let’s do that together.

The song right on the edge of freedom

Fortunately, one little song on the concert program that night was very sticky: “Who I Want to Be” by Coty Raven Morris (arr. Saleel Menon) [link].

I lead with my spirit
keeping love in the circle around me,
expressing my spirit,
loving what I see and cannot see.
I take care of the vessel I’m in.
I love the me that’s under this skin,
taking care of my mind,
envisioning the me
I want to be.

At one point, selected singers went to the mic to voice the goodness that is in them. It was a blessing to hear what every psychotherapist must wish their clients were singing.

However, I have to admit there was a bit of a trap waiting in the song for the unsuspecting. It so firmly begins with “I” — and it is such a burden to be in charge of one’s spirit! But at least they were keeping a circle of love around them — love is so uncontrollable, it disabuses us of the idea we can control everything. And they included expressing love for what they “cannot see,” which led to the deeper places in the next song.

The song about the Great I Am

If they missed the connection with God I hoped they would make as they led with their spirits, the kids had another chance to connect with something bigger, along with the rest of us, during “Spirit,” Beyonce’s contribution to Disney’s live-action Lion King [link].

The wind is talkin’
for the very first time
with a melody that pulls you toward it
paintin’ pictures of paradise…
Spirit.
Watch the heavens open…
Go into that far off land
and be one with the Great I Am.

Beyonce grew up singing in the choir of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Houston.  Methodism can come with lots of rules and labels, but it is hard to miss the personal and universal spirituality John Wesley experienced within it. The “strangely warmed” places are where the Queen B has landed.

Her song is not too far from Jesus offering some of my favorite sentences in the Bible [link]:

Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”[ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. — John 8:54-59

Here are the seven “I Am” statements of Jesus in John [link].

The quote about entering the the far off land

People come to the Great I AM in strange and mysterious ways. I think sometimes they are with Jesus and don’t even know it. Often, quoting a Bible verse is no more help to people than their latest walk in the park — and could prove to be much less helpful. C.S. Lewis is honest about that. If you read his spiritual memoir, he is just being honest about his own journey.

We bought the audible book of Till We Have Faces in March and finished it in June — we have not become preoccupied with the immense library of stuff we can listen to. But the timing turned out to be just right. The ending was a great prelude to the questions the kids were singing.  At least they were questions I hoped they were asking as they began their journey into the “far off land,” rather than just consuming nice words and music, as we are tempted to do.

C.S. Lewis gets at the heart of why our spiritual journeys are often long and convoluted [Audible]:

When the time comes to you
at which you will be forced at last
to utter the speech which has lain
at the center of your soul for years
which you have, all that time,
idiot-like been saying over and over,
you will not talk about the joy of words.
I saw well why the gods to not speak to us openly,
nor let us answer.
Till that word can be dug out of us,
why should they hear the babble
that we think we mean?
How can they meet us face to face
till we have faces?

I know it is not obvious what Lewis is talking about in that quote. It is not crystal clear if you read the whole book! But it is at least as clear as Beyonce calling us to be one with the Great I Am. Crystal clarity is way over-rated.

About the video: Aneel Aranha is good at A.I. He came to faith later in life, but he is making the most of it. 

The quote that sticks in my mind

No matter what scraps of truth and love I find along the way to my destiny, I rely on God to make a feast of them and to host the feast, to boot. Though we try to sit in God’s seat and host our own party, grace is new every morning. We are pulled toward the light like my lilies, growing more in the shade than they should be. I see myself, my children,  grandchildren, and my clients stretching toward the light all the time.

They lean, even though they are, like we are all, to a degree:

hearers of the word and not doers,
they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;
for they look at themselves and, on going away,
immediately forget what they were like.
But those who look into the perfect law,
the law of liberty,
and persevere,
being not hearers who forget but doers who act—
they will be blessed in their doing.. — James 1:23-25

Every little doing of reaching out and up matters, no matter what your core story keeps repeating. Every step of keeping love, of going to the “far off land” — both that vast inner territory and the vast times and places yet to be known, matter.

May the good songs elongate in your head as you go. May God bless us children as we take our first steps, next steps and repeated steps, and bless us all as we persevere on the journey.

Return to the Garden: All is not lost

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The sawn vine

For about a year, now, I have taken it upon myself to restore the garden at the center of our old Philly neighborhood. The previous caretaker, a well-loved neighbor, died years ago and no one had taken up the cause until we moved in.

As in many Philly forests, thick vines had snaked up into the trees. Last summer, I took many of them down. This year, I finally made my way to the far corner, where another vine was sucking the life out of a pine tree. When I saw it was fuzzy, I suspected it might poison me. But it was beginning to rain, so I did not delay and took my saw to it. It only poisoned me a little.

Besides, I love the Garden. And the garden loves me back in so many ways.

Gardens are love in action

Gardens are “thin places” where we meet God. — at least they are if we read the Bible! In the Bible, gardens are where the loveliness of creation is revealed, focused, and tended.  As you know, the creation story in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, begins in a garden. Then at the close of the New Testament, in John’s Revelation, a garden at the end of time is pictured in which there are trees with leaves for the healing of the nations.

In the middle of the Bible, the Song of Songs imagines a garden where lover and beloved delight in one another:

“A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, springing up in flowing streams from Lebanon… Awake, O north wind, and come thou south wind: blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow… I went down into my garden to see the fruits of the valley, and to see if the vines had flowered, and the pomegranates were in blossom.” — from Song of Songs 4-6

You can almost smell it and feel the breeze!

The Song of Songs is a sexy book (I started humming “Unforgettable” when I thought of it). May you have a lover who fits right into it with you. Regardless, God can fit into it with you, too. It is also describing the spiritual garden where the Lover becomes one with creation, and with each of us.

We may have a lingering memory of losing Eden.  But in the Song of Songs, the Lover cries out, “Let my beloved come into the garden, to eat the fruit of the trees that are therein!” God is calling us back, calling us to return.

Love planted in a wasteland

My wife and I often look at each other these days and say something like, “We did not know we were growing up in the garden spot of U.S. history.” Against all odds, during our lifetime, the country was working on love, justice, beauty, and delight in creation— even led by the likes of Lyndon Johnson, of all people!! But like history ebbs and flows, it was not very long until now we are exchanging these things for prejudice, oppression, hatred, division, and war.  Exchanging the Garden for the Wasteland.

But all is not lost. Jesus lays out a way of return to the garden. He spent his last night before the way was inaugurated in a garden. Then they wrapped his body in spices like we could smell in the Song of Songs. It says in the Bible, “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so […] they laid Jesus there.”

There’s an ancient tradition in the Church that says Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified, occupied the same place where once the Garden of Eden had been—and that the Cross, the Tree on which Jesus was crucified, stood on the very spot where once the Tree of Knowledge had grown—the tree whose fruit expelled us from the Garden.  And now on the Cross, Jesus becomes the ripened fruit of a new Tree; but this time we are invited to eat.

It doesn’t really matter if the tradition is true territorially (although we certainly love to argue about things like that, don’t we?) because it is true of each of us personally. The wasteland we carry in us and often extend into the world is the very place where Jesus is crucified and invites us into a new way, a way back into the Garden.

I probably should not admit this in print, but I spoke to the poison ivy and told it, “I admire your adaptability, but this is not the place for you.” Then I carefully put it in a bag. Love your enemies, but don’t follow them around or let them steal your joy.

All you need is love

After we figured on how to get Pandora on the new TV the other day, the granddaughters wanted to replace Tahitian music with the Beatles. The oldest of them is about the age I was in 1967 when the Fab Four performed “All You Need Is Love” for the first live, international, satellite TV production. It was transmitted to an estimated 400 million viewers across 25 countries. We made sure to watch it.

In retrospect, the broadcast seems like a sweet moment in a charmed era. And I am shocked at the impact the stubbornly-naive Beatles still have on my descendants. So many people were demanding access to the Garden, then!

There is a fruit we love as soon as we taste it. It is the love that shows us the way back to the Garden. We need it to survive: forgiveness, mercy, peace, reconciliation.  Jesus is the Tree and the Gardener. The Song of Songs writer sings it with the Beatles:

Place me as a seal upon your heart,
For love is as strong as death,
its ardor as unyielding as the grave.
It burns like a blazing fire,
Like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love.
Rivers cannot wash it away. — 8:6-7

Finding Jesus in the garden

Some people imagine Mary Magdalene singing those lines from the Song of Songs as she prepared Jesus for burial. She was on the way with Jesus in his final hours. She was present for every step of Jesus’ final journey — she was there, at the Cross as he died, there to anoint the body and prepare it for burial, and finally, there as the first witness to Love’s return.  On Easter morning, she goes back to the garden, and there she finds the words of the song are fulfilled. Love is as strong as, and stronger, than death; it’s ardor as unyielding as the grave. No flood can erode it or algorithm dilute it.

I’ve been wondering if I have not been enjoying my work in the garden so much this year, because I am surrounded by an increasing wasteland of a country. My grandchildren are the generation the sociologists keep talking about who inherit the work of the hedge fund robbers, the disillusionment of endless war, the rubble which grifters leave behind and a national debt they will never repay. In the middle of that, like our common little greenspace in the middle of Philly, the Garden speaks to me. “Come,” my Beloved calls out, “Come into the garden, and eat the fruit of the trees!”  Come and eat of love.

Rembrandt van Rijn – Christ and St Mary Magdalen at the Tomb, before 1669

Of course, Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener! He’s the Master Gardener in his Garden of Love.  All along he’s been showing us the way back, and now he crosses back, even from death, to show us one last time why we are here.  We’re here to garden with him — to tend and cultivate love and beauty, mercy, compassion, justice, and joy.  It’s why we’ve always been here.  And the Garden has always been there waiting for us to return.

Caryll Houselander, a Roman Catholic writer and poet who died in the 1950s says:

[While] Christ was in the tomb; the whole world was sown with the seed of Christ’s life; that which happened thirty years ago in the womb of the Virgin Mother was happening now, but now it was happening yet more secretly, yet more mysteriously, in the womb of the whole world.  Christ had already told those who flocked to hear Him preach that the seed must fall into the earth, or else remain by itself alone.  Now the seed of His life was hidden in darkness in order that His life should quicken in countless hearts, over and over again for all time.  His burial, which seemed to be the end, was the beginning.  It was the beginning of Christ-life in multitudes of souls.

Over and over again the love sprouts and finds a tender. Maybe it is the gardeners who are saving the world, making the landscape free from poison ivy and Pete Hegseth. Regardless, we can be sure the Master Gardener will rise again in whatever era darkness reigns. Jesus only seems hidden until you run into him on Pandora or in your own backyard.

[Thanks to Matthew Wright for inspiration]