Category Archives: Spiritual direction

Return to the Garden: All is not lost

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

Planting hope: Even facing the impossibility of family

A life in the Spirit, Marriage and Family, Poetry, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

We planted a dogwood tree in our little back yard. It is how we respond to Trump and his flailing fascism project.  We likely won’t see it come into its full glory. But, as we say, we will stay in the game of hope, realized or not, until the last buzzer.

In 1893 the U.S. Marines overthrew the government of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii; later that year the Panic of 1893 kicked off a economic depression. About that time, Lucy Larcom wrote a poem:

He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope;
Leaves unfold into horizons free.
So man’s life must climb
From the clods of time
Unto heavens sublime.
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree,
What the glory of thy boughs shall be? — from Plant a Tree 

1n 1973 AIM activists occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded knee surrendered to federal authorities after 71 days; later that year Alexander Butterfield informed the Senate Watergate Committee that President Nixon had secret recordings of incriminating conversations. Wendell Berry wrote a poem:

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. — from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Spend a minute with me and let’s nurture some seeds of hope with the poets.

We have a shortage of hope

One of our old friends was visiting last week so we invited the family over for dinner. I was impressed by her being impressed by their sense of security. They give me hope.

But they are inheriting a world full of insecurity. We’ll see if they become tree planters, or if they have grandchildren of their own.

You are probably aware that the birthrate is going down all over the world — especially in places where women have the right to choose their own destiny rather than being subject to a man. Their choice seems to be a strange thing to need to point out, but equality in the U.S. is not a done deal AT ALL. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and we can see how fragile that was.

There are many reasons women are not giving birth at rates that sustain their nation’s population. In the New York Times this week, Anna Louie Sussman said the main reason is hopelessness. Married couples cannot justify launching their child into uncertainty. Sussman is the author of the forthcoming book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty.

Prospective parents may be hopeless because they are godless people who think they are stuck with gaining enough power to rule their private world — and they can’t control it well enough. Or they may be hopeless because the rulers of the world in the last 30 years (here is your list of billionaires)  have infested the ground with weeds of disaster that overwhelm their every positive step.

Sussman provides an example of this new instinct among potential procreators:

Raleigh Rivera and her husband had spent five years fine-tuning their parenthood plan: In 2025, they would move from Los Angeles, where they have been living since 2023, back to Ms. Rivera’s hometown, Minneapolis, where they could afford to buy a home and start a family. “We both have been baby- and kid-crazy for our entire lives,” she said.

They had planned to start trying when Ms. Rivera turned 30, a birthday she celebrated last summer. But that same year, everything that had felt stable to them started to crumble. It began with the Palisades and Eaton fires decimating parts of the city they called home. The prospect of a first-time home buyer credit, something Kamala Harris had campaigned on, had disappeared. By summer, Ms. Rivera’s parents in Minnesota were choking on smoke drifting over the border from Canadian wildfires. Her husband is a citizen, but since he is Mexican American, she worried that racial profiling policies put a target on his back. Ms. Rivera, who has a master’s degree in public health, worried about sending a future child to school with unvaccinated classmates. “We felt like we had worked hard on ourselves, making sure that our finances and our health and everything was in order,” she told me when we spoke in August. “And those plans are on pause right now because everything is — it’s just impossible to know.”

An age of uncertainty

Researchers run into this sense of impossibility wherever they go. I run into it in my therapy office almost every day. If you are trying to make useful policies for the future or you are predicting what future demographics will be so you can get ready, you need to factor in that young people bring an inescapable and crushing sense to the discussion — that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Sussman says, “Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.”

The future has never been assured, but it feels as though we are living in a time of spectacular uncertainty. Here are the reverbs concocting a vibe:

  • In the United States, workers spend less years at a job and experience less stable income.
  • Life expectancy, once inevitably increasing, has fallen for less-educated women and men.
  • Many of the forces our economy is built on — A.I., immigration, global trade — feel distressingly volatile.
  • “Disruption,” once a byword for a disturbance or a problem, is the governing ethos of a terrifyingly powerful sector of our economy.
  • The rise of prediction markets has turned the world into one large casino.
  • The climate crisis is spiraling.
  • The costs of everything that could enable parenthood, whether that’s a roof over one’s head or child care, are unaffordable.
  • The past half-century has brought us breathtaking inequality, accompanied by a sharp decline in social mobility.
  • Even declining fertility rates feed the vibe: How will society function if each generation is smaller than the last?

The two generations currently of childbearing age bear the psychological and financial scars of coming of age during world-scale catastrophes. Their trauma amplifies the vibe:

  • Older millennials entered the labor market during the Great Recession; many watched their parents lose their jobs or homes.
  • Members of Gen Z, whose lives were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, now find themselves competing against A.I. for entry-level jobs and even prospective partners.

Now the man running America seems single-mindedly devoted to chaos at home and abroad.

You can probably feel the anxiety rise in you as you read all this stuff, right? If not, turn on a screen. The Great Recession’s outsize impact may also be due to its status as the first economic crisis in the era of a nonstop digital information deluge, which rendered it, and the sense of dread it engendered, all but inescapable, even for people not financially affected. The same kind of impact is now generated by natural disasters, political upheaval and war from anywhere in the globe; no one is insulated.  We don’t just bear our own uncertainty, we bear the amplified uncertainty all around us as well. It is hard to disentangle from what concerns mostly others to concentrate on what concerns mostly you.

Faith boosts fertility

In some studies, researchers have found an element that boosts fertility: faith. And I don’t think they were just collecting J.D. Vance sermons. For many believers, faith provides deeper certainty.

The famous Romans 5:1-5 is basically a poem about hope in the hands of the paraphraser, J.B. Phillips:

Since then it is by faith that we are justified,
let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace,
and here we take our stand,
in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—
we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.
Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance;
this in turn will develop a mature character,
and a character of this sort produces a steady hope,
a hope that will never disappoint us.
Already we have some experience of the love of God
flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.

To read these lines in the manner Paul wrote them, we need to exercise our spiritual awareness deepening into Holy Spirit awareness. We can all get there.

But it might be hard to get out of the gnawing fear we feel to do so. The ordinary awareness of this present age is rifled with uncertainty. That has always been the normal state of humanity separated from God. But today it is even worse, as humanity is wrapped up in a virtual oneness under the thumb of the purveyors and manipulators of an artificial intelligence.

My family experienced a large dose of uncertainty last month due to death and illness in the clan. I’ve watched us reach for the resilience to cope with loss and change. Some have turned to faith, and love. And I think there is some shaky hope that some did not live by until they needed to. It is sad to find yourself old and in need of hope in the most uncertain of times – your old age in the age of Trump.

Phillips gets at what Paul has to say to to encourage us — young and old alike, very well, I think:

  • Grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
  • Here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.
  • We can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.
  • Character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us.

I don’t know about you, of course, but when I read those lines a few times, I felt better. I made myself read them again just now because I want to feel better.

When the Tennessee legislature bends the knee to Trump and turns back the clock that  briefly marked an attempt to undo the racism of the U.S. society, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and we take our stand in that.

When I drove over the line from gentrification to devastation in North Philly last night, I knew we could be full of joy here and now even in our trials and tribulations, not because we don’t care that the world is an uncertain, cruel place, but because the love of God is being poured into it.

So we plant trees. We have children in hope. Not because we are certain the world is worthy of our love and trust. But because we trust the love being poured into it.

We grasp the peace and take our stand in the certainty that God has hope for US! Jesus is joy, itself, no matter what the passing-away powers do. If anything can change the world and change us to see the goodness built into it, it is people who hope like that.

Jungian archetypes for men: We need the wisdom and balance

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction

I have four sons and six grandsons; most of my clients are men. So I have a ringside seat, so to speak, to see what men are being taught to be by today’s society. They’ve been overwhelmed, since 2016, by the example of Donald Trump and his sons, the most brazen, corrupt robbers the country has ever known. And lately they must have noticed the toxic example of Pete Hegseth, the former Fox news analyst who is now Secretary of Defense, who said in March:

We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.

Imagine your sons applying that immorality to their daily relationships! Just imagine being a member of Congress who had to deal with the defensiveness of the Sec. of Defense last week at the hearings about the Iran War. I think he answered a few questions with respect but in response to the ones he did not like he went straight to DARVO and puffed out his bullying chest [SNL].  Drunk with power.

The quest for power

The present drift of male mental health and spirituality focuses on power. You can see it in the huge adoption of first-person shooter video games. It is hard to think that anything has developed young male attitudes more than games like these:

  • Counter-Strike 2  (2023):  A “competitive, tactical shooter game with precise gunplay” game from Valve Corporation, founded in 1996. Valve also operates Steam, the world’s largest PC digital distribution platform. In 2025 the game generated $2 billion in revenue.
  • Apex Legends (2019): A “fast-paced, hero-based battle royale with unique movement mechanics.” It made over $3 billion for Electronic Arts from 2023-5.
  • Doom Eternal (2020): A “high-octane, fast-paced ‘boomer shooter'” game “focusing on aggressive combat.” It made $450 million for id in its first nine months of release. It is difficult to estimate the billions in revenue the Doom franchise has produced since 1993.
  • Delta Force (2025): A “modern, large-scale military shooter” game from Team Jade. In Q4 2025 revenue exceeded $138 million and reached $7 million in a single day on April 17, 2026.

There are many more FPS games on the market, occupying the imagination and time of young men.

Last summer, at the Drone Innovation Cell in Vilseck near the Hohenfels, Germany Training Area, Capt. Ronan Sefton, an intelligence officer in the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, explained to Business Insider that piloting drones effectively and playing video games were correlated. “The people who are learning the fastest, able to fly the most controlled, fly the fastest, and very accurately” are gamers.

Naturally, the White House released a video that characterized the “Epic Fury” assault on Iran as a video game [link].

The first six days of Epic Fury cost the U.S. 11.3 billion dollars! Professor Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert at the Harvard Kennedy School, expects the cost to reach a trillion. She identified several reasons why this military operation could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. national debt well into the future.

She estimates the short-term, upfront costs as totaling around $2 billion per day during the 40 days of live conflict. This includes the price of munitions, troops, and damage to military assets — such as the shooting down of three F-15 fighter jets due to friendly fire from Kuwait. Sorry to be crass, but it was a giant, masturbatory power orgasm. It is power porn in action.

The resurgent power model for masculinity has a virtual home in podcasts, games and porn now tagged as the “manosphere.” Our grandson told us about the Netflix documentary exploring it.

Our men are surrounded by these examples. And they are bullied by them. What will become of our sons? We live in a world of rapid technological change and shifting social norms. We all feel confused, if not dissociated or depressed! Many men find themselves adrift—uncertain of their role, their purpose, or what healthy masculinity even looks like. The traditional models of manhood often seem outdated or problematic, yet the alternatives can feel vague or unattainable or untrustworthy.

Positive male development

I was thinking about producing a men’s retreat based on much of the good material I have used in the past. But I wondered if there would even be an audience of anyone under fifty for working on what it means to be a healthy man. I honestly wondered if would-be participants might feel they could get into trouble with women for centering themselves or in trouble with bullies for being soft if they ventured out.

That’s too bad, because the ancient wisdom about archetypical patterns of human behavior and psychology provides a framework for understanding and expressing masculinity in ways that are both transformative and balanced. [The Enneagram is a form of the thinking that tries to apply archetypal wisdom regardless of male or female].

The famous book about male mental health and spirituality feels dated these days, but when it first arrived in the 90’s, alongside the FPS video games, it already seemed ancient, because it is.  Psychologists Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette put it together in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering Masculinity Through the Lens of Archetypal Psychology – A Journey into the Male Psyche and Its Four Essential Aspects

Women have archetypal energies, too, of course Queen, huntress, sage, mother, etc. But it is all one Spirit, Paul says. Men have to deal with their expressions, some innate, some socialized in their own ways.

Categorizing ourselves and adopting strict definitions won’t help us develop healthy, adult consciousness. All Jungian archetype work, deals in metaphor, and delves into unconscious forces and universal connections more than scientific categories. But as difficult or mysterious as it may seem, it is important to stay aware of these energies because they are being perverted and broken by the men in charge as we speak. [Andrew Tate teaching]

Beyond Stereotypes

The Jungian archetypes transcend limiting stereotypes about masculinity. They offer a vision of manhood that includes strength and tenderness, action and reflection, independence and connection.

When men understand the main archetypes calling and moving them, they no longer feel forced into a single expression of masculinity. They can draw on different energies for different situations—embodying Warrior focus when completing a challenging task, King leadership when making family decisions, Lover presence when connecting with loved ones, and Sage discernment when facing difficult or transcendent choices.

In Missouri

If you were at any of the “No Kings” marches this year, you probably saw signs that rebelled  the unhealthy expressions of male archetypes. Each one can manifest in unhealthy ways when overdeveloped or underdeveloped:

  • The King becomes either a tyrant (overdeveloped) or a weakling (underdeveloped).
  • The Warrior becomes either a sadist or a masochist.
  • The Lover becomes either an addict or impotent.
  • The Sage becomes either a detached intellectual or a fool.

Understanding these imbalances helps men recognize patterns in their own behavior and make conscious choices toward healthier expression.

 Practical Applications

How do these ancient concepts apply to daily life? Consider these general examples:

  • Parenting: A father draws on King energy when setting consistent boundaries, Warrior energy when protecting his children from harm, Lover energy when showing affection and encouragement, and Sage energy when teaching life lessons.
  • Workplace: A colleague uses King energy to organize a project, Warrior energy to overcome obstacles, Lover energy to collaborate effectively with others, and Sage energy to reflect on and learn from mistakes.
  • Relationships: A partner embodies King energy by taking responsibility, Warrior energy by committing fully, Lover energy by expressing care and appreciation, and Sage energy by listening deeply.
  • Personal Development: A man develops King energy through leadership roles, Warrior energy through discipline and physical challenges, Lover energy through creative pursuits, and Sage energy through study and reflection.

The archetypes are not the sum of all knowledge, of course. But I have been surprised to know many people who don’t have an inner map of any kind to follow. These basic pathways help us develop as they give us ways to think and feel about ourselves and our behavior.

The archetypes are not the last word on gender identity, either. Transgender and non-binary thinkers also deal with them in positive ways, though, on the face of it, the uninitiated might see them are the epitome of binary. This discussion on Reddit might get you started [link].

The goal isn’t to perfect each archetype separately, but to integrate them into a cohesive whole. This integration is a lifelong journey, not a destination.

Many American men are socialized to be tough all the time, even if they know they are not—that is their version of the Warrior. When they understand they can be a Warrior and a Lover, a King and a Sage, they feel more complete and happier. By reconnecting with these timeless patterns, men don’t find a rigid prescription for behavior, but a flexible framework that allows for authentic expression of their full humanity.

In a world that often seems to have lost its bearings around masculinity, these ancient archetypes provide a map—not dictating a single path, but offering landmarks to navigate by as each man finds his own way forward. For the sake of my family, I pray they find a way into their lives before the oligarchs’ disciples poison our souls completely.

Who are you at work?: Which way of Jesus are you missing?

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

If you are just keeping your nose above water, trying to be a Christian at work somehow, this post might help. It is about how we learn to relate to God in real time, not sometime or some-other-time-when-I-have-time, but all the time.

At the center of the classic dialogue Jesus followers have been having about prayer is the duality of physical and spiritual, the same duality Jesus masters for us. I think the old words “cataphatic” and “apophatic” have been well-used to describe the more physical/right brain/positive practices and the more spiritual/left brain/negative practices that help us connect with God. The two words also describe two ways of thinking (and doing theology) that might be affecting how you do your job – or survive it.

Oversimply put, a cataphatic approach to God (and life) looks at what can happen in a given time and place. I see it as “doing my best with what I’ve got.“ Maybe it is what “the glass is half full” kind of people do. People often use the word “positive” to explain this way, or moving along the via affirmativa. So when we describe God from this view we see what God is (e.g., “God is love,” “God is omnipresent”).

Likewise, oversimply put, an apophatic approach to God (and life) looks at what is NOT happening in time and place at all, because things about God are beyond us. I see it as looking for what is best because I am not there yet. God is pouring out whatever can be in a glass and I want to be a vessel which can be filled. People often use the word “negative” to explain this way, or moving along the via subtractiva. So when we describe God from this view, we see what God is not, recognizing how God transcends human comprehension (e.g. “God is not evil,” “God is not limited by human notions of what is good”).

Very few people who deliberately seek God practice exclusively along a positive or negative way. But you may lean one way or another. If this discussion helps you see yourself more clearly or open a door to living a richer life, I’ve hit the mark.

Cataphatic ways

Cataphatic thinking focuses on positive attributes, using words, images, and concepts to describe God. It emphasizes that we can know God through revelation and creation.

So my hero, Francis of Assisi, is well known for wandering through the Umbrian countryside seeing the depths of God in a leaf and communing with Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Walk into most Catholic or Orthodox church buildings and it is a cataphatic explosion: statues, bells, incense and a focus on the Eucharist. I think Pentecostal churches take it a step further, emphasizing the power of God in the here and now.

So if your job is a pain or you’re bored with it, you might try on some cataphatic thinking when you arrive. In every person and every task there is some kind of beauty to be found; Jesus is present in the people and in the moment. That’s why we can do all things to the glory of God! Plus, you are there at work with Jesus by your side. Your aliveness is a gift to give and God-with-you is ready to love and serve.

Apophatic ways

Apophatic thinking focuses on denying any limited human concept of God. It argues that because God is infinite, positive statements are inherently inadequate, leading people to “strip away” any images or thoughts in order to experience God’s transcendence.

Many of us have been taught to meditate by emptying ourselves to make space for God’s Spirit. I agree that God is deeply met in silence. When you walk into many Protestant church buildings, they are stripped of ornamentation that might distract from God’s transcendence. They are empty spaces where God and his people represent the Spirit and not spaces full of imagery which traps God in time. The emphasis is on the word coming from the outside, not inside. Like Martin Luther says: “This life is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise.” (I tried to talk about the excesses of this last week).

So if your job is a pain or you are bored with it, you might try on some apophatic thinking while you are there. At times it makes sense to take a break and return to silence somewhere, even if it is in a bathroom stall. After finishing a task you could rest in God’s presence, if even for ten seconds, letting everything go before you pick something up again. You could put a post it somewhere with a quote that reminds of you who you really are. How about, “Nothing in all creation will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus”? All the monks centered their day on this process: work and prayer.

This discussion is also common sense

Some people might say I’m describing the different ways extraverts and introverts approach life. And that may be true. Extraverts lean into relationships and the present moment to feel alive, and introverts need alone time to rejuvenate. Nobody is just one thing or another, I don’t think (or I could positively say “I think,” right?). If you are an extravert, you might need to make a few friends at work and not get isolated. If you are an introvert, you might need to find a park nearby to have lunch alone.

Health experts talk about positive and negative approaches without God in them at all. For instance, think about dieting. Positive approaches to dieting talk adding nutrient-dense foods (vegetables, fruits, whole grains) to crowd out less-healthy options. They call for mindful eating — paying attention to hunger and fullness cues rather than following rigid, external rules. They encourage forming sustainable habits, making small, consistent changes, and having self-compassion — viewing setbacks as part of the process rather than a failure. They’re behind the Health at Every Size (HAES) discussion.

My pastor is a “health at every size” kind of Christian. He especially likes to help us see God in every person. Sometimes even I think he could be less about what we feel and more about what we think.

Negative approaches to dieting are all about limiting food or eliminating entire food groups. They organize schedules for eating, like “intermittent fasting.”  They talk about “good” or “bad” eating, demonstrated by all the eating plans you can buy even geared to your body type. They often motivate with an eye on perfection, like a perfectly fit Pelaton coach cheering you on from the screen.

I’ve had more pastors like Martin Luther, who see life as a struggle against sin and a constant effort to know God. Those folks sometimes create church members accustomed to being motivated by criticism.

So the ancient Christian practices of prayer either come from common sense or created it. You decide. Regardless, which way do you lean? It is probably making a difference at work.

Who are you at work?

I got to thinking about all this because I spoke with someone who treated their job in an apophatic way. When they went home and had their “real life” they were one person, but at work they were “on the job” and felt constrained to act like a job person. They were on an unconscious via negative:

  • At work I am what I am not.
  • Work is what I am not.
  • God is not in the work but I need the money.

One of my older acquaintances was talking about the challenge they felt when training new, younger workers to replace those who were on the way out. At one point they were looking for one of these new employees because their team was trying to solve a client’s problem before the day ended, as they had promised to do. They asked someone where she was and they told him, “Oh. She left. She goes home at 4:30.” The boss was finding some meaning and life in the job, the team, and their success. The new hire saw the job as limited, unfulfilling, only worth so much time. One was more cataphatic and one more apophatic.

I think most of us are apophatic when it comes to the job. We see it as what it is not. And we generally see it as a place where God is not. As a result, we end up not something, ourselves. Maybe we are a good employee. But we are an employee and not ourselves. We’ve got to be “on” at work but our hearts are often “off” and that hurts.

Last Friday, on Howard Thurman day, he gave us a good way to balance out the negative and positive way. He said:

There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one’s experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action.

When I go to work, I need to operate out of an “inward spring of confidence” that flows from my experience of God with me. That experience is going to take some apophatic practice through which I have created a space where I can meet God no matter what is happening, because I met God when nothing was happening.

That spring of living water welling up in me keeps “alive a thousand springs of action.” Every day is full of the sights, sounds and loves of God. The “shifting events” of the workplace are full of cataphatic opportunities to love, tell the truth, and be exemplary. If Jesus were wandering around your workplace in the guise of a boss or a new hire, he would certainly find someone to love. And he would see the beauty all around him – you’d be there, after all.

I told my beautiful, challenged acquaintance their workplace in their giant company was a vast territory where they could meet God in hundreds of ways every day. Even their suffering at the hands of godless capitalists could have meaning if they were not just NOT at work. You might have different advice. I recently fixed my comments function, so now you can let us all know what you feel and think, if you like.

 

Being outside of God: Thoughts on being in

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I attended a psychology conference recently with a large contingent of Evangelicals among the presenters and participants. All day long, as people explored the meaning of faith, there was an intrusive theme I kept hearing, “I am on the outside getting in.” God may be welcoming us in. Or we may be struggling to get in. But the existential reality with which most seemed to agree is that we are all on the outs with God.

I felt outside of their “outsideness.” My “other” existential reality never dawned on me so acutely. I have not stopped thinking about it ever since. I really do feel I am in with God, in Christ, right now. Undeservedly but absolutely inside.

All weekend long I kept taking issue, in my own thoughts, at least, with the extreme sense of autonomy some people were stuck with. It is a dilemma. For psychologists, autonomy is a fundamental truth to be protected. For Christians, it is a good thing but not THE thing.

Autonomy

You can get a definition of “autonomy” by watching The Pitt. The doctors on that TV show are protecting it all the time; it is a main element of their ethics. They painstakingly hold back their opinions and even advice so the patient can exercise their freedom to choose. On one episode the ER gave a dying woman a long time in a scarce bed to make up her mind about how she was going to die.

As a result of all this painstaking, the doctors end up very much like God, I suppose, letting us unfold without bossing us around. Of course, the opposite is true, too. The doctors are often portrayed as having no choice at all, constrained by science, protocol, profits and time. They are constantly complaining about being trapped by the needs of the emergency room, enslaved to their paperwork, and subject to their foibles and their relationships. They seem to feel they have no autonomy at all.

The definition of autonomy is, simply, the capacity to think your own thoughts and take action on them, not be dominated by someone else and enslaved to their will. We’re all committed to it, all feel we don’t have enough, and all feel subject to something or someone that thwarts it all day.

As a psychotherapist, much of my work is to help people exercise their autonomy to think and feel as they desire and make new choices accordingly.  Mostly, my clients want to be free of what ties them up so they can love and be loved, and so they can contribute to society and receive from others.

The Evangelical clients tend to have a further dilemma, because they believe if they think anything but God’s thoughts it is a sin, and if they feel their feelings (most of which are immoral or prone to be), it is likely a sin. They seem to be determined to take orders from Jesus the King, which releases them from the need to listen to themselves and change. It is a theological nightmare. They are strangely condemned to be in charge of their future, very autonomous and alone, but they are totally subject to someone else’s will, which is quite beyond their ability to accomplish but which is a life and death matter to accomplish, nonetheless.

For instance, the last verse of the version of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded we sang on Good Friday had this final verse:

My days are few, O fail not, with thine eternal power,
to hold me that I quail not in death’s most fearful hour;
that I may fight befriended, and see in my last strife
to me thine arms extended upon the cross of life.

Did I hear the theology right? This seems to be the gist of it: “I need God’s power to hold me (I pictured a tractor beam) because I am on the other side of death; I’m outside of the place Jesus lives. I have to fight to stay on my quest to be inside, where Jesus, one day, will greet me with open arms.

My friend protested on Facebook on Good Friday: God doesn’t love us because Jesus died. Jesus died because God loves us. Even though this is common New Testament, many of the Christians at my conference were still working out a transaction. Jesus died for me, so I have to die for him to seal the deal and get into eternity. Jesus died for me so I could gain the power to do my assignment and so be good enough to get into heaven.

To sum it up: Evangelical Christians often feel “outside” God’s presence due to a performance-based spirituality that equates grace with legalistic obedience rather than a free gift. This mentality stems from a “sin-fixation,” whereby believers constantly scrutinize their actions to measure their spiritual standing. This approach often leads to a cycle of shame, where failing to meet high behavioral standards feels like losing God’s favor, creating a perpetual need to get back in.

Let’s unpack the elements of that a bit.

Performance

A twenty-something friend told me she could not attend Jr. High summer camp as child because she had not yet spoken in tongues. She faked it. I still marvel at this. How could someone make the ecstatic experience of tongues, totally uncontrollable by definition, into a criteria for getting into camp? I understand the delight of having the Holy Spirit “come upon me.” And I think tongues were, in the Bible and continue to be, a sign of God’s presence. But make the experience a general rubric for goodness or acceptance? Teach the junior highers the need to perform the trappings of faith well? 1 Corinthians is an argument against people who would do such a thing. But if we are all outside, we will likely invent a criteria for getting in —  and, unfortunately, for keeping people out.

Measurement

Many evangelicals define their standing with God by how well they obey set rules—such as church attendance, tithing, and avoiding specific sins. When they “stumble,” they feel as though they have fallen out of grace, confusing sanctification (the process of becoming like Christ) with justification (being declared righteous). People measure their sanctification to prove their justification as if they were in charge of their salvation!

I went to a conference session by a Christian Psychologist (who I love) and he was using research models to measure love, since why should God be outside the religion science has made for itself? It was a nice attempt to put measurement back where it belongs.

Self-control

An intense focus on personal sins can lead to “creeping legalism,” where believers spend more time obsessing over controlling sin than experiencing the freedom of grace. This “sin-fixation” results in a constant need to apologize for being human, leading to a feeling of being “outside.” It often results in the need to control oneself, others and the world which never goes well.

Self-control is one of the fruit of the spirit. There is a long history of people using the word to keep themselves undefiled, especially by sexual impurity – because they want to get in. But a more accurate meaning of the fruit is: the healthy empowerment one feels when they experience autonomy, the gift of being one’s true self. In Greek philosophy, self-mastery was basically the best one could do, it was the best to which one could aspire in a cosmos full of impersonal, often irrational gods. But Christians live in a world given by a Creator who loves them and leads them, day by day. Self-control is the calm capacity to give as grace has been given to each of us.

Permission

Some evangelical teachings can create a mindset where grace is viewed as permission to sin, but simultaneously, “unmerited favor” feels fragile and easily lost. People are in a balancing act between feeling good about where they are and waiting for the other sin shoe to drop. This dichotomy leads to anxiety about one’s standing with God. The idea is, “Once I’ve given in to sin I am tainted.” This leads some people to fake being in, even when they feel tainted. It leads others into self-exile, since they know they will never be fully in.

One serious teen I knew became a Christian and showed up exhausted to talk to me one day. When I asked him why he looked so tired, he finally revealed. “I have to stay awake because I have a lot of sins to confess. I especially don’t want the sun to go down on my anger.” He really loved the idea of not getting away with anything, but he could not permit God be in charge of the forgiving. He was perpetually in charge of making the right choice to get permission to come in.

Promises

The gap between the promise of a transformed life and the reality of human brokenness creates a sense of disillusionment. The idea is, “If all the promises are not being fulfilled in me, I must be out.” Validating their own authenticity according to God’s performance can make it difficult for believers to accept they are already “inside” God’s grace. Especially when we are sick in body or mind, we assess our well-being according to what we think ought to be true. For many believers, any sin or suffering mars their perfection in Christ.

Assessing ourselves according to how well the promises of God are realized in our life is a recipe for being perpetually out of the exquisite feeling of swimming in the ocean of grace into which we were launched at birth. If the test tube truths the religion of science teaches dominate us (which are often disappointing in their own limited universe), God is regularly disappointing and we are usually disappointed or disappointing, depending on how we respond. We can end up loaded with a false guilt about how bad I must be for God not to fulfill in me what he fulfills in others!

Obedience

Dallas Willard explains how many Christians mistakenly see Christ’s teachings as laws to obey to gain grace, rather than as reflections of the life that comes to them through the new birth. This fundamental misunderstanding keeps believers striving to “get in” to a kingdom they are already part of.

This misunderstanding is so universally assumed that the TV show The Good Place could have it as a central premise. Kristen Bell does not believe she should be in the (what comes to be revealed as an ersatz) “good place” because she is selfish. It seems almost everyone is convinced that salvation requires being good enough to deserve it and obedience to arbitrary rules is key to achieving it.

In Christ

I guess I should not blame the Evangelicals for falling into heresy, since it seems like from the Middle Ages onward, Europe was a long road to re-centering humans. Christianity was reduced to a penance system long before they got there.

DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man put’s the idea of the dangerous kind of autonomy into a picture. The circle represents divine or spiritual perfection (cosmos), while the square represents the material, earthly world. By bridging both, the figure highlights the human body as a microcosm of the universe. Humans are central, especially men.

According to DaVinci’s chart, I am autonomous. I am innately free to choose. In relation to God, I am exiled or welcomed in. I relation to others I can make relationships or end them.

But how did I get out of relationship if I were never in? From the beginning to the end of the Bible (the Evangelicals purportedly love), our sense of being out is a matter of being removed from where we were. Being in with God is our natural human state.

Paul is always referring to being “in Christ.” The phrase is a spatial metaphor which signifies the believer’s renewed sense of being safe at home as opposed to their previous uncertainty before faith and baptism. Being our true selves in Christ or our false self in our autonomy is Paul’s version of being  in our out. The way Paul sees it, Jesus was at the creation of the world and we all bear his image. And according to Jesus, we are all are touched and called into abundance by God’s love. We are all in the love of God whether we think we can choose that or not. God sees us according to who we are in Christ. We have the freedom to turn away. But that is not natural or inevitable.

Being outside where nothing but the power to do “righteousness” proves our worth and where our successes give God the glory he craves results in the psychopathic Pete Hegseth and the infamous prayer he prayed at a meeting last week:

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.”

I think it takes little convincing to admit “the peace of the righteous,” as Hegseth describes, has nothing to do with Jesus and nothing to do with peace. The U.S. has NOT been at war, undeclared or declared, for about 15-20  years since 1776. If you can’t get into heaven, you make yourself a god on the earth, right? At least that is what a lot of people who would like to follow Jesus are struggling with in the United States.

Inner health prevents the death of resistance: Four goals for the persistent

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Last week, I suggested to several clients that their anxiety and short-tempered reactions were partly about living under the “Trump Cloud.” We are all there.

I, for one, am convinced the president presides over a sociopathic corruption scheme — so you can see what my cloud looks like! Others may be less interested or engaged than I am, or even in favor of a Trump autocracy — but even the 41% who approve of him live under the endless disruption barging into every day. The last few weeks have been dominated by a huge, instant war and further revelations from the Epstein files about Trump’s sexual relations with young girls. It is overwhelming for us all.

As a result, we seem more unhinged. For instance, the most interesting thing that happened to me yesterday was coming to a complete, inexplicable halt on the onramp to 76 from 676 in downtown Philly. This is where the two-lanes of freeway condense into one. It is always a jam up and frustrated people often do less-than-sane things there. But this was unusual. We must have been stuck for ten minutes (or so it seemed), so some people got out of their cars to see what was the matter, so I did too. It appeared to me that the sportscar had tried to squeeze in and the SUV bumped it to protect its right to the lane. The two drivers were out of their cars and arguing, letting the rest of us sit. Word was, the SUV would not give up his info. They were waiting for the police. The sportscar was convinced to pull over and let us pass, so I got by and did not see what finally happened.  But I still wonder, “What are we coming to? Were these guys so angry and distrustful, now so sociopathically tutored, that they, too, were claiming territory and didn’t care what happened to the rest of us?”

Stranger things are likely to happen under the cloud

What do we do to survive this era and help make a change? Here is how this post answers that question: We need to heed the many reminders about how spiritual and psychological health leads to good social change.

Yes, there are loads of strategies for how to resist effectively and how to build the future. But all of them are founded on our inner truth and love. Daniel Hunter says: “Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it. Thus, for us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion or constant disorientation.”

Trump’s second term arrived at a time of great social distrust — much of it amplified by him to gain power and wealth. But he did not generate our distrust. Across the board, society already had a reduced trust in traditional institutions. We distrust the media, medical professionals, experts and politicians – for good reasons, since they are cooperate stooges. But our distrust is deeper than that. We also distrust most local and neighborhood associations and membership groups, like churches, the PTA and all those new protest orgs. Whether from COVID or political polarization, a lot of us have even experienced reduced trust in friends and family. We can’t even trust predictable weather anymore.

You can track the development of our mistrust by noting the popularity of Stranger Things (Netflix 2016) which is about the power of human connection and courage in the face of the unknown and unexplained, and Game of Thrones (2011-19) which is about the struggle for the iron throne and how people who want power will do anything to get it, even in the face of the Great Other. Both juxtapose the normal and the paranormal as key parts of the show’s narrative and thematic structure. And both distill how nothing is what it seems to be — and so can’t be trusted.

The distrust spawned by the billionaire/hedge fund extraction project to break American democracy fueled the engine of autocracy because it makes us much easier to divide.  Trump’s tweets/rhetoric encourages it — telling people to distrust  immigrants,  Democrats, socialists, people from Chicago, women marchers, Mexicans, the press, Iranians, transpeople and so on. It becomes a social disease when people decide if a person is trustworthy on the basis of who they tell us not to trust! I spent a lot of my career as a pastor trying to create systems that provided an alternative to this distrust, but a lot of people did not trust me or the system I led, either. However, I persist.

Here are four basic suggestions for how to develop more inner resistance under the Trump cloud, which is not disappearing any time soon, beginning with regaining some trust for yourself.

Trust yourself

We have been gaslighted so thoroughly, it is very difficult to trust our own decisions, even our own thoughts. A lot of us are perfecting dissociation in a vain attempt to weather the trauma we live in.

Trust-building starts within each of us. We need to trust our own truth and love. If you are following Jesus you can trust His truth and love making you whole. Regardless, this development includes trusting your own eyes and conscience, as well as guarding your heart from the crazy-making. Like Elon Musk determined to break the government with DOGE, breaking your inner resistance to unreality is also part of the domination scheme. (Bernie Sanders recently had a chat with Claude about this). Always remember: YOU MATTER.

Trust building is trusting yourself and also being trustworthy.  We should be reliable friends, but all the parts of our inner selves should also be friends. We need to trust that the “I AM” of each of us is going to show up to help us flourish no matter what. We need an inner trust that acknowledges fear and lets that feeling pass through. We need trust that can endure the uncertainty that nags us. We need to let the “cloud” be real so we know a lot of the troubling things we feel are about the cloud, not us.

This trust building will take some time and effort, of course. We’ll need to take care of ourselves if we want the world to change. If you’re tired, take some rest. If you’re scared, make some peace. (Here is a nice list of suggestions for how to stay grounded [link]). A good starting point, for now, is to listen to the voice in you that seems the most trustworthy. Don’t keep checking your phone for validation, check yourself. Don’t keep reading this if you need to take a walk or go find a tree to feel.

Find others who you trust

We have been atomized and isolated so effectively a lot of us don’t even think about trusting people. We are on our own — and that emotional landscape we inhabit, inside and out, makes a big difference.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explored how destructive ideologies like fascism and autocracy need loneliness to grow. She used the word verlassenheit — often translated as loneliness — as a central ingredient. As she meant it, loneliness isn’t a feeling but a kind of social isolation of the mind. One’s thinking becomes closed off to the world and becomes dominated by a sense of being abandoned.

Arendt was talking about Hitler and Stalin, but she is describing the societal breakdown we’re all experiencing, too. Trump is working on the breakdown every day. The constant attacks on social systems: teachers, health care, civil servants, courts, etc. — make us turn away from leaning on each other and towards ideologically simple answers that increase isolation (e.g. “distrust government,” “MAGA is nuts,” “anyone who votes that way doesn’t care about me”).

We have to consciously bridge that distance. People are finding ways to do that. For instance, in my church, a couple of women started an action group. People who made pods during Covid are still travelling together. Indivisible and Singing Resistance are creating new groups all the time. Most of these little groups, like the one in our church, are lamenting how little we are doing. But our very existence is resistance.

Finding just a few people who you trust to regularly act with and touch base with is central to defeating autocracy. We need to use our mutual trust to explore our own thinking and support each other to stay sharp and grounded.

Grieve

No matter what we try to do, there is going to be loss. So we will need to grieve well to live well. We will need to save our capacity to compartmentalize, rationalize, intellectualize and ignore for things like working in a large corporate structure or sorting out the basement. If we use those capacities to defend against our feelings, grief can damage us body and soul like a Kona storm sitting over Hilo.

If you aren’t a “feelings person,” let me say it this way: The inability to grieve is a strategic error. After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw people who never grieved; they just worked harder or avoided harder. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future — and as a result they remained in shock. They are still saying, “I can’t believe he’s doing that.” Believe it. Grieve it.

The alternative to perpetual shock is grieving — quite deliberatively, if necessary. Start by naming and allowing the feelings which arise when you confront the “stranger things:”

  • Trump left the Paris Climate Agreement and California has a March heatwave.
  • I daydream about Trump. We all wake up to bat-shit crazy headlines each morning.
  • Trump builds giant detention center for Markwayne Mullin to oversee. The Pitt has ICE coming into the ER.
  • Now it is Iran, tomorrow it is Epstein, then maybe the elections will be invalidated.

Making such a list, especially with someone you trust is health-generating. We begin to identify the sadness, anger, numbness, shock, confusion and fear. We grieve. We come out of our daze and experience acceptance. [A Spell for Grief or Letting Go]

Release what you cannot change

We are so trained to believe our individual power is the most important thing in the world all we think we can do is control something or someone. And if you are as realistic as I think you are, you already admitted control is not working well.

During the rise of the Nazis, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer, which AA loves so much:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Trump’s presidency is deliberately making activists, especially, and all of us, feel overwhelmed. There is so much we feel we need to do and it is hard to accept we cannot do it all – at least I feel that way.  For instance, this week my interest in plastics was revived in my overall despair about climate change in the middle of an oil war. So I took the hour it took to commit to a way to do my little part. But I also saw how few hours I had. Chaos is a friend of the autocrat. One way we can unwittingly increase that chaos is by jumping into the abyss of needing to do it all.

I cannot say I am completely successful at this, but I use my journal to help me sort out what is the best I can do instead of what is the most I can do — what am I given to do as opposed to what needs to be done. I suggest we all take ourselves seriously enough to get some clarity on what is important these days. If we are just coasting through, we might get run over. If we think we are a semi when we are a Civic, we may burn up the engine. If you are in a small group trying to do something meaningful, like in church, be sure to press for a focus, not just be a committee-full of people-pleasers attempting to be inclusive and just ending up an ineffective potpourri.

It is spiritual and psychological health that will lead to good social change. That means trusting ourselves, sticking with others we trust, grieving well and releasing what we cannot change. It requires at least that much of us. We all know people who think they can sit out this challenging time. I feel with them. But I am still patiently impatient for the goodness of God to be seen and respected and put into action in our warming, war-torn world. Nurture that inner life you’ve been given, the best you — it’s the key to making a difference when we really need something new.

Patrick’s journey through the wilderness, and ours

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I feel like I escaped 2025 only to run into Trump’s War with Iran in 2026, just as the crocus began to bloom. Will these days be full of the moments we remember the rest of our lives? If so, may my grandchildren remember how terrible it was when they look back on their youth from their secure, reimagined future.

When we were walking our neighborhood in the wind yesterday, we ran into about 200 of St. Joseph’s finest having a moment. They were getting drunk in honor of St. Patrick at an elaborately planned backyard party. We heard them from a couple of blocks away. I wonder how they will look back on that day  I hope they will be amazed at how God touched them in their ignorance and at least a couple of them might say, “I was numbed that year in response to the war and everything, but God called me out.”

If that happened, it would be much more in the spirit of St. Patrick than getting drunk in his honor and tormenting the rather protective neighbors of Wynnefield who have such pride in their old neighborhood.

Patrick’s confession

There are so many good reasons to honor Patrick, even if you are not Irish. In his shockingly vulnerable autobiography Confession, St. Patrick has some encouragement for everyone who is seeing themselves for who they really are.

12 So I am first of all a simple country person, a refugee, and unlearned. I do not know how to provide for the future. But this I know for certain, that before I was brought low, I was like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall. That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure.

Patrick came from an aristocratic family in Britain before he was kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland. Even before he was that slave he says he was a “stone in the mud.” As it turns out, becoming an ignorant country person, a refugee, was the best thing that ever happened to him. Because it was in that condition, he met God. All over the war-torn world right now, refugee teenagers are becoming brilliant in faith or terror.

He is writing his Confession after he successfully fulfilled his calling to share the Good News of Jesus with the Irish people — he has become the bishop of a burgeoning network of churches! He tells a story about how rivals tried to bring him down by making known a story about some unknown sin he committed when he was a pre-Christian teen. Slander creates permanent wounds. But nothing can undo the joy he finds in being called and empowered to do what he is given to do.

13 So be amazed, all you people great and small who fear God! You well-educated people in authority, listen and examine this carefully. Who was it who called one as foolish as I am from the middle of those who are seen to be wise and experienced in law and powerful in speech and in everything? If I am most looked down upon, yet he inspired me, before others, so that I would faithfully serve the nations with awe and reverence and without blame: the nations to whom the love of Christ brought me. His gift was that I would spend my life, if I were worthy of it, to serving them in truth and with humility to the end.

Nobody writes such things unless they have a moment by moment experience of God’s presence. Patrick honed his relationship out in the hills with the sheep, day and night. I was out honing and being honed on retreat last week, forcing myself to get into the season of Lent. More than ever, we need the self-imposed wilderness of Lent needs to do its work as the bombs go off in Tehran

In the wilderness

As Patrick tells his story I’m encouraged to hear another tale of God calling a person from out of nowhere and providing for them in the worst conditions. Patrick tells of how God spoke to him out in the field about the ship that would carry him from Ireland and his captivity. He manages to get on it after travelling to the other side of the island. Once on shore again, the whole crew ends up in an unpopulated wilderness for 28 days without food until Patrick prays up some pigs. Like Jesus in the wilderness, he feels tested and cared for.

If he were a client of mine, the following story would be an interesting description the anxiety he carried born of all the trauma he had experienced — stolen from his parents, enslaved, and now lost in the wilderness with people he barely knows in a place he has never been. How many college students feel like that? How many people reading right now?

20 That same night while I was sleeping, Satan strongly put me to the test – I will remember it as long as I live! It was as if an enormous rock fell on me, and I lost all power in my limbs. Although I knew little about the life of the spirit at the time, how was it that I knew to call upon Helias? While these things were happening, I saw the sun rise in the sky, and while I was calling “Helias! Helias!” with all my strength, the splendour of the sun fell on me; and immediately, all that weight was lifted from me. I believe that I was helped by Christ the Lord, and that his spirit cried out for me. I trust that it will be like this whenever I am under stress, as the gospel says: “In that day, the Lord testifies, it will not be you will speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”

It seems to me that paragraph sums up his life very well. You may have had a similar dream sometime. A doctor says, “A dream featuring heavy pressure on the chest, often accompanied by an inability to move, is typically a symptom of sleep paralysis. This occurs when the brain wakes from REM sleep while the body remains sleep-paralyzed, often creating hallucinations of a suffocating presence or ‘weight’ on the chest. It is generally harmless but terrifying.” Anxiety and stress can trigger these episodes as well as sleep deprivation. The researchers will give you ways to prevent it. Your spiritual director might help you listen to it.

How Patrick responds to his dream , for some reason he does not know — except to attribute it to grace, is to call on the sun. If you were Greek, you might name your son “Helias,” which is like a personal name for the helios. He called out, “Helias, come help me.” And the sun brightened and warmed his paralyzed body and terrified soul. Maybe that experience is one of the reasons, Patrick installed a sun at the center of the cross, so the Irish could feel the light like he did.

The circle represents the sun

In honor of Patrick, in defiance of the fascists, it might feel like sunrise in your soul to take his story seriously, as if you still mean something, too. It would be refreshing to follow Patrick’s example, even bearing the wounds of your past, even carrying the memories of your youthful sins and your feelings of anxiety — or the exhaustion of resisting feeling any anxiety in these terrible times, and not just get drunk. March 17 is the day we remember him.

You might read the Confessions. My son and I made a post at our site where you can learn all about Patrick.

You could listen to a dream. Here is a means to do that if you need one.

You could remember your youth, examine your wounds and let yourself be warmed in the sunlight of God’s forgiveness and endless love for you.

You could consider what it is you are given to do in this challenging era. Stones in the mud are undoubtedly being plucked out right now and installed atop some wall, large or small. Patrick never forgot the absurdity of being the unlettered slave boy called to free his captors and those enslaved to their God-free ways. We just don’t know what God is going to do with us in our wilderness, either, do we?

Pray for Christians to stop falling for fascism

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Pieter Brueghel the Younger — The Request of the Mother of the Sons of Zebedee c.1620

Fascism is modern word for the oldest con in the book. Even the mother of the Sons of Thunder fell for it.

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him.  And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” …

When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” — Matthew 20:20ff

The only imagination she had was that her promising sons would be at the top of Jesus’ pyramid with him. Jesus immediately turned her pyramid upside down and asked her sons if they knew what they were talking about.

Misguided Christians have been turning the Lord’s pyramid upside down ever since. Even back in early times, most of the church was actually delighted to have the Roman emperor, Constantine, take leadership! Millions have submitted to an irrefutable King Pope (or Mormon Prophet), or they have set up their big-box church pastor as Lord. It is no surprise, but it is a crying shame so many so-called Christians embrace strong-man Trump. He’s one of the greatest con artists in history, even though his lies are transparent. Nevertheless, they fall for the fascism.

Trump and many like-impaired leaders around the world: Putin, Erdogan, Orban, Xi and most of the members of Trump’s Board of Peace, are just the latest versions operating the old con. It is as old as those very first Priest-Kings, who claimed ownership over all the land and people, conscripting soldiers for enforcement, engaging a merchant class for management, and carving a deity in their image to justify it.

Basic fascism

Matthew Cooke says: “Fascists are not some fringe, backwoods cult. Let’s just go over their character traits again:

  1. military-worshiping separatists
  2. inflated by a glorious imaginary history
  3. humiliated by a persecution complex
  4. slammed by trillions of dollars of propaganda promising we can only reclaim our standing in the world if we devote our lives to maintaining a pyramid scheme run by an Epstein-class.

That does not describe just one half of congress.” It describes our entire political and economic framework. It is the framework in which we are all living.

The Parable of the Rich Fool by Rembrandt, 1627.

Jesus so clearly says goals based on greed and a lust for control over the future are for fools:

And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”    — Luke 12:15-21

Why do even our Christian reformers think they can change the system by redecorating the control room? America needs to repent in a lot of ways, but that does not merely mean electing a Democrat! “Repent” means “change your mind,” but it also means change your direction; it means respond to your new understanding by changing your allegiance. Most Americans are working to feed a machine that produces only one fruit. We eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it’s not just rotten to the core, it’s poison. The fruit of the bad tree is so evident, it is hard to know where to start pointing that out.

But just think about what it means to level Gaza and bomb Iran while calling yourselves the people of God! Even more, think about who secretly profits off the carnage and the carnage-making capabilities these wars foist on the world. And think about this tax season: 20-25% of working folks’ gross income will go to Trump sending $20 billion to Argentina!! The estimated cost of the Iran build-up and first attack on Iran was $630 million, by Wednesday the cost was $1 billion, and now they are over a week into it at a billion dollars a day!

The antidote to the poison

The political antidote to this poison is basic human rights for all. Or, as Jesus said when one of the scribes asked him,

“Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;  you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” — Mark 12:28-31

Love is the antidote. Again, Matthew Cooke says: “If we allow anyone, any political structure, to pretend one group of people are better than another, and condition rights for any reason: political beliefs, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, we reduce rights to permits that are revocable by the state at the discretion of whoever happens to be in office.”

The revocation machinery is in place and it is being used right now. It might not be you it’s being used on, but it will get to you. And you may already be afraid of it getting to you, which means they might not even have to directly threaten you to control you. “This is how fascism operates. It doesn’t necessarily abolish universal dignities right away. It conditions them — on obedience to the machine.” That’s how the Nazis did it and that’s how the Trump regime and the 1% and their corporations are doing it.

Fascism has been called the final form of capitalism.

Fascism is the logical culmination of the American economic system, if capitalism means giving those with the traits required to amass the most wealth and power the keys to every market and the strings to every political puppet. Benito Mussolini of Italy built an entire political system on this fusion of business and state power in the 1930’s, and gave it the modern name “fascism.” This model for a society exists in total opposition to every great teaching since the dawn of time, from Plato to Confucius, from indigenous wisdom on every continent to all three religious branches that harken back to Abraham.

One last time for Cooke: Fascism “can only occur because law enforcement has been allowed to hunt people, kidnap them, and force them into labor and concentration camps ever since our founding fathers invented a myth-of-a-pure-people just for us 250 years ago. Human rights have always been conditional here, revocable by the state.

The antidote to the poison of fascism, of ethno-nationalism, of this violence and priest-king worshipping cult – also melts the pyramid to the ground — and the billionaires, and the Epstein class along with it” (looking at you Peter Thiel). It starts with this first principle: there must be universal human rights for all the citizens of planet Earth.  Regardless of which part of what continent they were born on or what word they use for the One unfathomable reality that must precede all beginnings and endings, the One closer than the innermost and further outside all that can be seen and not seen.

Basic resistance

At some point, we’ve got to stop paying for and then just redecorating our staterooms on the Titanic.  We’ve got to change our minds about where we live and adopt an alternative story about how life is to be lived. We need to following basic, Sermon on the Mount teaching, now that it really matters:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. — Matthew 6:19-24

Following means shining the light strategically, assertively and persistently and forming an alternative.

The Epstein class does not maintain power because it is stronger. It has always been vastly outnumbered. It maintains power because it has mastered how to coordinate us and we haven’t. The surveillance state, the corporate control over all our markets, a false church under a false idol, and its armies of secret police are all coordination technologies. They allow a small group to act as one, while keeping the majority of us divided, fearful, and fighting each other instead of the fascist system. That is the system which is going to get back 20-25% of the wages it deigned to give us in order to provide “greatness” and “freedom.”  For one thing, are you getting what you supposedly paid for? Is greatness Trump demolishing the White House illegally and putting up a cheap-looking but not cheap ballroom? More importantly, would Jesus “buy in” to the system? Can you imagine him lining up to pay for ICE?

Fascism rewards obedience. It punishes community cooperation. It uses racism, nationalism, colors like red vs. blue — when it’s never been left vs. right, it’s always been up vs. down. But as long as the neighbor, the foreigner, the other is the enemy, the system is safe.

Every coordination trap has a breaking point.

Repentance matters. The moment enough people defect from the dominant strategy, the calculus shifts for everybody. Suddenly, obedience is no longer the safe move, and cooperation is. We’re already seeing it happening. A narrative shift is taking root. Minneapolis helped it form a lot more. A new story is one weapon nobody can defeat. A new story can bring an empire to its knees in months. That’s why the Ellisons bought Paramount Global in 2025 — CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures, and that’s why they are closing a deal Warner Bros. Discovery right now – including HBO and CNN. They want story control, better coordination. Fortunately, we have new names for these plutocrats: the Epstein class, the Trump crime family, the billionaires/oligarchs. We are on to something new.

 We can pull down the strongholds with a new-for-some-but-old-for-Jesus-followers story and three organizing tools. There are successful ways people have used to undermine authoritarian regimes.

  1. Labor withdraws cooperation. That includes mass strikes. (probably led by organized labor).
  2. Civil disobedience makes the cost of enforcement unsustainable. (probably led by the church, which should be innately disobedient to sociopaths, anyway).
  3. We starve the system of the capital it needs. That means boycotts of some kind (people are making lists for us).

Fortunately, we don’t necessarily need a majority of the country to cause the change we all need. A Harvard study found that when 3.5% of a population engages in sustained disruptive action, toppling of fascist regimes is possible (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011). So when we get engaged, we are not just being idealistic, we are doing math. History suggests that the breaking-point moment is always much closer than the latest Epstein-like crime syndicate wants us to believe.

What is the cost if we do not take action?

If we do not take action we lose everything we need and want from our society: our rights, our dignity, our water, our glaciers, our food, our safety, our taxes, our connection to our whole human family, our capacity to freely care for others, our freedom to use our gifts to create and serve as God leads us. The cost of not taking action now is the loss of the future for our children. Given the technologies we depend on, we cannot survive without cooperation — not the cooperation of the ruling classes, but cooperation between the people of the world, our hub cities linked in a mutually-benefiting web. Our children are counting on us.

Truly, if we do not take action, we endanger our souls. If Christians are in the forefront in these efforts by the example of their way of life and their courageous truth-telling and resistance, they will answer the Lord’s prayer as he prepared for the cross:

I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him….

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them.  And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.  — John 16:33, 17:1-2, 10-11.

You don’t know how much you need to trust God until you need to.

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The now infamous Tilly

We endured the 20+ hours it took to get home from our wonderful trip. Then we walked in the door.  A big fat snow storm. A frozen pipe oozing water down the back wall and creating  nasty ice sculpture. An innovative toilet not functioning and bilge puddling from between the basement tiles. Trash and mail piled up. And, of course, there was the love-starved cat.

Once we returned, the cat stuck to us like glue all night and day. So I thought she was sticking when I took out the trash. But she darted out the door and into the frigid night and falling snow unbeknownst to me. I suppose I was less careful since, “What cat would go out in a blizzard?” We were cuddled up in our blankets for a long time until we noticed there was no longer a cat on top of us.

I guess you don’t know how much you need to trust God until you need to. We were beside ourselves. We love the cat almost as much as she loves us. We looked through every nook and cranny of our new, little house and could not find her. She had fooled us before, so we waited for her to appear from out of nowhere. Then we looked outside. Then we tried to go to sleep and wait for her to come out. I said, “We’ll just have to give her to God.” I admit I was not completely satisfied with that prayer. But where else can you go when you have nowhere else to go?

The angel

I tried to go to sleep but it did not work out. So I got up to do some more post-trip sorting out. About 2am, while I was typing, I heard someone shout at me from our back alley, which had never happened before. It looked like our neighbor, so I went out in the falling snow in my robe. “I’m looking for your cat,” he said. I had texted his roommate and everyone else in range, to sound the alarm. He went on to say, “I’m kind of the neighborhood ‘cat shepherd’ and I don’t want to lose another one.”

So we all started looking as the snow poured down – all around our block, under cars, behind bushes. Nothing. I went back to our porch to start over for the umpteenth time and I heard a cat. It was ours. She was settled into a cat shelter the neighbor had made out of a storage container. He was overjoyed and began to cry and admitted he was a little drunk.

So when I gave the cat to God, did that result in the arrival of a drunk angel to connect me with my beloved? My answer is “Yes.” You decide for yourself. You decide if it was right for me to feel like I  was George on the bridge meeting the semi-competent Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life. 

Angels in any condition are needed

The whole experience made me think we’d all better become adept at turning to God when we are desperate. Troubling times keep troubling up, after all.

A woman in Northeast Philly captured the moment on her security camera when she was walking her dog and her neighbor unwittingly unleashed three pit bulls from his house. They attacked her dog and bit her mercilessly. I don’t know whether she called Top Dog to save her (link in case you don’t live in Philly). But even if she did, she’ll need deeper healing and help than any lawyer can provide.

When Liam Arias and his father, Adrian were whisked out of Minnesota and locked up in Dilly, Texas, all sorts of angels appeared. Representative Juan Castro personally escorted them home when a judge ruled against the “perfidious” power-grabbing ICE keeps acting out. Having met a few refugees, I can tell you they have to trust God because they have so little hope.

Every day in this terrible time the cat is out in the snow, the dogs are out of their cages and armed men might appear in the neighborhood without a moment’s notice. Most of us are desperate enough to ask for help. Let’s start there with trust, not just end up there when there is nowhere else to go.

You may not believe God will help you or believe God is with you even if there is no hope for you. But it is still true: Jesus will be there and is there. Before I was even able to wonder why I was doing it, my Sunday school teacher got me to memorize how Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” I did not get the “Lo” or the “end of the age” or even “unto.” But I somehow understood “I am with you always.” And I have never forgotten.

I admit I often think I am responsible or to blame for a lot of the bad things that happen to me and I get frustrated because I don’t know how I am going to fix the war in Ukraine. But when I am afraid my loving cat is going to freeze to death, my thoughts naturally turn to God. And there God was in my drunk neighbor. I’ll concede that actual angels may have been helping too. But until Gabriel, or whoever, appears to me, I’ll take an angelic human or whatever goodness God shares with me next. I think we all have some angel in us. We should be quite useful to each other in desperate times.

Temptation: The Bully, The False Lover, The Shrewd Army Commander

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I had a spiritual director once who was trained in the “Ignation School” of spirituality. Our relationship was a nice experience for me. He was a chemist, by education, and brought much of the personality and expertise of his field with him into our relationship. Being almost the opposite of a chemist, in training and typical personality type, I benefited greatly.

At one point, he told me about the three ways I could be tempted, according to Ignatius, and asked me to decide which way I was being tempted in the moment. You, like I am, may be tempted to give up your true self, or conform to the present ways of the world because of fear, or just try to ignore Jesus or all your spiritual awareness because there is just a lot of nonsense piling up all around us  it is overwhelming

I hope repeating this old post might give you a couple of minutes of clarity or inspiration, depending on how you’re wired.

I have never forgotten the imagery Ignatius offered his disciples. Here are the thoughts from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola paraphrased by David Fleming. I thought you might like to examine yourself to see how you are likely to be opposed this week.

According to Ignatius three are Three Ways the Enemy Works:

Like a Bully

The enemy behaves like a bully who is a weakling before strength, but a tyrant before weakness. It would be characteristic of a bully to lose courage and take flight when confronted with someone who is determined and strong of will. However, if a person loses courage and begins to flee, the anger, vindictiveness, and rage of the bully will surge up and know no bounds.  In the same way the enemy becomes weak, loses courage, and turns to flight as soon as the one leading a spiritual life faces their temptations boldly. (SE 325)

I have been very encouraged this week by dear friends who have had the courage to face “the bully” in whatever guise he was taking. Minnesotans may down in history for teaching us. My friends make me remember the recurring dream I had for several weeks, long ago now, in which a “monster” was chasing me. Gwen suggested I prepare to turn and face it that night rather than dreading to run away from it in my dreams. I decided to do it, and in my dream I did it. The result was exactly as Ignatius said. I proved it had no power over me.

Like a False Lover

The Enemy’s behavior can also be compared to that of a false lover.  One who loves falsely uses another for selfish gains, and so people become objects at one’s disposal or like playthings for entertainment or good times.  A false lover usually suggests that the so-called intimacy of relationship be kept secret because of fear that such duplicity will be made known.  So does the Enemy often act in ways to keep temptations secret, and our tactics must be to bring our temptations out into the light of day to someone like our director, confessor or some other spiritual companion. (SE 326)

I regularly hear about the literal “false lovers” who lock people up. Porn is the undiscussed  false lover for any people. Many people have connected with a person who doesn’t love Jesus and that relationship is a secret love. Some people have many secrets about how they have satisfied their lust and pretended they didn’t to their intimates. Sex it a spiritual matter. Although many people are resolute in pretending otherwise, there are probably no inconsequential couplings or orgasms. There are good reasons to wonder how people got into the Epstein files.

But our loves are not all sexual. We have many lovers who use us and leave us kicked to the curb. We trust our employers or addictions or abusers, even when they don’t love us like Jesus. We trust our false selves in all their delusions and bad heart-habits, even when they have repeatedly been proven self-destructive.

The solution is dialogue. We shouldn’t wait for our expectations of trustworthiness to be fully satisfied before we talk about our lovers. They are much less powerful in the light. Just because they fear the light, and they tell us that being secret is better, and they warn us of the terrible consequences of living in the light, that doesn’t mean they aren’t lying.

Like a Shrewd Army Commander

The Enemy can also work like a shrewd army commander who carefully maps out the tactics of the attack at the weakest point of defense.  The military leader knows the weakness is found in two ways:  a) the weakness of fragility and unpreparedness, and b) the weakness of complacent strength which is self-sufficient pride.

The Enemy attacks come against us at both points of weakness.  The first kind of weakness is less serious in that we more readily acknowledge our need and cry or for help from God.  The second kind of weakness is far more serious and more devastating in its effect upon us so that it can be a more favored tactic of the Enemy. (SE 327)

Peter says the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. This is a similarly threatening image. Our enemy is like an army commander scoping out the weak defenses of our walled city. Some places, like the gates we open to the world every day are well-defended because we know about them. But there are weak sections of the wall, perhaps, that defend places we never expect to be attacked, or don’t want to imagine being attacked because we’ve been hurt there before, that are much more dangerous.

The sociopaths who have taken over the presidency and many corporations are shrewd in that the are single-minded in their pursuit of winning power. ICE is literally prowling. It is overwhelming. Jesus knows. John said, “ Greater is the one in you than the one in the world. Relying on our own strength is probably the weakest thing we could do.

Opposition is real

Our former church got complacent and distracted.  I think they thought we were safe because everyone supposedly loved one another. It made many people “sitting ducks” in the gun sites of an enemy shooting conflict at us. We can be so committed to our harmony that we don’t allow healthy conflict, or don’t even allow needed change to occur if it might create conflict. We even had a proverb that said, “Everyone is recovering from the sin addiction – expect conflict.”

On a more personal level, each of us might be very unaware of our childhood defense mechanisms and just consider them “normal,” or even “my right to be who I am,” or even, nowadays, “my genetic disposition that I can’t change even if I want to.” We could all use a little more Ignatian attention to our wanton self-sufficiency. The enemy would love us to be self-sufficient. It is antithetical to serving God. It makes easy to dominate, since we are basically alone looking for power when, just as Bad Bunny said, “The only thing greater than hate is love.”

Ignatian spirituality is not for the weakly committed. It takes a lot of time to ponder all the ways we could be growing stronger in faith and becoming stronger opponents to the enemies of God. I am encouraged to take the time, because much of the time I am not spending becoming aware of my temptations I am spending conforming to them.