Tag Archives: love

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]

Forgive yourself: You’ll not only feel better, you’ll be better

Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , , , , , ,

We usually think of forgiveness as a relational matter. They hurt me; they need to apologize. I did some wrong; I have to admit it and ask forgiveness. You may theoretically believe that is true, right? But living it out in the real world can be difficult. It is much easier to blame or avoid than reconcile.

We need to figure out forgiveness to save the world from its perpetual lack of reconciliation. As we do that, we actualize our own true self and get reconciled inside. Because forgiveness is not just between two people, is also an internal, psychological, and spiritual necessity. You also have a relationship with yourself, too. If we don’t sort out all the different voices that make up our inner dialogue, there is perpetual conflict going on inside of us, too!

For instance, last week I put out my weekly blog post a day earlier than I intended —  no big deal really. But I made the mistake because I thought Sunday was Monday! I was ready to call some computer someone somewhere to find out why my machines were all off! I finally figured out I was off and felt ashamed of myself for jumping to a wrong conclusion that cost me an hour of turmoil — so embarrassing! I accepted my “sin,” but the feelings of guilt and shame stuck with me. I did a dumb thing. Then I felt ashamed because I couldn’t let go of those feelings! What a flawed psychotherapist! I was not forgiving myself. I needed some inner reconciliation. Otherwise, I might have carried around my secret shame right through the terrific meeting at Salt and Light!

We know Jesus will forgive our sins when we confess our sins. But will we cooperate by forgiving ourselves? Some would say “Forgiving yourself is not that important if Jesus already did it.” Maybe. But I know a lot of people who are forgiven in principle but have never experienced a minute of that forgiveness in their hearts. Their presentation of themselves in the world is forgiven, which is good as far as that goes. But their inner being is unforgiving, critical, harsh and living under the law of some childhood jungle in which they grew up. Maybe you aren’t fully forgiven by Jesus if you won’t forgive yourself.

by Jaroslav Samoilenko

Hard on yourself?

How many times have I heard, “I think it will all get better if I just try harder. I’m having trouble doing what I want to do, but when I do, it will all be fine.” Such a person never even gets to square one of life with Jesus because they are still negotiating whether his lovingkindness is something they can live in and express, especially toward themselves. As a matter of fact, they may be quite loving to others but hard as nails with themselves. They might have a loud inner voice that even says, “Look how bad you are at forgiving yourself!” Or even harder, “If you don’t love others rightly, you’ll be damned!” Or very logical, “If you ‘forgive yourself,’ pretty soon you’ll never confess a sin and not even be a Christian!” Rather than letting guilt and shame pass through like regular emotions, every criticism and failure sticks to them like they are flypaper, until it is hard to hear the voice of love for all the buzzing. Does any of this sound familiar?

Do you struggle with forgiving yourself? Probably. I think most of us have been quite confused about  the subject. Most of us seem to be balancing whether we are too easy on ourselves, or rationalizing our bad behavior — at times wondering whether we are too hard on ourselves, and at times condemning ourselves. Such questions are what any wise person would want to ponder, of course. But the Bible tends to go beyond them. Paul assumes we are all unjustifiable (Romans 3:23), and we’re all likely to think too highly of ourselves (Romans 12:3). His remedy is not to admit we are self-condemning and self-congratulating at the same time; he wants us to accept where we are at and accept that Jesus is with us there. Likewise, Jeremiah asserts that we deceive ourselves about our condition; we’re a mystery to ourselves, but God can truly interpret our hearts (Jeremiah 17:9-10).

Don’t you think it qualifies as a “sin” to hold ourselves in contempt even when God prizes us and has forgiven our sin (2 Corinthians 2:6-8)? Let’s consider how to forgive ourselves and be reconciled inside as well as out. Then we might be able to feel God’s compassion in our anguished souls. If you already feel some resistance to the very thought of that, this post might be for you, especially.

Why forgive ourselves?

Only God can forgive sin, so we are not talking about that, OK? I’m talking about cooperating with the Spirit of forgiveness beating on the door of our guilt and shame. We’ve been gods to ourselves and it is strangely different to come at our sense of responsibility for being good from the place of being forgiven. We are born again by forgiveness and, like so many things in Christ, we need to grow up into it.

Remember: All who are in Christ are freed from condemnation (Romans 8:1) and freed to love (Galatians 5:13). We are meant to display the mercies of God as sinners forgiven of their sins (1 Timothy 1:15-16).

Extending grace and kindness to oneself and others is the transformation God effects in those who have received His grace and kindness. God’s kindness leads to repentance, that is, the Presence of kindness leads us to agree with God’s loving way of seeing us. Such gentleness is only possible for us because Jesus has set us free from the power of sin, the tyranny of self-rule, and the oppression of evil. Jesus said “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8). The starting point of forgiving ourselves is experiencing God’s forgiveness.

Keys to forgiving yourself

Clarify responsibility

Blame is tricky. Sometimes we blame ourselves for the injuries other people cause. For instance, many neglected or abused children think they must be to blame for not being cared for because they are unlovable. On the other hand, we sometimes blame others for things that are really all about us —  it is called projection. What we find shameful or unbearable, we cast on others and despise it, or assume someone else made us feel and act as we do.

When we are blaming ourselves or others, we need to sit back and do some mentalizing. Before we start reacting inside with self-loathing or outside with abusive behavior, we need clarity: What is mine and what belongs to someone else? What might be coming at me from the society, in general?

“Clarifying” who is responsible for the injury might sound like we could get caught in an endless inventory of our troubles, as if more clarity is all we need. But I think we need to go deeper than that. I am really talking about simple self-care. We feel better when our feet are on the solid ground of reality, even if that reality initially causes us some pain.

One of the reasons we shy away from clarity is because we feel things about it. We might be angry. We might have unfinished business with a perpetrator we have displaced  on people who bumped into our trigger. We might feel confused, even paralyzed. But we need to risk seeing it all clearly, since if we do not clarify who to forgive: ourselves, others, or whoever, lack of forgiveness will probably make us sick. It’s terrifying to face our pain, and so it seems easier to take the blame for it or cast the blame for it. But it is better to have a clear look at what is really going on so we can be appropriately responsible and appropriately gracious. It is deeper to have compassion for ourselves. Clarifying who needs forgiving is a good first step.

Renounce the dark comfort of your badness

You have probably heard someone say this, too, ” God can’t forgive me; I’m beyond grace.” I heard someone say on TV the other night, “I’ll see my mother again in hell.” Sometimes an unwillingness to seek forgiveness and live in God’s grace is a matter of pride – I did it my way. But more likely, doing life our own way is a matter of despair — it is all we think we can do, we’re alone. You may hear a voice that tells you. “You need to earn God’s favor and that of others.” But then you likely have another voice chime in to say, “You are too flawed to do that. You keep trying and you never make it.”

Self-justification is the universal spiritual disease that leads to spiritual death (Romans 6:23). Self-condemnation also leads to spiritual death: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). We need to give up both of them. We need to be forgiven by God and then work with her to forgive ourselves — feel the love of God healing us and the power of God transforming us.

 Seek repair/make amends/foment reconciliation

 One of the best feelings in life is to sincerely say, “I am sorry I did that to you. Please forgive me.” I think someone read that line and immediately thought sarcastically, “Right.”  Some of us choke on the words “Please forgive me” because they are among the most vulnerable words one can say. They admit we’re guilty. We did something bad. We did not earn it. We are not perfect. We need something from the other person: forgiveness.

As hard as each may be, every act of forgiveness changes the world a little more, or at least stops it from going down the drain so fast. Jesus is quite radical when he tells us to go to our brother and sister and win them to a reconciled relationship (Matt. 18). That’s what God was doing in Jesus. His whole life is an invitation to connect in love, forever. His suffering is not just to fulfill some cosmic law, it is the natural process of being self-giving. When we acknowledge our responsibility for pain or the responsibility of others and seek to make things right, our experience of God’s love and forgiveness opens up, maybe even because someone forgives us or receives our forgiveness! When I experience the forgiveness of God and others I can extend it more readily to myself. (Ephesians 4)

The same experience Jesus describes going on between people, needs to go on inside us. We need to seek repair and foment wholeness in our hearts, as broken as they may be. We are prone to duking it out inside. The things we say to ourselves! I won’t write any examples because they are often unprintable. The shame that locks us into a secret view of ourselves that haunts our days! Forgiveness is an inside and out revolution.

Love with abandon

Jesus identified loving God with your whole heart and loving your neighbor as you love yourself as the two greatest commandments. He told his disciples to “Love one another as I have love you” – he assumed, of course, his disciples were letting  him love them. We are all invited to walk in love with Jesus. All of Christ’s teachings assume some new spiritual thing will happen in us, including that we will love ourselves like we experience God loving us. I am not sure we can keep loving others authentically if we do not experience the lovingkindness of God in our souls — and 95% of us want to do that.

Jesus is given over to love. He loves with abandon. Love requires courage and boldness because love is always costly and opens us to possible suffering. No one who has friends, lovers, children or a mate has never suffered for love. It calls for sacrifice. It is sometimes unrequited. It is easily misunderstood. Sometimes we refuse to forgive because we are protecting ourselves from the demands of love. Maybe right now you resent being told you need to do something you don’t feel like doing or don’t think you can do. Maybe you think it is unjust to forgive or you fear you will be diminished if you give into a bad person. But love and intimacy are only possible when we are vulnerable to being hurt again.

Love is kind — not only to others but to ourselves. Love keeps no record of wrongs — not only of others but of ourselves. Those are lovely seed-thoughts from 1 Corinthians 13. Our spiritual instincts tell us that even though our failure to forgive ourselves hinders our love for others, our meager attempts at doing it, met by the meager love others show for us is not for nothing. The process of bravely loving others facilitates self-forgiveness, too.

As soon as you read those lines, you may have noticed how you are not kind to yourself and how your record of your wrongs is quite complete. But don’t give up on yourself! God won’t. John lovingly writes to his disciples (1 John 3), “Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

Get help

If you are hard on yourself and struggle with forgiving yourself, a therapist might help. Most people think forgiving others and being forgiven is the right way to go. Even so, more and more people these days are shying away from love because conflict and break ups could happen. They feel unprepared and unskilled in a fundamental feature of intimacy: forgiveness. A therapist might help you get started on better relationships with others and with yourself in many ways, including learning how to forgive yourself.

The president who drove Christians back to basic faith

A life in the Spirit, Life as the church, , , , , , , , , ,

If you are hesitant to have faith in Jesus and express it these days, I am not surprised. I think many of us already feel burned and the unburned have felt the heat. If we say anything in public it might be on camera for Homeland Security to discover, or some social media coup-collaborator might go after you! For instance, I advertised my research presentation on Facebook and about 1000 people took a look at the post. I put my psychology/Christianity integration work out there and people listened. Despite positive impact, there is one comment I keep thinking about: “Amazing the hate in the hearts of people under the guise of research it simply exposes bias and lack of critical objectivity.”

The comment was another example of DARVO by a rather religious person I rather like – in the flesh, at least. He did not deny Trump is a sociopath, directly, he went straight to attacking me, personally, as someone with hate in my heart pumping out research that lacks objectivity. This was all in the cause of defending the victimized president and his followers. Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender — that’s how it works.

Golden Trump at the merch site at CPAC in 2021 (AP/John Raoux). Click for source

But Trump is no victim. He even has worshipers. Millions of Americans have faith in him. The comparison has been made for years between how the children of Israel freely combined their gold to make a calf to worship while Moses was up in on the mountain receiving the law and the shocking number of Americans who worship Trump.

I am amazed they so freely give up their rights as Americans under the law. As poorly as those laws protect many citizens in this historic republic of the rich, they are better than nothing. Nevertheless, people follow Trump, who remodels the White house with gold while denying the poor their average-$187-per-person monthly SNAP benefit. Then one of them ferrets me out in my obscure space in the blogosphere to call me full of hate toward the poor president.

It all makes me want to set the next impossible goal in the hope we can apply the truth in Jesus to the present disaster our federal government is creating. So here goes. Here’s another shot at the basics of faith in Jesus tuned for our time.

Love them all

I come from an era when people used to dress in rainbow wigs to get noticed at sports stadiums holding up a signed that said “John 3:16.” I was embarrassed but still approved of their audacity. They were determined to get the basics of Christian faith before as many eyes as possible. We’ve always got to try something.

We’ve got to try something or people might miss the truth in John 3:16: The promise of eternal life in Jesus is made to every single person, everyone, all of them. Love them all. Even love your enemies.

Mexican congressman Braulio Guerra sits atop the U.S.-Mexico border wall that divides Tijuana, Mexico, from California on March 1, 2017. Twitter/@BraulioPRI

This loving includes the immigrants Stephen Miller demonizes. I have been to our southern border where so many immigrants arrive and quite a few scale the wall. It did not take me too long before I was having dinner with a young couple from Honduras who took the risk to try to get into the U.S. with their baby! It was not hard to love them.

Love them in Honduras. Love them in Mexico. And love those strangers when they get into the U.S. by legal means or not. That’s Christianity now and forever. Loving Donald Trump does not take precedence. The U.S. does not take precedence. God loves everyone in the world.

Christian community is adaptable and porous

We just finished the All Saints Day triduum, which celebrates the saints, the “whosoever” who followed Jesus, who are part of the transhistorical body of Christ. I celebrate them in a blog I keep as my online altar of remembrance and admiration.

The history of the church is an astounding story of discernment and inclusion, especially if you don’t emphasize the corrupt parts of it. It’s too bad the over-emphasis on STEM courses is making  such history-keeping obsolete. After the 2008 financial debacle, students started gravitating toward majors they believed offered them greater job security. So, according to my grandson at Pitt, it is hard to find a student who  reads any book these days, much less history books.

The lack of reading apparently includes reading the Bible. According to a 2024 article, from  2011-2021 “Bible Users” — which are people who interact with Scripture in any medium at least three or four times a year (apart from in church) hovered between 50 percent to 60 percent of the U.S. population. But in 2024, the number of Bible Users was down to 38%. That means in the last few years, millions of Americans have not even glanced at a Bible for any significant reason. It shows.

Meanwhile, in China, Xi is cracking down on the wildly adaptable and porous, often underground church, arresting the leader of one large element just before Trump arrived last week. [PBS video]

The Chinese church has continued to grow, even as their government tried to Sinicize it,  that is, conform it to the Communist Party line about what is acceptable Chinese culture. Their perseverance is another example of how the church has grown and changed throughout its history. Christian community has been repeatedly corrupted by men, primarily, since its conception, who have seen it as an opportunity to get some power. But the Chinese, Congolese and Brazilian churches give me hope these days, even as the church in my own country is tied up with a deluded need to protect an endangered past, even tied to a form of nationalism that belies the transnational nature of the church.

The church is always the hope of undermining cruel and corrupt leaders, even the sociopaths who always know the weaknesses in a person or a nation and exploit them. People of faith always upend the status quo because the church never depends on it to be itself; it is the body of Christ in any culture.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem for his last week of upending, he named himself the rejected “cornerstone” and said the kingdom of God would be taken away from the rejecters  “and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed” (Matt. 21). When the motley crew called the church, the body of Christ in action, produces the fruit of the kingdom of God we are the rock that helps rejecters not get crushed.

Eternal life cannot be caged

The point of having eternal life cannot be reduced to an argument about whether my trans grandchild has been duped by woke fools or by the medical model of solving human conundrums. Love them all. Let them in.

Like John 3:16 says , trust in the risen Jesus transcends the latest expression of lies and greed directing the deceivable. Nevertheless, we have several versions of the Trump Bible, from which he profits. Some people have such a weak grasp of the Bible and the history of the church that they have been duped by the latest tyrant! It is not the first time, unfortunately.

But as all Bible readers know and all church historians can verify, wise men go home another way.  Disciples leave their nets. Centurions can repent of their murders. Women can become the first apostles. Believers like Paul and Silas can sing open their prison doors and save their jailers. Martyrs, like those Rome killed, upend state propaganda. Saints like Francis of Assisi and John Wesley, as flawed as they are, change their corrupted church and violent governments profoundly, starting with their own transformation and dogged conviction.

Eternal life cannot be caged. To experience our freedom and receive our joy, we must act out our faith, no matter the mess in which we find ourselves.

*******

Today is Martin de Porres Day! Get to know this Peruvian champion of the poor at The Transhistorical Body.

Everyday worry: God’s love in uncertain times

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

As I look out my high-rise window right now, I can no longer see the Philly skyline. After a week of rain, we still have showers! — today the clouds are so low I am looking into one. Last year I think we had a drought, this year a deluge.

I felt like I was in a fog long before the clouds descended. I’m not alone. You might also feel like a dark cloud has dimmed the light since Trump took office and issued 150+ executive orders. Sometimes this thunder and flurry of paper feels like a storm cloud, but more often it just obscures our view of the future. I won’t go into the latest from his trip to the Middle East and the awful budget bill, the impact of tariff nonsense, general corruption, and Stephen Miller. I’ve done quite a bit of that lately.

Regardless of the details, the descent into authoritarianism is a cloud of worry over most of us. The other day I looked out into my life landscape and my generally positive future seemed nowhere in sight. I had the usual worry about clients and my relationships — but what about the country? What is happening to the church? Selling my condo has been Trumped. Other business interests are beginning to be impacted. The 27% of my zip code neighbors who live below the poverty line are being squeezed even more.

Worry is not good. There is help.

I was having trouble turning into the presence of God as I looked out my window and prayed, so I looked for some help. What I found might help you, too.

First, I went to the book I am reading: Companions on the Inner Way by Morton Kelsey. I thumbed back to s spot I had underlined. Kelsey notes how Jesus called God “Abba” and told us to do the same. He says “Abba” should be translated “Daddy,” not just Father. It is affectionate, familiar.

My own father was not as warm as I would have liked, so I have always relished my somewhat “secret” relationship with God I developed when I lived with him, which still feels warm. I am grateful for that.

I think many of us like Jesus the most when we see him with his disciples saying, “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you.” I feel great sympathy for my clients who never had a parent who could be relied upon to show up in ways that communicated love to them. I have lamented with 30somethings who are still waiting for love to “happen” in their lives. They are still like children in the cradle waiting to be picked up. Or they are really “over” not getting picked up and will tell you they’ve given up on true love.

I was enjoying my relatively easy relationship with God when a stray thought wheedled its way into my mind. My somewhat passive acceptance of  God’s love is great, but I decided I needed to add some conviction to it. Lounging in God’s arms is good, especially when I am worried, and such repose should be constant. But in a day clouded with alarm everywhere I look, I think the feeling needs some kick.

Receiving grace should meet our conviction

My mind turned to the wonderful Romans 5

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. (vv. 1-2)  

There is Abba gracing me with that wonderful safe place to stand every day and delight in the hope of glory. But Paul goes on with the kick.

And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (vv. 3-5)

There is the conviction we need to apply. God’s love has been poured into my heart, and I’ve got plenty of affliction. Paul thinks that reality is going to result in something good. The Spirit is activating the conviction zone. I think of conviction as a response to the Spirit nudging me — that’s a good reason I discipline myself to pray every day, so I can get nudged.

Even more, conviction is the passionate action I take after I’ve turned into God’s embrace. My football coaches taught me this by saying (well, yelling at me a lot), “White, it is great you know the plays. But you don’t block and tackle with enough conviction (they probably said balls, or guts, and they really meant malevolence). If you don’t act with passion, nothing good will come of your understanding. I apply that lesson to loving. Love is a gift we experience from God; but it does not become something we live until it meets with  conviction and becomes our passion, too.

Love received. Love given.

I have so much experience with the Bible, I could then pull up two more places that guided me further. (Therefore, learn the Bible people).

I did not even try to remember where the phrase “mountains falling into the sea” was in the Bible. I Googled it. I guess I did not really need to find it. I knew the gist because I was experiencing it. I feel like the mountain of the U.S. I am used to is falling apart. It is unraveling before our eyes. A lot of us are watching it or trying to ignore it. And millions of us are convicted to respond. (Were you out on the street last Saturday? What are you planning for June 14?).

Google pointed me toward the famous Psalm 46. Here is the part I was looking for from Jonathan Alter’s translation:

God is a shelter and strength for us.
a help in straits, readily found.
Therefore, we fear not when the earth breaks apart,
when mountains collapse in the heart of the seas.
Its waters roar and roil,
mountains heave in its surge.

As I pondered that poetry in the middle of my dire straits, an old song rose up. It was very popular in the early days of our former church.

Even if you did not take the time to listen to it, just try on this mantra. It is the prayer of love meeting conviction:

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders.
Let me walk upon the waters
wherever you would call me.
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander,
and my faith will be made stronger
in the presence of my Savior.

These lines are a jolt in the middle of the song. When we sang it as a church, we would get progressively louder and more convicted as it repeated.  Glorious. I was glad to recall the experience the other day when mountains were falling and the waters were rising. I am called into new things in my old age. I need stronger faith for stronger worries.

Truly alive in the middle of uncertainty

I love how Oceans is a mash up of Psalm 46 and the story of Peter being called out of the boat in the storm. When we sing it, we start out being comforted by God in the middle of straits frothing as mountains crumble into them. Then the mantra reflects Peter seeing the Lord walking on water and getting out of his storm-tossed boat. I didn’t go to the Bible to find Peter’s story. I did not really need to, since I’ve heard it from flannel graph to commentary. What’s more, I’d just seen it on YouTube in an excerpt the creators The Chosen have uploaded. It is moving.

Even if you did not watch the scene, know that one of the good things about this video rendition is it does not shy away from the fact that we experience a lot of uncertainty and trauma which undermine our faith. We will always want to cry out and have Jesus save us and not leave us alone, just like we wished our parents had been more adept. God will not leave us orphans. At the same time, we will always need to grow out of our old selves and into our new – need to keep our eyes on Jesus and get out of the confines of our present understanding. Affliction produces endurance and endurance produces character.

Character is the fruit of conviction. We are not orphans. Great. But can you imagine a better time in history to have the love of God meet you in your trouble and energize your conviction to be truly alive in the middle of it and even make a difference? I keep telling myself “Endure the worry. Jesus is with you. The love of God is alive in you, even if the storm seems long.”

The leaders won’t save us: Put on furious, competent love

A life in the Spirit, Climate, , , , , ,

Margaret Renkl wrote a prophecy in the NY Times on November 18: “We Can’t Keep Waiting for Our Leaders to Save Us.” Let’s all say that again — that phrase most Christians (and my team, the Anabaptists, in particular) have been saying all along: We can’t keep waiting for our leaders to save us.

Even though it is convenient to blame someone else instead of taking responsibility and organizing ourselves (ponder whether you are lazily watching your family, church or neighborhood association disintegrate), we don’t have time to wait.

Renkl writes, “We were living in a cataclysmic age of mass extinction and climate instability even before the election. Now the climate denier in chief is poised to gut the environmental protections that do exist. Even so, conservation nonprofits are struggling to raise the funds they need to challenge his wrecking-ball agenda in court. The people who care are feeling defeated, and the fight has not yet begun.”

I want to talk about that some more. But ponder what it will means when the new plutocracy takes over next January. They want to play a new ball game.

  • And I mean plutocracy! Trump $8B, Elon Musk $334B, Vivek Ramaswamy $1B, Linda McMahon $3B, Howard Lutnick $2B, Doug Burgum $100M, Scott Bessent $1B, Kelly Loeffler $1B. The total wealth, just there, is more than the GDP of 169 different countries! Carsie Blanton has a prophecy of her own to sing about that situation.
  • Israel’s wars have reshaped the Middle East in less than a year. Netanyahu’s attacks on Iran and Hezbollah were wildly successful. The cease fire with elements in Lebanon may undercut Hamas so badly they free the hostages. We will see if the far right-wing in Israel annexes Gaza with U.S. permission and invites Jared to realize his dreams, now that his dad, the pardoned ex-con, will be Ambassador to France.
  • A.I. is going to explode in capacity any minute. I’m almost afraid to write that, since it might do something to me. Two of Google’s DeepMind co-founders, Shane Legg and Demis Hassabis, were signers of a 23-word open letter in May of 2023, along with other leaders of the A.I. universe, which declared, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

What kind of game will the new team play? I know some of us can’t see how Trump got into office. But is it possible that the less-than-half who elected him were so distracted by transphobia and other conspiracies, the beastly billionaires sneaked into D.C. to finish their gut of the U.S.? “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” — Luke 6:24

An anti-beast bestiary

Their first play of the game will likely be to undermine the meager approach to climate action the world is managing. The recent COP29 meeting in Azerbaijan (home to the world’s first oil well), gave us what, an 8th of a loaf looking for half? The nominated Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, says one of his three big plans after taking his is seat is to increase U.S. oil production by 3 million barrels a day!

Samoa Environment Minister Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster (right) embraces an attendee during a closing session of the COP29, Nov. 24, 2024. Rafiq Maqbool/AP

Renkl writes, “I was already grieving, and the approach of Remembrance Day for Lost Species, which falls each year on Nov. 30, didn’t help. Was this really the best time to pick up Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by the dazzling British author and scholar Katherine Rundell? Did I really want to read another book about how so much of life on earth is close to ending?”

I decided I did want to read it. In fact, it is a good book to read in the aftermath of a planet-threatening election. Here’s why — For the hard work that lies ahead, Ms. Rundell writes, “Our competent and furious love will have to be what fuels us.” This weird little book helps us stay in love. Like marriages surviving crises and friendships facing conflict, we need help to stay in love.

Rundell celebrates 23 endangered creatures with factual but endearing little essays. The last of the “vanishing treasures” on her list are humans. If we lose the rest, we will lose us. You know this story.

Wildlife populations are disappearing at an unthinkable rate, but we are getting nowhere in the effort to curb emissions or to protect the habitats of the creatures who yet survive and the temperature of the planet keeps going up. In 2022, the world’s nations made a historic pledge to keep 30 percent of the earth wild. So far, most of those countries have failed to produce a plan for doing so. Plus the promised abandonment of fossil fuels has proven to be an empty one. Global oil consumption was at an all-time high in 2023.

We can’t keep waiting for our leaders to save us. We need to wake up every morning looking for what we can do, collectively and individually, to buy enough time for our leaders to get this right.

In a time of diminishing possibilities, what options are left to us? You probably know about all these choices:

Competent, furious love

The main thing we can do, as prophetess Rundle says, is develop “competent and furious love.” This is where the Christians should really shine, since we know:

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh [your former sin-dominated state]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (Galatians 5:6, 13-15)

If the billionaires are devouring the country, if the oil companies are devouring the air, if the media what-nots devour the communication, if the pesticides devour the vanishing treasures, only competent and furious love can stand against it. As we know:

God is love. Anyone who lives faithfully in love also lives faithfully in God, and God lives in him. This love is fulfilled with us, so that on the day of judgment we have confidence based on our identification with Jesus in this world. Love will never invoke fear. Perfect love expels fear, particularly the fear of punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been completed through love. (1 John 4:16-18, The Voice)

Fearless love will be what stands up against whatever thugs are unleashed by the hater-in-chief to punish his foes and stoke more fear. People are already hiding, especially if they look Guatemalan, for the fear of the army patrolling the streets like in Venezuela. Only love like God’s can cast out fear like that.

The fearless love of God, creation and all the creatures will have to prevail. It always seems like “weak sauce” up against AK47s. The National Shooting Sports Foundation said in 2022 there were more than 4.5 million ARs, AKs, and similar rifles in circulation. At the time of their study, there were at least 24,446,000 guns in civilian hands. But either love prevails or we all die.

My pastor is fond of believing “love wins.” He says, even if people die trusting in chariots and horses and kill the planet, love will win because God is love. I hope he is right. But I am trusting in a furious, competent love that fights, right now, with the same weapons God demonstrated in Jesus. Incarnate, self-giving love in faith and in action wins. The hope of such love gives me courage to get real and not just blame the leaders — as blamable as they may be, instead of doing what I can do, in Love.

*********************

The season of Advent began yesterday. Want to know more about it? Get your understanding refreshed? Visit Celebrating the Transhistorical Body. 

A meditation to help us face 2024

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

Are you or your friends scared to face 2024? After everyone finished their reports on the December sicknesses last week, many people went on to report their anxiety about the coming year — for some it was more than anxiety, it was terror.

I can see why they feel that way. The Trump effect has created trickle-down lawlessness that makes simply driving one’s car frightening. The decades of partisan power struggle in U.S. politics has leaked into everyday transactions. Left-leaning institutions cancel their leaders, right-leaning institutions fire their pastors and directors and everyone has a litmus test, everyone is primarily concerned with power. Jane Coaston coined the term, “vice signaling,” to describe how Trump’s core supporters convey their tribal allegiance and show how little they care about conventional moral norms. The basic questions of life have become “Is my side winning? Am I getting what I deserve? Am I getting ripped off? Can anyone be trusted?”

It is not like humanity has ever stopped asking those questions. But cultures all over the planet have found striking ways to fight our sinful impulses. People keep reporting how they don’t have anyone fighting for them and don’t have the strength to protect themselves.

We all have something to give

We may have more capabilities to cope and even thrive than we think. That reality also appears in my office every day.

We all have something to give that makes things better. I think Jesus followers, especially, should feel an obligation to express the truth and love in them — that truth and love which is given to you in a unique way only you can give. In light of that I have been trying to figure out how to keep putting some truth and love out there that is not just outrage about Trump or despair about how many bad things have happened to me (e.g. – I have Xfinity issues).

My attempt at truth and love today centers on my recent, new soul friend, John O’Donohue. I think you could use some time to meditate on the teaching I received from his book Anam Cara. It could soothe your fears and even help you find a way through all those things you dread.  Throughout his book, O’Donohue keeps describing the basic alternative to the constant power struggle we are all sick of and sick from.

Life is not about who wins the election and who controls the economy. If it is, then life is just about getting power, and most of us do not have a life. That is, the life we have remains hidden from us.

In his Celtic way, O’Donohue reinforces what every baby knows and every adult longs for: life is about love.

O’Donohue can’t help but write poetry, even when he is writing prose. So I took a nice section of his book and made stanzas out of it, like a poem. I gave each section a title.

After you’ve used it all to meditate, I’ll make a few comments in closing.

See if this meditation gives you a non-anxious few minutes and fans the flames of God’s love in you. I believe as we claim such space in the world and live out of it, the Spirit of God transforms fear into fulfillment.

Your face is the icon of creation

Against the infinity of the cosmos and the silent depths of nature,
the human face shines out as the icon of intimacy.
It is here,
in this icon of human presence,
that divinity in creation comes nearest to itself.
The human face is the icon of creation.

Your heart is your inner face

Each person also has an inner face,
which is always sensed but never seen.
The heart is the inner face of your life.
The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful.
It is here that love gathers within you.

Love awakens what is divine in you

Love is absolutely vital for a human life.
For love alone can awaken what is divine within you.
In love, you grow and come home to your self.
When you learn to love and to let your self be loved,
you come home to the hearth of your own spirit.
You are warm and sheltered.
You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and belonging.

Longing and belonging fuel the fire of fulfillment

In that growth and homecoming
is the unlooked-for bonus
in the act of loving another.
Love begins with paying attention to others,
with an act of gracious self-forgetting.
This is the condition in which we grow.

Once the soul awakens,
the search begins
and you can never go back.
From then on, you are inflamed
with a special longing that will never again linger
in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment….

Love unlocks eternity

At the deepest level of being,
possibility is both mother and transfigured destination
of what we call events and facts.
This quiet and secret world of the eternal is the soul.

Love is the nature of the soul.
When we love and allow ourselves to be loved,
we begin more and more to inhabit the kingdom of the eternal.
Fear changes into courage,
emptiness becomes plentitude,
and distance becomes intimacy.

Godless people are going to try to use fear, emptiness and distance this year (and always) to dominate us and steer us in the direction of surrendering our true selves to their power. Trump even shared a fan-made video on Truth Social saying he was chosen to save us.

What should we do?

I am going to keep re-membering as the powers try to dislocate my insides and separate me from loved ones. I plan to keep turning into the truth and love in Jesus.

I am going to go back to James:

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

I am not going to forget what my face looks like, whether distorted by AI or tracked by cameras. My inner, unique face is going to be shown to the world through self-forgetting, transfiguring, and embracing love. I don’t need the world’s power if I am secure in the heart of creation, resting in the grace of God in Jesus. I may use my power to good ends, but I will never try to live off it like it longs to feed on me.

**********

Today is the MLK National Holiday in the United States. If you’d like to join in and learn what it is all about, visit The Transhistorical Body. 

There is a lot of bloom left in you, too.

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

When we first moved into our high-rise condo overlooking the park and the Philadelphia skyline, we were, along with all our neighbors, shut into our units by the pandemic. Not good. What’s more, our wrap-around balconies had been condemned by License and Inspection and needed to undergo a complete, expensive and LONG rehabilitation. Also not good. If situations like that, and worse, kind of resemble your life in the last few years, shut in and in need of rehab, you are not alone my friend.

Thank God things change! The pandemic was just recently declared over – although my son and my dear friends are fighting off Covid as I write, so I guess they missed the announcement. But things are generally better when it comes to the virus. What’s also exciting: our balconies were reopened last Spring, just in time for me to experiment with a new little farm I planted on them. I had plenty of new territory to plow. My daughter-in-law remarked at our New Year’s party, “These balconies are like extra rooms!” That’s really nice.

Hawaii State Flower Yellow Hawaiian Hibiscus
On the Big Island

Miracle hibiscus

I have a stories that go with each of the dear plants I have been nurturing, but in the interest of time I will just mention four that seem rather miraculous, especially the two hibiscus.

It started getting cold, so I thought I’d bring the plants inside and see if I could keep them alive until spring. They looked kind of “peak-ed” (FYI – in farm territory that means you’ve wasted away with illness until your cheek bones are pointy like mountain peaks). The hibiscus were already losing leaves, like they do when they aren’t in Hawaii.

To my surprise, when I brought them into the house to nurse them over the winter, they all got a second wind! The geranium budded. The dipladenia sent out six shoots looking for a trellis. And the hibiscus leafed out and began to bloom! My wife wondered how she was going to get rid of these plants that invaded the living room. But I was giddy with delight over late-fall blooms.

You are glad you read far enough to hear this good news, right?

Lessons from bloom to bloom

I confess, I visit these plants like they are much-loved children and attend to their buds and shoots with tender interest. So they have been central icons for my meditation. I am writing to share my revelations with you.

First, I did not know my 21st floor balconies are, in fact, more like Tibetan steppes than a Narberth backyard. I thought it was a perfect place for a farm. But if you saw my tomatoes you’d know something was very wrong. The plants baked in sun amplified by window reflection. They were rocked by unobstructed wind. Storms blasted them. They got dried out faster than I watered them (and then I went to Spain). It was very stressful for them!

It dawned on me my friends and family look like they have been on the balcony for a couple of years. Like I thought of my balconies, the world kind of looked like it should be a hospitable place. But there was virus, economic upheaval, riots, new wars, all sorts of tyrants — big and small, and unpredictable weather. A lot of us have very small tomatoes, spiritually speaking, and our leaves are about gone. My plants got small and tried to survive, so did many of my loved ones.

Diplandia

Second, I did not know that moving the plants a few feet into my condo terrarium would create an environment conducive to a miracle. Those hibiscus did not need much of an excuse to let loose with some flowers; Lord, they wanted to bloom! And I thought the trellis I made for the stunted dipladenia looked silly it was so big. But now the tendrils are reaching up into the nothing above it. I think the farm still needs more experimentation. But I can see how resilient the plants are if they are given a chance.

My friends are like that too. I am thinking about three people, in particular, who had a classically terrible pandemic: lost jobs, went off the wagon, or went broke. But they are budding these days. One of them is starting on something that looks more like him than the other career ever did. They ended up in unexpected territory and started noticing unexpected growth. There is absolutely hope. I’m a bit shocked about how good I feel right now myself!

Rest in God’s presence

My recent guide, John O’Donohue, keeps reopening my mind to the reality that instead of frittering away my sleepless nights worrying about my friends and family, my frayed connections and threatening circumstances, I need to remain at rest in LOVE. The creation is friendly; look at it. Slow down. Let things develop. Suffer. Recover. Explore. Fail. Die well. Be resurrected.

The other night when I was lapsing into being a Christian and my spiritual cheeks began to plump up, I remembered a song we sang at my best friend’s funeral after he died in a plane crash when he was in his early thirties. My part in the funeral was to lead the singing for this very large crowd from the very large Assemblies of God church where we had worked together. I had never led such a big group, so I was terrified of looking foolish. I had said I’d do it because I’d do anything for Rick, not realizing what it would be like to lead in someone’s funeral I deeply loved (and still miss!). But the moment turned out to be a wonder, one of those thin places you remember when you need to find another one.

The other night, I needed that favorite song of his  and the experience of the moment we sang it at his funeral. When we sang it then, I remember the shocking feeling of God’s presence orienting me (and surely everyone else) right into the center of the Lord’s great love. I felt, “Rick is OK. We are OK even though we feel all the things we are feeling.” It was the first hint I got that goodness and grief are not mutually exclusive.

It is a simple, might be less-than-true, sort-of-sentimental song — and that made no difference. It was Rick’s song, our song, that moment’s song and the singing of it was truer than any words could convey:

Surely the presence of the Lord is in the place.
I can feel His mighty power and His grace.
I can feel the brush of angels’ wings; I see glory on each face.
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. [People still sing it.]

It was as if I’d been moved just a few feet into God’s living room. I felt the bloom coming, in spite of grief, fear and everything else swirling around in that room and in my soul.

In our DNA, spiritual and physical, love is waiting to bloom. There are not too many places or moments in which that blooming is unlikely to happen. The Spirit of the Lord is in us and around us. We are suffused with Love, even when we are sick, unhappy, stupid, or somebody put us on the balcony in the burning sun, or forgot to water us.

I may need to learn that again tomorrow, when I am surprised by tiny tomatoes. But I keep getting better at learning reality — and I at least expect another opportunity for learning to arise, just like all the other opportunities have sprung out of strange songs and unlikely situations. There are always a lot more thin places than I know about before I really need to find one. Then I stumble into one and realize again: there is absolutely hope. You’ve got some bloom in you.

Small loves add up to enough love: Make a list

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

One of the most memorable “characters” in the wacky Disney Nutcracker (2018) is the Mouse King. For one thing, it is a technical marvel. MPC, the animation wizards, crafted hundreds of individual mice which they then combined into a oversized monster that could ooze around humans, robots and CGI scenery.

But the Mouse King is also memorable as a fascinating idea. When I was praying, the idea came to me as I sifted through lost and longed-for loves — my own loves and those my clients recount. I thought, “Love is like the Mouse King.”

We wish love were bigger

What I mean is, just like the wicked Mouse King is a conglomeration of many little mice, the big love we long for could be a collection of the little loves presently offered to us. The one with eyes to see, let them see.

As I prayed, I felt lonely and unloved. But I am not, objectively, alone or unloved, so I needed to see what those feelings were all about. They centered on my disappointment over people who were not responding to my attempts to connect and meaningful relationships I felt I had lost. I had a classic moment of eating the holes in the Swiss cheese. I ignored the “cheese” I had for the  cheese I desired. You may have developed variations on this theme:

  • I am not worthy of actual cheese so I make do with holes.
  • I was deprived of cheese and only understand holes.
  • I don’t need cheese and am strong enough to live in holes.
  • I deserve good cheese and no one will give it to me.

Fill in the blank for yourself.

All this is to say, we are hungry for love, for the “cheese” in which we find so many holes, for the main sustenance our souls can’t live without. We usually wish we had more true love in us and coming to us. If only my love were bigger.

Could small loves add up?

Today I got to see a friend’s toddler on Zoom. He barely knew how to wave and wasn’t sure about all those faces, but he waved. Later on, he said in language only his father could understand, “I want more waving.” I said, “That’s worth the effort to get to this meeting!” It was a very little love to receive, but could little loves add up? Could we be more satisfied if we turned into them?

A 2022 movie adapted Sir Terry Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001) for the screen. The film is a funny and sinister take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin story. In it, Pratchett creates another version of a rat king. This monster has a magical ability the draw non-sentient rats to itself. They pulse and bubble under his coat (above). Many little energies produce a potent villain.

I think the same can happen with love. Christians often note this when they bravely say their mustard seed of faith can move a mountain, “If we combine the individual gifts we have, we can change the world!” My small faith, hope and love are not too small to be valuable. In this vein, most Christmas cards should depict God, who is love, being born as a human baby. Amazing things came from that small being! Small loves add up to substantial impact.

I think it is a little easier to see how I am obligated to do the right thing by loving others, even if my love is small. It is harder to see and collect the small loves given by people loving me! (Did you add a bullet point above?). Nevertheless, I think these small-seeming loves combine to form enough love for me to live on. But I will need to have the eyes of my heart open so I can see them. They may seem so small they are invisible!

What’s more, these little loves, even when seen and welcomed, will have to find their way through all my defenses against the terrible feelings I fear connected to not getting enough love. I may have decided long before I had language to think about it, that my mother’s love was too small! I wish we could draw all these loves to us like a Rat King draws rats. But more than one acquaintance has said, “But that would be self-centered, wouldn’t it?” or “Wouldn’t I be taking someone else’s love?” Do you have a reason to stay unloved? Is it “big love or nothing” with you?

Make a list

Even though it seems like a daily battle, I keep trying to receive what I am given, even if I feel it is too small, even if I sometimes give into the temptation to think all I have is holes.

Why don’t you try collecting a bunch of small loves with me and see how you feel? See if they amount to more of what you need. Here’s what I piled up today from the last 24 hours or so:

  • My friend’s child on screen felt like a small love to me. There were a lot of layers of love in those waves.
  • My own amazing and devoted children are on my screensaver. I talked to one of those lovers yesterday.
  • I looked at the painting my granddaughter made and we framed.
  • My yoga app surprised me with a new soundtrack: birdsong.
  • New friends invited us over for 70-hour brisket. I don’t know what that is but I already appreciate the effort.
  • I discovered Baby Rose singing about her loves.
  • Fort Lee was renamed and I take that as love.
  • My friend of 40 years has a birthday today.

There were a LOT more bullets. I culled my list because I’m sure you get the idea. To NOT come up with a substantial list of your own will take some stubborn resistance on your part, and you may have that, like we all do. But we can overcome our resistance.

Even without God in the world, you’d have small loves all around you leading to the biggest love of all. It is a blessing the whole world shares. But God is born among us every day. Jesus is walking with us. God, who is love, is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. We’re gifted with love moment by moment.

Beyond trauma and resilience is Love

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Psychological growth, , , , , ,

A rich sense of blessing came over my wife and I not long ago. The experience has stuck with me and continues to loosen the barriers between me and my original union with God. Bessel van der Kolk and Psalm 139 helped.Here is a bit of the psalm:

For You shaped me, inside and out.
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb long before I took my first breath.
I will offer You my grateful heart, for I am Your unique creation, filled with wonder and awe.
You have approached even the smallest details with excellence;
Your works are wonderful;
I carry this knowledge deep within my soul.  — Psalm 139:13-14 (The Voice)

You should probably take a deep breath and read that again so you can sink into it.

It took me a few decades of life before I could take a deliberate breath and appreciate what my mind and body knew about God. So much of the Christianity surrounding me as I grew up was focused on being in right relationship with God, the great “external locus of control.” You’ve heard: “Get right with God. God is good all the time. Everything happens for a reason. Jesus is Lord of all. Jehovah is King.” The Church has often been a place where men fight each other to see what image of God is going to dominate, or what philosophy will rule. You’ve seen: Pastors raised up in sky-high pulpits or on jumbotrons, giant altars, a screen from behind which a man brings out holy things, founders who end up as dictators. Even Psalm 39, above, has been used to describe a very powerful creator whose total knowledge gives him total control (“God’s in control”) and so gives infinite opportunity to criticize the smallest details of our sin.

My Christian clients often come to therapy with the predictable effects of their damaging view of God. Even when they accept Jesus into their hearts (often in response to fear of hell or fear of ostracism from their family if they don’t), he resides in them like a prison warden, and the most avoidant are in solitary confinement.  Yet, once given a chance to tell their story, to be seen and heard, to explore the taboo topics of trauma and self-condemnation, they find a surprising knowledge of another God deep within. As they find their own value and exercise their own agency they get a new sense of an internal locus of control, and a new view of God emerges. They are free to form a much deeper relationship. As a result, Psalm 139 becomes more like the very gentle reading in The Voice. In that amplified translation, the rich word they translate “shaped” feels more intimate and, for what I want to say today, like a loving touch.

Bessel van der Kolk recording On Being. (Image by Kelli Wilkes)

Is resilience all we’ve got?

As I have been languidly reading The Body Keeps Score (in order to keep up with everyone else, honestly), I have enjoyed Bessel van der Kolk’s memoir-like presentation of how the science of trauma has developed over his lifetime, since the 1970’s. He’s a learner and open to any way to help people, to whatever works to free them, including spiritual ways. In 2021, Krista Tippet unearthed that his parents were fundamentalist Christians and the fact he “spent a fair amount of time in a monastery in France called Taize.”  One thing he has learned lately impressed me. It came from his own experience of MDMA as a means to revisit places where memories are stuck in a debilitating narrative of trauma.

Van der Kolk was a sickly, impoverished, hungry child with neglectful, traumatized parents. He says in the interview,

In my last experience [with MDMA}, actually, I experienced in a very deep way what that little boy went through, who was starving and his mom was not there for him. And I had a tremendous sense of compassion for, oh my God, what that little boy went through. And the people around me were extremely attuned. And it sort of took care of something so subliminal inside of myself that I think it’s produced quite a significant transformation inside myself. In terms of that I don’t feel deprived. I don’t feel that there’s a deficit anymore.

He says the drug gave him access to the “cosmic dimensions” of himself. It opened him to the “mystery of the universe” and he ended up “feeling at once insignificant and utterly precious at the same time.” He could have written Psalm 139 himself!

When van der Kolk and others explore trauma they are looking for psychological, relational and physical ways to diminish or reform memories that color future reactions to life and love and often shape us for self-destruction. When most therapists get to the “bottom of things” their main hope for healing is human resilience. In their view, our personal capacity, for the most part, is the power we have to get well and feel well, or at least stay safe and sober. Often their confidence is well placed because we are wonderfully made and have an amazing capacity for survival. For most of us, trauma often ends up transforming us, not tormenting us. In North Jersey I think most people say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

What is beyond the trauma narrative?

I am often amazed at the resilience people demonstrate. Once they rediscover their capacity, when it is affirmed, and they construct a new narrative for how their life works, they often feel good to go and they go. Others, once they have a new sense of safety and personal agency, are free to see what is deeper than their trauma. Beyond the faulty foundations of their attachment and the troubles of this world, they have always known God, in one way or another. Van der Kolk begrudgingly sees this knowledge in his parents’ infantile faith. But then he can’t miss it when his normal senses are bypassed with MDMA and wonders are revealed, received by and stored in his right brain, where he knew God before he knew language.

This post arose from a similar experience of revelation and reassurance. We were having a conversation  and both felt grateful for how our faith had helped us keep going and even transforming us when we were deeply hurt, not only by each other and the forces surrounding us, but by the trauma of the last two years and experiences clear back to our early childhood.  We were helping each other memorize the new narrative of love we had learned, the love that preceded our trauma, the trauma to which we had devoted much energy recounting and fearing.

Maybe now that scientists like van der Kolk are belatedly acknowledging the primacy of the right hemisphere of the brain, more and more people  will be open to their natural state of oneness with God. He says in his book, “The right brain is the first to develop in the womb, and it carries the nonverbal communication between mothers and infants” (p.79). I believe it is primarily in the right hemisphere where God also nonverbally communicated with us and continues to nurture us in a spiritual womb. I often tell about my first experience of church as a five-year old. I did not bother much with the left-brain lessons. But when we sang the songs, music being among the languages of the right brain, I felt like I was at home; they gave my senses the words to explain how I had always known God.

Psalm 139 gets at the sense we have always been with God and God has always been with us. I think it has always been a good reminder, a symbolic representation, of what we all know in our deepest hearts beyond our brokenness. We were created in love. Psalm 139 is another version of my kindergarten experience of oneness, “If it happened there it happens everywhere.” We are all known by a loving God. Jesus makes that plain.

So we can all find faith in God which supports us even better than our own resilience. We can find assurance that allows us to keep going when we are hurt. In the face of all the trouble we face, it makes sense to be stubbornly loved and always looking for love, even when the absence we feel hurts, knowing it is there, sinking into it beyond words, feeling it in the love of others. If it happened then, it can always happen. Deeper than suffering, than resilience, even deeper than trauma transformed is love. My prayer remains, “Your works are wonderful; I carry this knowledge deep within my soul.” I am the work of your love.

The new movement of the Spirit takes lament, commitment, action

A life in the Spirit, Building community, Life as the church, , , ,

On May 4th I begged a piece of paper from Gwen to take notes at the Jesus Collective Partner Summit. One would think a serious partner would be prepared to codify his marching orders! At least Gwen came prepared to move with the movement.

A Spirit-inspired vision still being born

I really should have had a few sheets of paper because there were many good things to collect! It was nice to be among a group of committed, often brilliant partners from around the world who are united by a vision for keeping a spiritual ball rolling. Beyond the reformation of Eurocentric, capitalist-bound, principle-centered, power-struggling, often narcissistic and male Christianity, there is a movement of Jesus-centered people who see another way to be the church. It is not a new way, but after hundreds of years of European domination, it seems new. Jesus Collective is working on a practical expression of the ancient-future way of the cross and resurrection that transcends all the boundaries of the world. If you explore the website you’ll probably get an idea of what’s going on. The website won’t tell you everything however; the new zeitgeist of the Body of Christ these days is better caught by experiencing like mindedness in relationship than taught with more left-brained schooling.

I enjoyed the relating but I was also schooled during the Partner Summit and Unite22. Jesus Collective has a unique view of the future because it was born right before the pandemic hit. Life these days is kind of “before the lockdowns” and “after a million Americans died.” It was not the most advantageous time to start something, but Jesus Collective started. Then the pandemic hit and then the revelation of Bruxy Cavey’s infidelity torpedoed the Meeting House which had been the collective’s incubator. The megachurch is still the incubator, only it is more like a NICU in a Kharkiv hospital. Since the inaugural in-person gathering I attended in 2019, the whole constituency has been traumatized and reformed. I was schooled about that, too.

What to do when the movement meets resistance

But there was so much more happening among the Jesus Collective than trauma! I came away stimulated and inspired – and convicted to keep the ball rolling! I can’t vouch for my notes, since my handwriting is often indecipherable. But I am still moved by three points I noted from a speaker I can’t remember. He or she was trying to answer the question, “What do we do now?” If there is still a movement of the Spirit alive in the world, how do we not only move with it but move it along when we are exhausted and beset with overwhelming circumstances? Jesus shows us a way. Here are three elements of staying on the way and showing the way with Him: lament, commitment, and action.

Jesus wept / lament

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. – Luke 19-41-2

My Christian psychotherapy clients, especially, often call lamenting “griping.” They are prone to say, “I shouldn’t be having these feelings” or “I am not sure I deserve to be sad when Ethiopians are on the verge of starvation.” Jesus did not talk himself out of crying. He did not shut himself down because people would see his despair and despise him for his vulnerability.

Emmanuel Katangole, from the east of Congo, justly became more famous during the pandemic because he has written so eloquently about the necessity and the power of lament. He says:

Lament is an invitation to see reality through the eyes of the most vulnerable, and to name and admit what is broken.

In this historical moment, only through the practice of lament can we imagine a new and better future. More than a personal spiritual practice, lament has potent political implications in three ways: connecting us to the oppressed, telling the truth to governments, and transcending partisan political borders.

I believe there is a new movement of the Spirit at work in the world, just as there is tragedy and evil afoot. If we are being reduced to repentance, that is a good thing. Lament is a positive spiritual response to our shame and hopelessness. Tears often water the seeds of a better future. If we can be moved, maybe we can energize a movement.

Edvard Munch, Melancholy (1894).

Jesus asked, “Do you want to be well?” / commit

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” – John 5:6

I asked one of my clients that question once. They had to think about it. Their aloneness had come to feel like their safe place. The vengeance they wanted over their abusers felt more important than health. The small space of control they felt they owned seemed violated by the question. I don’t think we should underestimate just how profound a question the Lord asks us, “No, really. Do you want to be made well?”

Taking the Lord’s outstretched hand is just the beginning. The man who was healed had to relearn to walk and experience being “the guy who was lame for 38 years.” He had to change how he saw himself and keep deciding to be well. At the end of the day we have to make a commitment to life. We often have to fight for our lives. Together we’re called to fight for the life of the world too.

I think Americans are so accustomed to their imperial ease that hysteria breaks out if gas costs a dollar more a gallon. Filipinos just elected the son of their former dictator because authoritarianism looks good if it promises some semblance of order. Even churches are adopting the authoritarian playbook. In these reactions, I don’t see a commitment to wellness, just control: I see little of the Spirit, mostly fear. I know a lot of Americans and a few Filipinos; many of them are exhausted, traumatized and often numb – and a lot of them are Jesus followers! For the first time, many of us may be able to relate to the man who couldn’t get to the pool. But here comes Jesus asking us for a commitment to him, not just to our own capacity. If we can get up and move again, maybe we can stoke the spiritual movement we all need so desperately.

Jesus taught: love God and your neighbor / act

Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. – Matthew 22:36-8

When I went to the Jesus Collective Partner Summit, I admit I was wary. So it was moving when many people convinced me I was loved and accepted, even valued.  I have my own trauma that makes me suspicious; I’m still recovering from a love breakdown in my former church. Quite often I need to remind myself to act love, do love, see love as my daily task. Otherwise I might just do me; I might get in the habit of being suspicious.

The leaders of the church where I completed my pastoring shunned my entire family because they imagined we were a threat to them. It was a classic cut off. Since we all still live in the same town and still care about our old friends, the absurdity of it all comes to fruit when people get married, have children, etc. and throw parties. The people remaining in the church have to wonder if it is OK to still love us and include us. They aren’t sure why, but we are out and they are supposed maintain “boundaries.” I hope we will all be back together in love one day. But until then, loving hurts. It is the task the Lord gives me as much as a delight I experience.

There are still people in Philly who operate according to the old redlining boundaries from the past. Family systems still don’t talk to descendants of a “black sheep.” Whole protestant denominations still recoil when something seems like it might be “Catholic.” For some reason the Supreme Court will sacrifice the peace of the country to overturn the right to privacy. There is a lot of broken love built right into the infrastructure. I may feel like I’m making bricks without straw, but we all need to bring at least one brick to the building of the beloved community every day. If we can move another brick onto that vision, maybe we can nurture the movement of the Spirit springing up in the strangest places.

We are called to get up every day and do the work of love. We are not called to get up every day and wish someone would do the work of loving me or get up angry about the people who don’t do the work. The desire and demand to love may flood some days with the tears of lament – let it come, let it sink in, and move with the Spirit anyway. The desire and demand to love will make us wonder if it is worth it to be well since well is hard — listen to the “yes” of the spirit resonating with the truth “You are beloved and valued” then make the commitment.

Let’s love others because we are lovers not because everything is working out well. Love is a feeling that becomes a task. Love is a desire that can’t help but become an action. Love is Jesus looking over Jerusalem with tears, reaching out his hand in compassion and challenge, getting himself killed, giving his life and forgiveness freely and in hope of resurrection. The Jesus Collective, in league with people all over the world, senses a new movement of raw, Jesus-y love like that spreading around the ever-warming globe, changing and rebuilding lives and churches. Maybe like never before we have a chance to bring good news to everyone in an era full of bad news and broken institutions.