Mike Paschall . com

It’s always fun to share exciting news, but that usually means something changed… something moved… someone is growing up!

#WilliamtheWarrior (William Michael Brewer) is about to turn six, and in the blink of an eye… he’s gone from this:

to this:

HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE? The boy has absolutely slayed Kindergarten this year, and now he’s on to First Grade next fall. And please know… he’s doing so well!

Like any other goofy little 5-year-old boy… he lives a pretty normal existence despite living beyond three major heart operations, numerous catheterizations, and too many intrusive doctor visits and pokes to count. He’s a remarkable, happy, and loving kid, and we are so proud of him.

Sidenote: William has another heart catheterization scheduled for May 31st. WTW has grown, and the procedure will help facilitate the blood flow he needs. Thank you for remembering him in your prayers.

Now… for some excitement!

In honor of WTW and the medical community he is surrounded by, we want to offer another round of WTW tees. Proceeds from your purchases will benefit the: The Heart Institute at Children’s Hospital Colorado. This place and people are near and dear to William’s family.

CLICK – #WTW / t-shirts or use the QR code to make your purchase today!

Order cut-off date ends May 15th / noon CST.

Thank you for loving on WTW.

We appreciate your support, and of course, always your prayers!

Mike and Patti

Such a way of discerning the sovereign power of his gracious compassion leads directly to the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate energizing for the new future. The wrenching of Friday had left only the despair of Saturday (Luke 24:21) and there was no reason to expect Sunday after that Friday. There is not any way to explain the resurrection out of the previously existing reality. The resurrection can only be received and affirmed and celebrated as the new action of God whose province it is to create new futures for people and to let them be amazed in the midst of despair… The resurrection of Jesus is not to be understood in good liberal fashion as a spiritual development in the church. Nor should it be too quickly handled as an oddity in the history of God or as an isolated act of God’s power. Rather, it is the ultimate act of prophetic energizing in which a new history is initiated. It is a new history open to all but peculiarly received by the marginal victims of the old order.

—From The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann

“(Resurrection)… it is the ultimate act of prophetic energizing in which a new history is initiated.”

This isn’t a conversation about election. This is pointing to the fact we’ve all been graciously invited to partake of the new covenant… the new kingdom… a kingdom humming in existence NOW! But there is something we have to grasp in the depths of our hearts… new means “new” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)! The old order did its job—it helped create our thirsty need for grace! The table is now lavishly set. All we have to do is receive and partake. That’s activates the bubbling fountain of the Spirit within us! (John 4:14) —MDP

LOVE WINS… EVEN WHEN IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE IT.

In her Dialogues, St. Catherine of Siena pictures the spiritual life as a large tree:

> The Trunk of the tree is love.

> The core of the tree, that middle part that must be alive for the rest of the tree to be alive is patience.

> The roots of the tree are self-knowledge.

> The many branches, reaching out into the air, are discernment.

>In other words, says Catherine, love does not happen without patience, self-knowledge, and discernment.

Today we have little encouragement toward honest self-knowledge or training in spiritual discernment from our churches. We prefer the seeming clarity of [duality] black-and-white laws. By nature, most of us are not very patient. All of which means that love is not going to be very common. We need St. Catherine’s tree again.

+Adapted from Radical Grace Meditations, pp. 184-185

This is really something to ponder. Eugene Peterson’s translation of 1 Corinthians 13 is so blatantly obvious and insightful to the current condition of not only our world, but the Church (the Bride of Christ) itself. WHEN did it become fashionable and quite normal [yawn] for the Church to be so agitated with hate, unabashed bias, comfortably divided, pridefully exclusive, and unashamedly at ease with groping for social and political prominence? Did Palm Sunday teach us nothing? “So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love” (1 Cor. 13:3). WHEN did this not apply to us anymore? —MDP

“If you cringe at your former self, that’s good—it means you’ve grown.

Never stop cringing.”  MARK MANSON

LIVE YOUR LOVE… THE WORLD NEEDS IT!

You will find the living God in the pages of the Bible. You will find [God] also just exactly where you are. When Jesus knew that he would not have much longer with his disciples he knew that they were sad at heart and he said to them: “It is for your own good that I am going because unless I go, the advocate will not come to you; but if I do go, I will send [the Spirit] to you… I still have many things to say to you, but they would be too much for you now. But when the Spirit of truth comes [the Spirit] will lead you to the complete truth.” (John 16:7, 12, 13) Jesus does not break his promise. God has sent the Spirit of truth, [the Spirit] dwells in your heart. You have only to listen, to follow, and [the Spirit] will lead you to the complete truth. [The Spirit] lead you through all the events, all the circumstances of your life. Nothing in your life is so insignificant, so small, that God cannot be found at its [center]. We think of God in the dramatic things, the glorious sunsets, the majestic mountains, the tempestuous seas: but [God] is the little things too, and the small of a passer-by or the gnarled hands of an old man, in a daisy, a tiny insect, following leaves. God is in the music, and laughter and sorrow too. And the grey times, when monotony stretches out ahead, and these community time to steady, solid growth into God.

God may make the [divine Self] known to you through the life of someone who, for you, is an ambassador for God, in whom you can see the beauty and truth and the love of God; anyone from St. Paul and the apostles through all the centuries to the present day, the great assembly of the saints and lovers of God. It may be that there is someone who loves you so deeply that you dare to believe that you are worth loving and so you can believe that God’s love for you could be possible after all. Sometimes it is though tragedy or serious illness that God speaks to our heart and we know [the Presence] for the first time. There is no limit to the ways in which God may make [the Presence] known. At every turn in our lives there can be a meeting place with God. How our heart should sing with joy and Thanksgiving! We have only to want [God] now in this moment—and at any moment in our lives—and [the Presence] is there, wanting us, longing to welcome us, to forgive us all that has gone before that has separated us from [being present to the Presence]. “If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23) God makes [a] home in you. They are not empty words. It is true. “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you.” This is prayer. Isn’t this the answer to all our yearning, our searching, our anguish, to all the longing, the incompleteness of our lives and of our loving? Until we dwell in [God] and allow [God] to dwell in us we shall be strangers to peace.

—From Prayer by Mother Francis Dominica

Every year in the very beginning of my annual pilgrimage back into familiar Advent readings, these words from Mother Francis Dominica appear like a silky apparition from the murky depths of contemplative gold. A quick search online reveals that Mother Dominica is a specialist in hospice care. That in-and-of-itself must somewhat explain her insights into the ministering wings of Presence. I’ve read this piece several times this week already. I thought I had posted this before, but if I did, I can’t find where or when I did. So, I’m posting it anyway. I think it will be a blessing to us if we can remain still long enough to feel “the peace” in Mother Dominica’s words. It’s a great kickoff for the Advent season!

Love and blessings to you all!

Mike

LOVE LARGE!  It matters.

Once upon a time I had a young friend named Philip. Philip was born with Downs Syndrome. He was a pleasant child—happy, it seemed—but increasingly aware of the difference between himself and other children. Philip went to Sunday school at the Methodist church. His teacher, also a friend of mine, taught the third-grade class with Philip and nine other eight-year-old boys and girls.

My Sunday school teacher friend is a very creative teacher. Most of you know 8-year-olds. And Philip, with his differences, was not readily accepted as a member of this third-grade Sunday School class. But my teacher friend was a good teacher, and he had helped facilitate a good group of 8-year-old children. They learned and they laughed and they played together. And they really cared about each other even though as you know, 8-year-olds don’t say that they care about each other out loud very often. But my teacher friend could see it. He knew it. He also knew that Philip was not really a part of that group of children. Philip, of course, did not choose nor did he want to be different. He just was. And that was just the way things were.

My Sunday school teacher friend had a marvelous design for his class on the Sunday after Easter last year. You know those things that pantyhose come in—the containers look like great big eggs. My friend had collected ten of these to use on that Sunday. The children loved it when he brought them into the room. Each child was to get a great big egg. It was a beautiful spring day, and the assigned task was for each child to go outside on the church grounds and find a symbol of new life, put it in the egg (the old pantyhose containers), and bring it back to the classroom. They would then mix them all up, and then all open and share their new symbols and surprises together one by one.

Well, they did this, and it was glorious. And it was confusing. And it was wild. They ran all around, gathered their symbols, and returned to the classroom. They put all the big eggs on the table, and then my teacher friend began to open them. All the children were standing around the table.

He opened one, and there was a flower, and they ooh-ed and aah-ed.

He opened another, and there was a little butterfly. “Beautiful,” the girls all said, since it was very hard for 8-year-old boys to say “beautiful.”

He opened another, and there was a rock. And as third graders will, some laughed, and some said, “That’s crazy! How’s a rock supposed to be like new life?” But the smart little boy whose egg they were speaking of spoke up. He said, “That’s mine. And I knew all of you would get flowers, and buds, and leaves, and butterflies, and stuff like that. So I got a rock because I wanted to be different. And for me, that’s new life.”…

He (the teacher) opened the next one, and there was nothing there. The other children, as 8-year-olds will, said, “That’s not fair—that’s stupid!—somebody didn’t do it right.”

About that time my teacher friend felt a tug on his shirt, and he looked down and Philip was standing beside him.

“It’s mine,” Philip said. “It’s mine.” and the children said, “You don’t ever do things right, Phillip. There’s nothing there!”

“I did so do it,” Philip said. “I did do it. It’s empty—the tomb is empty!“

The class was silent, a very full silence. And for you people who don’t believe in miracles, I want to tell you that one happened that day last spring. From that time on, it was different. Philip suddenly became a part of the group of 8-year-old children. They took him in. He entered. He was set free from the tomb of his differentness.

Phillip died last summer. His family had known since the time he was born that he wouldn’t live out a full lifespan. Many other things had been wrong with his tiny, little body. And so, late last July, with an infection that most normal children could have quickly shrugged off, Philip died. Mystery simply enveloped him completely.

He was buried from that church. And on that day at the funeral nine 8-year-olds, with their Sunday school teacher, marched right up to the altar and laid on it an empty egg. An empty, old discarded holder of pantyhose.

           —From “The Story of Philip” by Harry Pritchett, Jr. in St. Luke’s Journal of Theology (June 1976).

This story has been around a long time, and it’s been published in more than a few magazines. Maybe you’ve read it, but forgot it? Maybe you’ve never read it before. Whatever the case, I’m reminded that the first recorded line from the greatest sermon ever given was the perfect opening to a linear progression of theological upheaval and social indictment regarding how God actually sees and relates to us. Who could have—would have—ever guessed that, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (happy are the broken, blessed are those who can’t) would set the tone for the greatest reversal theme of all time? The religious norm never saw it coming.

Pritchett’s story uses the innocence (the natural interaction) of children to teach us a grand lesson. Could it be that the “poor in spirit” (the broken, the challenged, the little ones, the ignored, the minimized, the immigrant, the sex worker, the drunk, the addict, the homeless…) have a better shot at real happiness and heaven’s blessedness? Not because of their brokenness, but because of what they actually have to give away to the world, in spite of that brokenness? I think that is the whole meaning of what Jesus was laying down in his sermon. Our unwillingness to see them… hear them… humanize them… is doing us no favors. I suspect that most of us are on the wrong side of power. I know I am.

Obviously, a challenged child became the real teacher… of everyone. And yes, it’s an old story, but it still preaches.

But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Mike

STAY IN LOVE / LIVE YOUR LOVE / EVERYDAY

Recently I was in a doctor’s office … when a young mother with long brown hair and a gentle face entered, pushing in a wheelchair a child three or four years old. The child obviously was disabled: hands unable to grasp anything, her arms and legs flailing helplessly, her eyes unable to hold focus. Her voice could not make syllables but only squeals or little wails. Mother positioned the child’s chair so that they were face-to-face. She began softly singing and doing the hand motions to “The Itsy-Bitsy-Spider” directly in front of the child’s face, to attract her attention. She repeated it over and over, sometimes catching the child’s hand and kissing it, stroking her hair; she looked into the child’s eyes and whispered, with enormous tenderness, “I love you.” For a moment, I felt like an unwitting intruder into a very sacred space.

Is this how we are, I wondered, before our God who wants to love us just as tenderly? Our limbs flailing aimlessly, unable to unify our energies to respond to the gift of life we have been given; our eyes unable to focus on the love God tries over and over in so many ways to reveal to us; Our voices unable to respond coherently to this God whom our minds cannot comprehend? And is this why we so often turn to the word mercy when we want to speak of our God?

When God’s love touches us in our neediness, the sorrow and suffering inherent in the human condition, we name it mercy. Mercy is perhaps the loveliest of all God’s qualities. This is the love that reaches into the dark spaces of our flailing and our failings, our losing and our dying. Mercy enters that space, picks us up and holds us tenderly until we are healed. Little by little, this love draws our groping hands and wasted energies to purposeful service; it looks directly into our uncomprehending eyes, hears our futile wails, and says, “No matter, I love you anyway. Come on…”  And so mercy brings us to ever new life.

—From “Living in the Mercy” by Elaine M. Prevallet

I shared this last night with the Wednesday Night group at the church where I serve. We eat together and take a few additional moments to check in on each other, and I usually offer a short devotional thought of some sort. What you just read (above) is what I offered last night.

Something about Prevallet’s recollection of the details of what she witnessed in that doctor’s office really pinged me. I think she described the encounter in such a way that it was really easy for me to segue into the point she was making.  And, I must add, it wasn’t about anyone else.  It was me.  I could see very plainly that “I” was that child.  I AM that child.  I think Elaine nailed it with “flailing and failings!”

I don’t think I often view myself as a recipient of mercy. I’ve thought of mercy as the thing that God reserves for the “big crap” I stepped into on purpose.  The really ugly stuff.  The horribly embarrassing stuff that nobody needs to know about… ever.  Grace and love covers a multitude of daily sins, but I viewed mercy as more God’s “final move” after I stepped on God’s benevolent last nerve. So, instead of a penal response, (what I truly deserve)… I got mercy.

The beauty of Prevallat’s offering is that it instantly hit me with a wave of humility. I’m not saying I’m humble. Oh, God no!  I’m not saying that at all.  I’m saying that the power of the story helped me to see how small, and shallow, and weak, and needy I am for God’s presence and ever-loving… mercy.  I know I’m gifted. I know I have capabilities. I know the Spirit’s voice and I try hard to follow the Way of Jesus. But when that wave of humility comes to do it’s job and humble us, it helps me to level the waters of humanity. Yes, I need mercy more than I realize I need mercy, but the humility is a reminder that I’m not alone or singled out as a piece of crap that’s living just on the edge of God’s vengeful anger. God’s response is always grace, often merciful, and always love. I certainly don’t always deserve that kind of response from our loving God. None of us do.

All of this to say, and I say it a lot these days, God loves what God creates. The condition of us, the flaws of us, the “flailing” of us may certainly damage us. Mercy says God isn’t put off because of our “humanness” and rotten choices. And it’s not just the big stuff.  Mercy moves in and out of our breathing… in syncopation with our existing.  If we get that, humility is the only access point to get our hearts involved with this holy mystery.

Mercy must be a pillar inside the goodness of God. God is good because of God’s own goodness. My declaration has nothing to do with God’s goodness. If I’m fortunate enough to see into this goodness, outside of my own doing, I realize how much mercy is in God’s goodness. The vastness of God’s goodness is pregnant with mercy.  I imagine more than we can ever comprehend.

Bless you.  Love you.

Mike

LIVE YOUR LOVE.  SOMEBODY NEEDS IT.

Really, there are no words to express the experience of the Holy Spirit. I have felt such religious joy several times, and I’ve had the joy of being immersed in light; there are no words to describe that joy. I have felt an absolute joy that cannot be tasted in such pleasures as fame or gain or the pleasures of the physical nature.

Christ said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”: and at once he added, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.” That means the same as when he said, “Abide in my love.” That is, the Holy Spirit, as the truth, gives the content of consciousness. As the Sanctifier, he gives a guarantee of our perfection. But that again is not separate from his atoning love. The realization of this love is altogether by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul who experienced this love received the power to overcome all things with the joy of love.

Really the Holy Spirit and love cannot be separated. Christ came into the world to show the human race the love of God. All the teachings of Christ have relation to this love. Salvation means that God is love. Providence also means that we are kept by the love of God. Judgment means that God will weed out those who do not believe in the love of God [or we live life in a vacuum devoid of feeling or being aware of God’s love]. God is love. Christ is the crystal of God’s love. The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of truth who reveals the atoning love of Christ.

This love is not the love that the world gives. It is the love that God gives. The love of the world is semiconscious. It only loves those whom it likes. But the love that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit is the full, conscious, atoning love that loves even those whom it dislikes.

When we thus think, all the teachings of Christ is love. Through the consciousness of the joy of this love, it flows out eternally like never-ceasing oil from a vessel. It is at this point the evangelist John says that the Holy Spirit and love are not to be separated. The mystical experience of the Holy Spirit is the intuitive recognition of the love of God. For this reason, those who have a deep experience of the Holy Spirit, however poor they may be, whatever sickness they may suffer, however much they may be persecuted, rejoice in the unceasing love of God. Truly, in this meaning, the Holy Spirit is the Comforter, and we may say he is our Helper. The religion of the love of Christ is not a religion of fear. It is the fountain of love and joy and life. We must live forever in his love.

—Toyohiko Kagawa, Living Our Christ’s Love

 

If I had some kind of power to steer you, I’d suggest that you read this every single day (maybe even 2 or 3 times a day) for an entire week. I’d also suggest that you continue to read it until you know the truth of it in your bones. A casual glance at this offering won’t suffice! We must know AND  experience these truths cellularly in our body. This is the stuff that affects how we live, how we think, how we let our light of love shine. This is the right source that should command our thoughts and actions. —MDP

LIVE YOUR LOVE…

THE WORLD NEEDS IT!

Goodness! How difficult it is to believe in the sort of Messiah that Jesus of Nazareth represents!

            To believe that we win by losing our very selves!

            To believe that love is everything.

            To believe that power is a great danger, wealth slavery, comfortable life a misfortune.

            It’s not easy.

            This is why you hear people in the street say, “If there was a God there would not be all this suffering.”

            Two thousand years have gone, and there are still Christians whose doctrinal notions belong to those ancient days when the power and existence of God was revealed by displays of strength and the victory of armies. And especially by wealth and having more possessions.

            The real secret had not then been received.

            Nor is it received very easily even today.

            Hence the blasphemy in general circulation denying the kingdom’s visibility, given the ordeal of suffering and death.

            The old teaching that we, the Church, must be strong still feeds our determination to possess the land and dominate the world.

            We must make ourselves felt. We must keep our enemies down. We must scowl. We must win, and to win we need money, money, money. And to have money we need banks, we need the means and we need clever bankers. How can we do good without means, without money? Let’s have a big meeting, and then any opposition will be shamed into silence. Well, we must defend our rights, the rights of the church. We must defeat our enemies.

            Enemies, always enemies on the Church’s horizon! Yet Jesus has told us in no uncertain terms that we no longer have any enemies, since they are the same people we are supposed to love, and love specially.

            Can it be that we have not understood?

            Don’t we read the Gospels in our churches?

            How long shall we wait before following the teaching of Jesus?

From Why, O Lord? by Carlos Carretto

What a gnawing piece of writing! I’m withholding commentary because I’m not sure Carretto’s insight needs commentary. But I will say that this hits deep, and if it stings… it probably needs too. The Church is a broad tent, and can be at times, blinded by bias and selective hearing. Certainly God likes grits… because I like grits. Right? Surely, we don’t believe that we are always above and beyond reproach?

There’s a lot of food for thought here.  So… think about it. -MDP-

LIVE YOUR LOVE!

IT MATTERS.

I have a good friend who lost her mate back in January. Rex had been sick for a long time with a lot of physical battles, but the guy remained thankful and pleasant throughout the whole ordeal. The guy was one of a kind. A brilliant man, well read, informed, industrious, gracious, generous, and always thinking about the next project. He cared about a lot of things that most of us take for granted. His passion to help, to feed the poor, was straight from the divine realm. He really invested and did what he could. I think he was simply unique in that ministry of heart, and I admired him greatly for it. I got pulled a couple of times into his passion to feed the poor. The guy was a tiger when he fixated on a goal. A “man on mission” is a gross understatement. I miss him already.

I dropped in to visit with him one day in January. Early, the very next morning, his wife texted me that Rex had passed in the wee hours of the new day. He was ready to go. It had gotten to the point when I’d ask him how he was doing, the standard response was, “shitty.” Then he’d grin and tell me how blessed he was, always noting how his wife of 61 years was taking care of him, serving him, keeping up the place, and himself. That visit was no different, except that he told me that he was ready to go home. Another project he was figuring, but there was always another project he was figuring.

A couple of weeks later, I dropped by to see Sally. It’s one of those relationships that I know I’m better for. She’s taught me a lot as she’s still transitioning into more truth and the mystery of unknowing. Senior adults who don’t have answers for everything are smooth as silk. I welcome any opportunity I get to be with them when they’re on that kind of contemplative path. Even amid so much pain and grief, she is teaching from the deeper realms of peace and contentment. It’s not that common. You notice it, and you feel it, when you’re around it.

I really wanted to know how she was doing, and she spilled her truth as I knew she would. “It’s the void. It’s the empty space that you can’t really ever prepare for.” Another perspective on grief. Another teaching of life’s reality. It chilled me when she said it because I know how often I manage my own need and desire for quiet. The optimal word there is “manage,” as though I have options. She’s learning how to be quiet within the cloud of quiet. And while it appears she’s adjusting to that level of quiet, it’s another realm of quiet she hasn’t known before, and it’s not going away. It’s not a temporary quiet. It’s a lasting quiet.  The air has changed. The space—the void—has overgrown everything in her life. She’s on a journey. She’ll adapt and she’ll be more than okay, just like millions of others have in their own journeys with grief. She’s tough like that.

After serving me snacks and drinks, she handed me an article entitled “Life is Short,” that she had photocopied from a magazine. “We don’t realize how much we abuse time and waste life,” she said. “Read it! It’s hilarious!”

I’ve been waiting for the right time to post it. The article is snarky, witty, and all too true. It definitely struck a few nerves. I’m passing it on because life IS short. I know it more every day.

Much love (way beyond knuckle love),

Mike

LIFE IS SHORT

by Cora Frazer

Life is short. Why not spend it mired in regret? Why not spend your evenings sitting side by side at the dining room table with your spouse, trying to determine whether your downstairs neighbors’ ceiling fan is making the floor tremble?

Our existence on this planet is statistically insignificant when compared with the history of the universe. So take advantage of it! Charge your spouse six dollars and fifty cents on Venmo for “supplemental groceries.”

You get to choose the life you live. And, every minute, you have the opportunity to make a different choice. Every minute, you could say, “Today, I will eat defrosted turnip soup and think about the time I felt left out at my friend’s wedding.”

What you really want to do right now is call an office-supply store’s customer-service number. So why not do that? What’s holding you back? Who would you be if you stopped limiting yourself and really let yourself experience the hold music, interrupted every twenty-three seconds with “All representatives are currently assisting other callers”?

The next time you find yourself adding up items in your “worst-case scenario” budget, close your eyes and really feel your fingers on the laptop keyboard with its “N” partly worn off. Sense the gentle thrum of panic in your chest and hear the patter of the drill in the street beyond. Open your eyes and subtract another thousand. Why? Because you, my friend, deserve it.

True, you could dedicate your time on earth to your relationships and the work and hobbies that give you a sense of purpose. Or you could dedicate your time to washing used Ziplock bags and turning them inside out on drying racks to dry.

Someone’s got to read every single tweet written by peers who have achieved success in industries that you were never interested in, so why not you? Give yourself permission to take screenshots of other people’s life joy and text the images to acquaintances with the caption “LOL.”

There are only twenty-four hours in a day, so why not say “F-it” and fully embrace all the sublimity of your scarcity mind-set? Why not return seventy per cent of what you buy out of fear that you’ll never be able to retire? You do you! You walk into that retailer and request a refund outside of the return window like the transcendent being you truly are!

You are a gorgeous human with unlimited potential to eat week-old hard-boiled eggs, and the only person who’s holding you back from checking eighteen times to see if the stove is off is you.

Every moment that you’re not sitting double-parked in your Honda Civic, protecting your spot during street cleaning, is a moment wasted. Every moment that you’re bounding through autumn leaves with your rescue puppy is a moment that you could be writing a negative review of a printer you broke. Every moment that you’re meditating is a moment that you could be thinking of comebacks to the student who called your class “lower level.” This very afternoon, you could stroll down the street as you talk to your friend on the phone, listening to each of his words, or you could put yourself on mute and clean the toilet.

Your heart’s truest desire is to refuse to rejoin the family thread because you can’t handle your grandmother anymore. Of course, there’s the voice in your head telling you that you “should” forgive her for suggesting that you brush your hair more often. But forget “shoulds”! Focus on reading marketing e-mails instead, out of a sense of guilt! Because you have a unique and beautiful simmering rage inside you, and no one else can harbor it for you.

And, if you do enjoy your time working in public defense, or knitting, or cooking recipes from around the world, or reading out loud to your spouse, well . . . honestly, that seems like something you should examine.

And, whenever you decide that you want to live your life in all its exquisite smallness, we’ll be here for you with our arms firmly at our sides.

“Shouts & Murmurs,” New Yorker Magazine, January 23, 2023

A man shocked me one day when he said, “You Christians don’t love Christ. You hate Christ. You hate what Christ stands for.” He continued, “You cover up your own hatred and fear of Christ by talking about how much you love Jesus. But, if you love Jesus, why don’t you love your enemies? If you love Jesus, why don’t you really obey the gospel, most of which you ignore?”

I heard those words and I trembled inside, thinking, My God, is that true of me? Brothers and sisters, just open Mark’s Gospel. Most of us haven’t paid attention to 90 percent of it. Most of the passages are just conveniently ignored by the institutional church and by ourselves. In fact, we often do the exact opposite of what Jesus teaches about, as if a bigger lie is easier to cover up. Christians and their bishops have been condoning and participating in war, greed and false security for centuries, while calling themselves the Body of Christ, or even “The Magisterium” (read authorized institutional spiritual authority). Matthew 23 would seemingly make us unwilling to wear a long robe or tassels ever again! Strange, isn’t it?

When was the last time you heard of someone being thrown out of the church for not rejoicing and exalting Him when confronted with criticism? (Matthew 5:11-13). Why don’t we make that a matter for excommunication? The thought never entered our minds.

From Richard Rohr, “Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction”

The original title of Rohr’s selection was “Do We Love Christ?” I decided it had been incorrectly titled. “Do We Love Christ?” is answerable without much thought. Most of us nod our heads, and move on without even reading the material. So, for today’s devotional, I took liberty of changing it. If you are still reading, I guess it somewhat worked.

Are we sure we love the Christ? The universal-cosmic presence of God in all of heaven and earth? It takes a certain amount of expansion in consciousness and spiritual awareness to grasp that. Having “eyes to see” isn’t a foregone conclusion. Just because I read and study my Bible, because I go to church, and because I pay my tithes, doesn’t necessarily mean I have “eyes to see or ears to hear” what the Spirit of all truth is laying down. There is so much uncomfortable value in Rohr’s words. I think he’s saying that loving Jesus, believing in Jesus, praising Jesus, is all good. But, those are not the all-encompassing main events. All of that can be done out of a spirit of religious pretense. It’s in FOLLOWING Jesus where the shift to the Christ consciousness begins to happen.

In fact, we often do the exact opposite of what Jesus teaches about, as if a bigger lie is easier to cover up. —Rohr

Quite a bit of the Church has settled for a precise and “certain” theological understanding that has all of the answers to its own selective questions. “Christ” isn’t Jesus’s last name. Though Christ does incorporate the works and words of Jesus, the pre and post resurrection reality of the Christ is all inclusive and encompasses all. The Christ is mind-boggling reality of infinitesimal Presence, and you and I are a part of that presence, whether we’re cooperating and in sync, or not. That is precisely the point Rohr is making. The way we participate (dare I say, “properly”), is to really follow (walk out, live out) the Way of Jesus. Can we honestly say we’re doing that? Or are we more concerned with “legalistic posturing” in order to justify our behavior and intent? Do we manipulate scripture and allow fear, unhealed wounds, things we hate, things we love, things we profit from, politics, and even church leadership to dictate our focus?

I’m not sure I know how it happened, but I ended up plowing a lot deeper here than I originally intended. So, to gear it down to something more manageable, I just wonder if we’d all be wider-awake in kingdom reality if we were more practically engaged. Can we hold ourselves and one another accountable to living Jesus’ values, character qualities, and ways of dealing with other humans who are not always living their best selves? That, in and of itself, should expand and immerse us in the genuine love of Christ.

MDP

LIVE YOUR LOVE AND BE GOOD AT LIFE.