Mike Paschall . com

What is God doing in the Scripture really? With that question in mind, I want to give you an operative principle, which, I believe, had it been used in the last 500 years, would have ensured a much more exciting and positive Christian history. If you’re meditating on a Bible text, Hebrew or Christian, and if you see God operating at a lesser level than the best person you know, then that text is not authentic revelation. “God is love” (1 John 4 16), and no person you meet could possibly be more loving than the Source of love itself. It is as simple as that. You now have a foundational hermeneutic (interpretive key) for interpreting all Scripture wisely. Literalism is the lowest and most narrow hermeneutic for understanding conversation in general and sacred text in particular.

Haven’t you read text and not know what to think? See, for example, where Yahweh presumably tells the Israelites to kill every Canaanite in sight—men, women and children—and then imposes a ban on every pagan town, telling the Israelites to enter, burn, and destroy everything in sight (as in Joshua 6—7). Do you really think that God is talking? I don’t think so. They have created God in their own image instead of letting God re-create them in his image.

“Well,” you say, “it is in the Bible, and that makes it true and right.” That is why we have to use a whole different lens for interpreting any authoritative text. How we deal with sacred texts is how we deal with reality in general. And how we deal with reality in general is how we deal with sacred text. And both reality and all sacred text are also fragmented and imperfect (1 Corinthians 13:12). It takes a certain level of human and spiritual maturity to interpret scripture. Vengeful and petty people find vengeful and hateful text (and they are there, but some find them even when they are not there)! Loving and peaceful people will hold out until a text resounds deep within them (and there are plenty there!). In short, only love can handle big truth.

+Adapted from the webcast “A Teaching on Wondrous Encounters”

That is why we have to use a whole different lens for interpreting any authoritative text. How we deal with sacred texts is how we deal with reality in general. —Richard Rohr OFM

It takes a fairly big investment of years, time, concentration, openness, and honesty to come into agreement with what Rohr is suggesting here. I’m not sure you can just start here. It might even be the second half of your life before you’re even willing to consider that this might be true. Honestly, it is much easier to just swallow what your pastor says (or church teaches) and live inside literalism. I’ve been there, and I know it uncomplicates (to a certain extent) where one might stand. But there are a million collisions with life that requires us to back up and contemplate what the deeper… more inherent truth might be (besides a chapter and verse response). What more aligns with the true nature of the Triune God? I say it all the time, biblically versed individuals (especially literalist) can be some of the meanest, nastiest, judgmental, and life-sucking people walking on this planet. Even Jesus asked us to live in a way and do things that are next to impossible to do without a serious download of Spirit and deep character development (i.e. love your neighbor as yourself). Ask yourself: What reflects Jesus and the goodness of God? In my estimation… that’s the better place to start. —MDP

Non-dual thinking is a way of seeing that refuses to eliminate the negative, the problematic, the threatening parts of everything. Non-dual thinking does not divide the field of the naked-now, but receives it all. This demands some degree of real detachment from the self. The non-dual/contemplative mind holds truth humbly, knowing that if it is true, it is in its own best argument.

Non-polar thinking (if you prefer that phrase) teaches you how to hold creative tensions, how to live with paradox and contradictions, how not to run from mystery, and therefore how to practice what all religions teach as necessary: compassion, mercy, loving kindness, patience, forgiveness, and humility.

—Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, Richard Rohr

For whatever reason, this really caught my attention when I first read it. It reminds me of Peter’s message:

“Beloved friends, if life gets extremely difficult, with many tests, don’t be bewildered as though something strange were overwhelming you. Instead, continue to rejoice, for you, in a measure, have shared in the sufferings of the Anointed One so that you can share in the revelation of his glory and celebrate with even greater gladness!” (1 Peter 4:12-13, TPT).

It’s a jolt to remember that we should not be too surprised when life goes sideways at times. In fact, that is the perfect proving ground (agitation, life pangs, disappointment, failure, rejection, etc.) for the manifestation of the things that Rohr mentions:

compassion, mercy, loving kindness, patience, forgiveness, and humility.

Those things are very much a part of the “Fruits of the Spirit” package, and that can’t really be faked very well while under pressure. Either you ooze the juice of the fruit—or you do not.

If the truth were to be known, marriage or covenant partnership might be the most perfect proving ground for what’s really inside us. Patti and I have been married 45 years, and even after all these years, we still have “come to Jesus” talks where we must be painfully real about how the relationship is going. It’s not always pleasant and I don’t always like how I respond to the process, but I always feel that we come out stronger and clearer in what we envision for our life together. Fortunately, we’re never too surprised that we get crossways with each other. We’re both strong, we’re both somewhat opinionated, and we’re both certain that we’re right in our positions. Like I said, those seasons of stretching are good proving grounds for what’s really in us. Fertile soil for good growth has all kinds of critters in it. The contemplative and the willingness to listen beyond words forces you to get good with the messy and complicated.

Recently, I’ve been pondering two questions that I think fit loosely into the genre of Rohr’s article. I don’t necessarily like the questions, but I think it might be important to face them from time to time. I wish the first question was “unthinkable,” but because I don’t want it on my plate or anywhere near my table, I’m willing to consider it’s all too often reality. I truly think it’s important to look at them and bring an honest response.

QUESTION ONE: If my mate (i.e. husband, wife, partner, significant other) announced that he or she was leaving the marriage without warning or negotiation, would it be justified at any level because of my actions, lack of actions, abuse, infidelity, lack of care, or love?

I realize that what would be considered “justified cause” would be dependent upon the individual wounded in the relationship or the damage done by some abuse or neglect of either or both parties. Real integrity with the question would probably trigger us in our culpability in what “justified” would mean. To be fair, I’ve been guilty of things that could be considered justified means. These are things that I know I’ve done that were not helpful or edifying to the relationship. But grace, and my wife’s love for me, saved the day. Just saying.

QUESTION TWO:  What would need to change in me that would validate trust (again) and promote the perpetual promise that I made when we cut covenant in marriage?

I’ve always been told that you can’t fix the “other” in your relationships. That means we only have real control or leverage with ourselves, and that’s where the work needs to happen.

Why these two questions? The only thing I got here is, why not? If I’m better for my [spouse, life partner, mate, soul mate], who is 50 percent of me, and better for myself when I’m oozing those fruit juices, especially while under strenuous pressure or complex issues, then it’s another chance to shine the goodness that resonates from my center. Honestly, facing these questions can be helpful to anyone who sincerely wants to uphold his or her side of the covenant. Even if your marriage is good and healthy, the questions make their way inside of us. If you’re aware of potential “just cause” issues, take the time to own and deal with them, repent of them, and say whatever needs to be said to the one wounded by such actions. This is the work of covenant. It should be normal, and it’s definitely necessary.

And, it’s not always bold and outrageously obvious. There can be danger in the hidden, vague and fuzzy gray. This is the crux of non-polar thinking. It appears to be imperative for healthy relationships of all kinds. —MDP

We do not begin life on our own. We do not finish it on our own. Life, especially when we experience by faith the complex interplay of creation and salvation, is not fashioned out of our own genetic lumber and cultural warehouses. It is not hammered together with the planks and nails of our thoughts and dreams, or feelings and fancies. We are not self-sufficient. We enter a world that is created by God, that already has a rich history and is crowded with committed participants—a world of animals and mountains, of politics and religion; a world where people build houses and raise children, where volcanoes erupt lava and rivers flow to the sea; a world in which, however carefully we observe and watch and study it, surprising things keep on taking place (like rocks turning into pools of water). We keep on being surprised because we are in on something beyond our management, something over our heads.

In prayer we realize and practice our part in this intricate involvement with absolutely everything that is, no matter how remote it seems to us or how indifferent we are to it. This prayer is not an emotional or aesthetic sideline that we indulge in after our real work is done; it is the connective tissue of our far-flung existence. The world of creation interpenetrates the world of redemption. The world of redemption interpenetrates the world of creation. The extravagantly orchestrated skies and the exuberantly fashioned earth are not background to provide a little beauty on the periphery of the godlike ego; they are the large beauty in which we find our true home, room in which to live the cross and Christ expansively, openhearted in praise.

—From Earth and Altar by Eugene Peterson

I love this. Peterson offers a wonderful reminder that there is more for us to consider… more to regard… when beholding God’s creation. No doubt, it is exhilarating to see Colorado’s purple mountain majesty, aqua-blue waters of the Caribbean, and the grasslands of Kentucky! Drive through the Black Hills of Wyoming! It’s gorgeous in every direction! Yet, I wonder if we ever consider that this is part of God’s love package? In other words, I think it’s safe to say, God is emotionally vested in ALL of creation. Do we realize that? Do we care about that?

I notice there is a lot of disdain for “conservationist i.e. environmental activist,” especially when it comes to the economy (which is often our fear induced bottom line), but we all could do with a little more environmental sensitivity and nature care when it comes to honoring the vastness of the God’s love. God loves what God creates. Of course… that is you and me, but it also includes what is on, above, and below the planet’s natural surface. —MDP

Father Richard shares his experience of how challenging it is to hear each other without agenda or defensiveness:

Can we take responsibility for the fact that we push people to polarized positions when we do not (or will not) stand in the compassionate middle? I think of how often, during my talks, someone raises a hand and says, “I disagree with what you just said.” Often, they did not hear or understand what I said, and they don’t have the humility to ask, in a non-accusatory way: “Did I hear you correctly in saying . . . ?” or “What do you mean when you say . . . ?” Of course, sometimes I am wrong, but such a mentality does not encourage dialogue or mutuality. Unfortunately, my response also often suffers because of the negative energy generated. I am then defensive or biting my tongue to control my own judgments or desire to attack back. The result is a half response, at best, because the environment is not safe and congenial.

Responses of this sort are usually full of assumptions: “I did understand you. I know your motivation. I know what you’re trying to say. Therefore, I actually have the need and right to attack you.” Normally, neither person grows or expands in such a context. The truth is not well served, because neither individual feels secure, respected, or connected. Unfortunately, this has become the state of our public discourse.

Fortunately, there will always be people who have the grace and the ability to engage in reflective listening, to ask, “Richard, did I understand what you were saying?” and repeat back to me their perception of what I said. Normally then I can clarify, or perhaps admit that I have communicated poorly or am, in fact, incorrect. When we can listen and respond in that way, each person is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve as children of God. Each person feels heard, and misunderstandings are clarified compassionately.

Unfortunately, that is not the way the ego likes to work. Opposition gives us a sense of standing for something, a false sense of independence, power, and control. Compassion and humility don’t give us a sense of control or psychic comfort. We have to be willing to let go of our moral high ground and hear the truth that the other person may be speaking, even if it is only ten percent of what they are saying. Compassion and dialogue are essentially vulnerable positions. If we are into control and predictability, we will seldom descend into the vulnerability of undefended listening or the scariness of dialogue. If we are incapable of hearing others, we will also be incapable of hearing God. If we spend all day controlling and blocking others, why would we change when we kneel to pray?

—Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2001, 2020), 56–57.

You might have to read this more than once. There’s a lot going on in this teaching. The Body of Christ could use a serious download in this area. I’m certain I need it as much as the next person. There’s no easy in this. —MDP

As many mystics and saints throughout history have said, God created because God needed something to love beyond the internal love of the Trinity. And then, to take this one step further, God created humans so that one species could love God back freely. Robots cannot love. Trees cannot love consciously, at least in the way we understand consciousness. Now set this parallel to your relationship with your own children. Your fondest desire, maybe at an unconscious level, if you consciously conceived a child, was to bring forth a love object. “I want to love this child in every way I can, and even hope that this child will love me in return. And the way I love them, paradoxically, becomes their empowerment to love me back. Now apply this pattern to God and us.

I think this is why the reproductive process is given to us in this unique and special way, precisely so that we can experience the reciprocal character of love. God is creating an object of love that God can totally give himself to, so that eventually we will be capable of freely loving God back in the same way. Humans are like two-way mirrors, both receiving and reflecting. Humans are like tuning forks that pick up a tone and hand it on as resonance.

+Adapted from The Cosmic Christ, Richard Rohr OFM

This is another way of understanding why freewill is so important to humanity. God continues to risk and trust us to choose (for ourselves) God… to serve God… to love God. Without freewill… any love  of God (even ours) is worthless and ultimately meaningless. Frankly, without choice… it’s something else altogether. —MDP

This is one good thing that silence and waiting has taught me: our lives are always useable by God. We need not always be effective, but only transparent and vulnerable. Then we are instruments, no matter what we do. Silence is the ability to trust that God is acting, teaching, and using me—even before I perform or after my seeming failures. Silence is the necessary space around things that allows them to develop and flourish without my pushing.

God takes it from there, and there is not much point in comparing who is better, right, higher, lower, or supposedly saved. We are all partial images slowly coming into focus, as long as we allow and filter the Light and Love of God, which longs to shine through us—as us!

+Adapted from Contemplation in Action, by Richard Rohr OFM

Truly beautiful stuff here! Those words, “…without my pushing,” pretty much summarize the whole notion of Jesus’ words: “the kingdom suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” We struggle with taking our hands off of what we want, think, or certainly know. We probably need more silence… more listening… less talking… less stubborn demanding and insistence that we know better. I know that is definitely true for myself! —MDP

I’m knocking on your reality door again with another one of Brian Doyle’s contributions in his book One Long River of Song.  I’ve already told you what I think of him and this book he wrote.  When I read something like what I’m about to share with you, it makes me want to take all the people I really love and care about and just shake the crap out of them. Not because I’m better, smarter, perfect, or right, but because we’re not always paying attention (mea culpa) to the small things that are not very small at all. Even in marriage one plus one doesn’t make two! It makes one, and there are a lot of words said at weddings AND funerals that I’m not sure we understand very well in the moment. And… if we do grow into understanding, then it begs the question: are we serious about what we promised and cut covenant for? I wonder sometimes about you and me on this topic.

Okay, that’s enough from me.  Here’s Brian.  Thanks for checking in. —MDP

PS – I’ve cried every time I’ve read this.  Maybe more out of gratitude that my stupidity hasn’t marked my name in this story at this time in my life. —MDP

EVERYONE THINKS THAT AWFUL COMES BY ITSELF, BUT IT DOESN’T

I know a guy whose wife fell in love with another man. She told him about it first thing in the morning on a summer day. She then went to start the coffee.

What did you do? I asked.

Just lay a bed, he said, listening to her puttering in the kitchen. Everyone thinks that awful comes by itself, but it doesn’t. It comes hand in hand with normal. No one talks about this. You’re watching the basketball game when the phone rings and you find out your grandfather didn’t wake up this morning. At the scene of the terrible car crash there’s a baseball glove that fell out of one of the cars. The awful is inside the normal. Like normal is pregnant with awful. We know this, but we don’t talk about it. The guy has a stroke at his desk, but no one knows because he has the door closed, which everyone takes as a sign he’s on it important call. I just lay a bed. It wasn’t heavy, like I couldn’t move or anything. It wasn’t dramatic. I was just listening. She got the coffee ready and I shuffled out and we had coffee and didn’t say anything. No words came to mind. That’s another thing no one says—that when you are completely shocked and horrified and broken and aghast, you don’t actually rage and weep and storm out of the house. Or at least I didn’t. Maybe some people do. But I don’t think so. I think probably most people are like me and just continue along, doing what they were going to do. I took a shower and got dressed and went to work. My brother says I must have been in shock, but I don’t know about that. I mean, I was shocked, sure I was. But I think it’s more that there had been a terrible car crash and I was noticing the normal. It was a Saturday, so the kids were sleeping in. I go to work on Saturdays, so I went to work. Lovely day, one of those days when you see dragonflies all day long. Dragonflies are very cool. People think you look for metaphors after something like that, but I think we just keep walking. That’s what I think. I mean, of course I thought about stuff like should we get divorced and how could she fall in love with another guy and how come she fell out of love with me, but mostly I thought about the kids. Sometimes I thought about the other guy, but not so much. I did wonder if we could ever get it together again, but not too much. I went to the bank and to pick up a suit at the tailor. I had a hard few moments there, because the tailor gave me an envelope with the stuff that had been in my suit pockets. This was my best suit, so I wore it for dates and weddings and wakes. There were a couple of Mass cards from funerals and wedding invites, but also there were two tampons just in case she needed them, and a photo of us at a wedding on the beach, and a ring our daughter had given me, one of those rings that you can make whistle. That rings nailed me. You would think it would be the photo of us beaming on the beach, but it was the ring.

A soldier friend of mine tells me the same thing happens when you are in a fight: that everything is normal, and then it isn’t, and then it’s normal again, except there are guys screaming or crumpled and not screaming. You get up cautiously from where you were kneeling, and you look around and everything’s just like it was a minute ago, coffee and dragonflies and the kids sleeping in, and then you just keep moving. It’s sort of boring, I guess, from a certain perspective.

—Brian Doyle One Long River of Song

Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharoah, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context.

—From The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann

I have never considered this aspect of Jesus’ compassion. Considering his constant non-violent attack upon the blindness of the religious establishment, I think it’s prudent to concur with Brueggemann’s understanding on this. Anything we do that mirrors the nature and character of the Christ pretty much confronts that social “numbness,” ineffectiveness, and lethargy of institutional religion. Any “like Christ” witness very often exposes and looks very different to the norms and attitudes of religious churchmanship (which is a terrible sport). Actually, it might have everything to do with the chronic institutional shrinkage as a whole. —MDP

My eldest daughter gave me a book for my birthday this past summer. I don’t think anyone has ever given me a “book” on my birthday that wasn’t signed by the author. But this one wasn’t signed because Brian Doyle (the author) died with a brain tumor in 2017 at the age of 60. Slowly and methodically, I have read his words, which convey much more than the actual thoughts on the page. I have loved every offering in Brian’s book, and it saddens me deeply that I did not know him personally. I think he would have been a great friend whom I would have loved very much. I ache to have shared a pint or two or three with him.

I’m putting up one of the short reflections in Brian’s book. I’ve gone back and forth about posting it because I realize how easily people are triggered around topics that have been politicized and used as a litmus test for “the love of God… and country.” I, for one, am not ignited by these kinds of partisan political passions. I’m trying really hard to live my life following something else… Someone else… a different “Way” in my life.  I’m no longer convinced that God is vested in any kind of political wing (especially the one we might favor OR claim as the “righteous side”). Honestly, I used to think that way, but not anymore.

This constant bickering, bullying, and demonizing of each other, all produced by mankind’s political opinion and/or lust for power and control… well, it’s so damn tiring.  So, I’ll stop with my shallow words and let you chew on Brian’s.

I offer this story only as a mix into your thinking. It’s not a statement. It’s not a directive. I’m driving from here to nowhere specific. I’m just thinking and wondering how we arrived to where we are. To be clear, I have people I love, children and grandchildren that I don’t want anywhere near the implications of this story. —MDP

THE BULLET

Here’s a story. A man who was a soldier in the American army in Iraq tells it to me. A friend of his, one of his best and closest friends, was nearly pierced through by a bullet fired by a sniper. The bullet entered the friend’s upper right chest, just below the collarbone, and plowed almost through to the back, just below the shoulder blade. American surgeons removed the bullet and discovered it was a 5.56-millimeter cartridge manufactured in Lake City, Missouri. The Lake City Ammunition Plant was founded by the Remington Army Company in 1941. Today it is operated by Orbital Alliant Tech systems, which averages five billion dollars in sales annually. Half of the one hundred biggest weapons and ammunition manufacturers in the world are American companies. Orbital is one of these. Orbital sells 1.5 billion rounds of ammunition a year to the American army and to the armies of other nations around the world. Some of that ammunition is lost or stolen or shuffled clandestinely to all sorts of revolutionaries, criminals, gangs, and thugs, including some that call themselves freedom fighters or insurgents against economic and cultural imperialism, though in many cases they are actually fighting to impose their own chosen form of oppression and tinny empire on the people they live among, people whom they are not averse to slaughtering for advertising reasons.

So let us review: An American soldier, age twenty-two, is nearly pierced by a bullet made in America, sold for a profit in America by an American company that makes half a billion dollars a year selling bullets and other weaponry to armies all over the world. The vast majority of the companies make a tremendous profit every year selling bullets and weaponry all over the world are American. Most of them are publicly traded companies in which many other Americans are heavily invested. So the bullet that nearly pierced an American boy, a bullet that caused him enormous pain, a bullet that permanently affected the use of his arm and shoulder, the bullet that cut a scar on his chest that he will wear until the day he dies, was made in America, by American workers, and paid for by American investors who profited handsomely by the sake of the bullet that executed its purpose by punching a hole the size of a quarter almost all the way through a boy from America.

A 5.56-millimeter bullet can penetrate fifteen to twenty inches through “soft tissue”—soft tissue meaning, for example, a boy. The bullet is “prone to yaw,” which means that it skews easily from a direct path, and it is also liable to fragment at what is called the cannelure, a groove around the cylinder. When a bullet fragments on delivery, the fragments slice and tear and rip and shred everything in their path, including bone. A 5.56-millimeter bullet can punch nearly half an inch into steel, and punch right through a bulletproof vest, and punch right through a human being of any size and shape and age and nationality and gender and religion and sexual orientation and combatant status, or not.

Rarely does a writer speak bluntly, ahead of time, to people who will type furious outraged insults in the comment section, after his article is posted, but I will here and now.

Dear outraged shrieking lunatic, you who are about to lecture me on how this was just an accident, and how it’s a necessary part of the capitalist system, and how I am clearly a yellow liberal pansy: Are you stupid, or are you insane? What part of all this makes sense? What part of all this is not about profit? Why should America be the biggest weapons dealer on earth? Why do we lie about how this is directly linked to murders all over the world, and how our own kids suffer and die from American weapons and ammunition? Is profit share more important than the lives of uncountable thousands of people all over the world who die from our weapons and ammunition? Are there no other products that all those American employees could possibly design and manufacture? Really? Have you ever been nearly pierced through by a 5.56-millimeter bullet? No? Then how do you have the unmitigated gall to say anything to me, you pompous ass?

—From One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle

Ordinary Christianity has emphasized that we should love God. This makes sense, but do we really know how to do that? What I find in the mystics is an overwhelming experience of how God has loved us! That’s what comes through all of their writings, and I do mean ALL—that God is forever the aggressive lover, God is the protagonist, God is the one who seduces me out of my unworthiness. It’s all about God’s initiative! Then the mystics try desperately to pay back, to offer their lives back to the world, to the poor and rejected, and, thus, back to God. Love is repaid by love alone.

Mystics are not trying to earn God’s love by doing good things or going to church services. That question is already and profoundly resolved. The mystic’s overwhelming experience is the full body blow of divine embrace, a radical acceptance by God even in a state of fragmentation and poverty. That’s what makes it amazing and grace (see Romans 11:6).

+Adapted from “Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate… Seeing God in All Things” by Richard Rohr

The title of this article is “How Does One Really Love God?” I don’t know how often you and I consider such a question, but what the author offers here is profound. These strong reminders can really focus us AND release us from performance pressures at the same time. “God is forever the aggressive lover.” Amazing! Read it again. It’s really good. —MDP