This Very Moment Is the Perfect Teacher …

When we are stuck in our convictions and personas, we enter into the disease of having good ideas and being right… We think we have a lock on truth, with our burnished surfaces and articulation, but the bigger we pump ourselves up, the easier we are to prick with a pin. And the bigger we get, the harder it is to see the earth under our feet.

We all know the horror of having been Right with a capital R, feeling the surge of a cause, whether in politics or custody disputes. This rightness is so hot and steamy and exciting, until the inevitable rug gets pulled out from under us. Then we get to see that we almost never really know what is true, except what everybody else knows: that sometimes we’re all really lonely, and hollow, and stripped down to our most naked human selves.

It is the worst thing on earth, this truth about how little truth we know. I hate and resent it. And yet it is where new life rises from.

Advent Meditation: God Birthed Grace Upon The Earth …

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people …
— Titus 2:11

Grace call us into a humility that seeks to honor the grace of God to forgive and restore us. Grace calls us into a humility that seeks to honor the multiple relationships throughout our overlapping households or spheres of community. The training power of grace may be its capacity to illumine the image of God in another. We pray for God to give us God’s own love for the other when we recognize that our love is in dire need of grace.

Peace: After A Destructive Encounter …

God does not spill milk. God did not bash the truck into your father’s car. Nowhere in scripture does it say, ‘God is car accident’ or ‘God is death.’ God is justice and kindness, mercy, and always—always—love. So if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for love.
— Kate Braestrup from Here if You Need Me

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
— William Gladstone (attr. The National Elementary Principal)

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.
Walk humbly now.
Do justly now.
Love mercy now.
You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free to abandon it.

The Redemptive Power of Love …

The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe. Beyond the vibrations with which we are familiar, the rainbow-like range of its colours is still in full growth. But, for all the fascination that the lower shades have for us, it is only towards the “ultra” that the creation of light advances. It is in these invisible and, we might almost say, immaterial zones that we can look for true initiation into unity. The depths we attribute to matter are no more than the reflection of the peaks of spirit …

What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them … whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

The Lenten Blessing — A Franciscan Benediction …

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

Thanksgiving Song …

Grateful for each hand we hold
Gathered round this table.
From far and near we travel home,
Blessed that we are able.
Grateful for this sheltered place
With light in every window,
Saying welcome, welcome, share this feast
Come in away from sorrow.

Desert Day 45: The Opposite of Goodness …

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours alone, but also for the sins of the whole world. 

By this we can be sure that we have come to know Him: if we keep His commandments. If anyone says, “I know Him,” but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone keeps His word, the love of God has been truly perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him: Whoever claims to abide in Him must walk as Jesus walked.