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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Category: Notes Anthology

So Much To Think About

George 1 Comment

Fear
Look beneath your fear and you will discover what it is you really care about. What you wish to protect: people, places, things, hopes, dreams. Aggression, shame, and disconnection—even as attempts at making a better life for me or a better world for all of us—don’t work. But as we expand our circle of caring to include all people, all places, all of creation, we discover that our fears are shared and that all our cares come from the same place. Come to understand your fear, and you may find that we’re all just trying to figure out how to love. 
Gareth Higgins

If you don’t think you can learn from people who are wrong, you’ll have a hard time understanding why other people are right.  Jonah Goldberg

The Gospel
The Gospel contains the seed of transformation that lead to solutions, but the seeds are too often killed by planting them in the ground of political gain and culture wars.
When the day comes when we desire  transformation by the Gospel through the Spirit…then we may change the world. Phoenix Preacher

Going Home
I think most of you probably noticed the words “going home” on the inside of the casket lid.
It is somewhat ironic that I recently read a quote attributed to a dying character on a TV show in which he described what he thought dying is like.

“… death is like when you’re a child and you get sick and feverish. You go to bed at night sweating, shivering, feeling wretched enough to die. The next morning you awake, your fever is broken, and you are feeling much better. You feel secure, snug, and strong – and suddenly you realize why. You’re now in your parents’ bed. In the middle of the night some one came to get you to take you home.”

Those words could take our thoughts in several directions, but what I want you to understand is that my experiences with my Uncle Bill and Aunt Imogene … coming to their house, being a part of their lives; even though less seldom than I had hoped, always made me feel secure, snug, and strong. It was like awaking in the warmth and comfort of your parent’s bed.
From my Uncle Bill Page’s eulogy 2006

TODAY
Today, I will be incompetent. (I can do nothing alone, but only through God)

Today, I will be present to those in front of me, and to Go(To REALLY listen to people, giving them full attention, and not missing out on anything in my presence. Also, that I may spend the entire day in the presence of God, listening to everything He is trying to say)

Today, I will be the Christ.(Being Jesus to all those around me)

Today, I will see the Christ (Seeing Jesus in those around me, especially the pestilence. Recognizing that everyone is a son/daughter of God changes my perspective of them as a whole!)

Randy Harris 2006

 Servant
Mar. 1st, 2006 | 05:47 am
I was challenged by a recent sermon which pointed out that many Christians are mostly about doing service when in fact they are called to be servants. It is good to do service but we can do service without being servants. In just doing service we maintain control. When we are servants we relinquish all control to our master. Jesus has called us to leave everything and follow him. 
I believe that I must first become a servant and follow Jesus and he will lead me in whatever service is to be rendered. My focus has been to figure out what service I need to do more than surrendering to the lead of Jesus.

Self-sufficient people
All self-sufficient people remain outsiders to the mystery of divine love because they will always misuse it. Only the need of a beloved knows how to receive the need and gift of the lover, and only the need of a lover knows how to receive the need and gift of the beloved without misusing such love. It is a kind of deliberate “poverty” on both sides. A mutually admitted emptiness is the ultimate safety net for love.
Richard Rohr

Real Church
“One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes even our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.”
Screwtape Letters

Enchantment (transcendence)
…the doggedly faithful will share stories about burning bush moments in their lives when they bumped into God, encountered a Love and Mystery beyond words and descriptions. These “strange sights” are not flights of fantasy or wishful thinking. They are the most reality-filled moments of our lives, the truest things we have ever experienced. These mystical encounters, as rare as they may be, are the foundations of faith.

Enchantment hasn’t been the supernatural vision but the surprising rush of joy and love—enjoying the gift of a sunrise, bearing witness to a small act of kindness, watching the breeze dancing in the branches of a tree, or seeing the person standing right in front you shining like the sun.
(unknown)

Pain of grief
Unlike people who tried to soothe my pain, part of the comfort God offered me was to never flinch or look away. God saw my pain and knew not to try to make me feel better, but to sit with me in the endless ache. God knows the only thing that can slightly lessen the pain of death is for it to be seen and known. So Jesus wept. And God does not forget, even for an instant, the stories of every single person who is gone.
Hannah Mitchell

Saved by grace
Sadly, much of Christianity has created an “extrinsic” view of our relationship with God and the path of salvation. In this, God is seen as exterior to our life, our relationship with Him being analogous to the individualized contractual relationships of modern culture. As such the Christian relationship with God is reduced to psychology and morality.
It is reduced to psychology in that the concern is shifted to God’s “attitude” towards us. The psychologized atonement concerns itself with God’s wrath. It is reduced to morality in that our behavior is no more than our private efforts to conform to an external set of rules and norms. We are considered “good” or “bad” based on our performance, but without regard to the nature of that performance. St. Paul says that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Only our lives-lived-in-union-with-Christ have the nature of true salvation, true humanity. This is the proper meaning of being “saved by grace.”
Fr Stephen Freeman

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Fankle
a better F word
…unfankling the fankles, and deciding to live with the odd unfankleable knot. ‘Fankle’ is a wonderful Scottish word for an unholy mess of thread, string, rope so tangled and entangled it takes inordinate patience to restore it to a useable skein.

Attachments
In Maps of Meaning Peterson describes how neurosis is often the product of unhealthy, excessive, and rigid attachments. Because of these attachments we often fail to move into newness and opportunity. We fail to meet the challenges of life with flexibility. Primarily because some things must be “let go” or “sacrificed” in order to move forward. Fearing to face this loss and grief, and clinging to the safety and predictability of the past, we neurotically cling to psychic lifeboats that can no longer save us and have outgrown their usefulness. Symbolically, we remain “children,” playing it safe, and fail to move heroically into the risks of “adulthood.” We have to be willing to “sacrifice” to keep moving into an ever-changing future. 

Preaching
Scott Swain wrote something that defines preaching this way:
In preaching, we are heralds of the king, announcing that he has come and that he is coming again. In preaching, we are friends of the bridegroom, wooing the bride to embrace her beloved Lord. In preaching, we are ministers of the new covenant, presenting Jesus Christ, clothed in all the promises of the gospel, and summoning hearers to engage him in covenant union and communion.

What is a woman?
The prominence of the woman in the Scriptures parallels the Spirit’s. She is present and yet backgrounded. She is visible, yet obscure. However, in the unfolding she comes increasingly into view until she looms as large as day in Revelation, the bride as the final symbol of mankind. Redeemed humanity is a mankind who has become “womankind,” the exalted son’s sister and bride. The final corporate identity of mankind is feminine. So, the woman is obscure in the Scripture not because she is less, but because she is last. She is indicative of things to come, yet she is treasure worth finding as she represents what eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, neither has entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those that love him.
Aimee Byrd

Language
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
George Orwell

Lived Theology
If you take a look at what Christian living is actually like for those in your community and circles, you will discover — usually not creeds and confessions — but “lived” theology. The lived theology of a suburban and urban life will not be identical. 
Scott McKnight

This is what I’ve come to understand about prayer.
Prayer is like breathing. Prayer is metaphysical respiration. Release and receiving. Escaping the trap of your subjectivity into an experience of gratitude and gift. Renunciation and grace.
If you refuse to pray, it’s like going through the day holding your breath. You become trapped within yourself, like a stagnant pond. To keep the waters clear you need inflow and outflow. 
But when you look at the world, everyone is holding their breath. 
All the world is suffocating.
Richard Beck

Paradoxical thinking
The truth in paradoxical language lies neither in the affirmation nor in the denial of either side, but precisely in the resolution of the tug-of-war between the two. The human mind usually works on the logical principle of contradiction, according to which something cannot be both true and false at the same time. Yet that is exactly what higher truths invariably undo (for example, God is both one and three; Jesus is both human and divine; bread and wine are both matter and Spirit). Unfortunately, since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, we Western, educated people have lost touch with paradoxical, mystical, or contemplative thinking. We’ve wasted five centuries taking sides—which is so evident in our culture today!
Richard Rohr

Doctrine
Doctrine gets a bad wrap. It gets portrayed as flat, fixed, and even fossilized truth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Doctrine is revelatory truthwhich has been crystallized, like a many faceted diamond, into the brilliance of a refracted clarity. Doctrine never replaces Scripture, but it collects and collates these sacred texts into dynamic exhibits of revealed truth. Think of doctrine as a theological art gallery. Doctrine presents Scripture as a series of theological works of art. 

Part of the problem with doctrine is how over the years it has become like the Cliff Notes on the Bible. It’s like trying to reduce a movie to a series of still images. The Bible is like an epic movie series. Doctrines are like select scenes from the movie put into still images. The images only have meaning if you have seen the movie, but if you have seen the movie, they hold enormous significance. 

Our doctrine, though, cannot be confused for for our experience. Doctrine helps us understand and interpret our experience, but too often, it has been a substitute. We ask people to accept a set of doctrines when we need to be helping them to encounter and experience Jesus Christ. Doctrine does not save people. Only Jesus does that. 

Then there is the peril of substituting our experience for our doctrine, or worse, defining our doctrine according to our experience. The deception of sin has shipwrecked many souls on the shoals of changing our doctrine to accommodate our broken human condition. 
There is a supreme irony in the interplay of these two scenarios. Because we have been willing to allow an approach to doctrine that settles for mere acceptance instead of pressing on toward personal experience, we have perpetrated an approach to personal experience (whatever it may be) that elevates it to its own doctrine. In other words, the Truth has been exchanged for “my truth” and “your truth.” 
the greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order.
Richard Rohr

Van Gogh’s Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear indicts us. How willing are we to lead with the fact that we’ve got a lot of things in us that aren’t right?
This is how God sees his people. We are fully exposed in our short-comings, and at the same time we are of unimaginable value to him. Because this is so, this is how we should see others, and it is how we should be willing to be seen by others—broken and of incalculable worth.
Russ Ramsey

German theoretical physicist Max Planck was told by his professor not to go into Physics as “almost everything is discovered already”. So Planck said he did not want to discover anything & just wanted to learn the fundamentals. He went on to originate Quantum theory & won a Nobel Prize. – a recent fact that came to my attention.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

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Pondering
Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry announced Saturday it had put to death 81 people convicted of various crimes in an effort to “deter anyone who threatens security or disrupts public life.” The Kingdom did not disclose how the executions were carried out, but it is believed to be the largest mass execution in Saudi Arabia’s history.

Despite record-high border crossings last year, the number of undocumented immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fell dramatically in fiscal year 2021—from 159,000 in 2018 to 143,000 in 2019 to 104,000 in 2020 to 74,000 in 2021—according to the agency’s annual report. The report outlines ICE’s “operational changes” under President Biden, including its focus on “the most pressing threats to national security, public safety, and border security” while allowing enforcement officials to “make discretionary decisions about which noncitizens to arrest, detain, and remove.”

Righteousness
Righteousness is not fundamentally about right behavior but right belonging to one another. It is about right relationships. This is why slander and deceitful speech and bearing false witness against others are so devastatingly serious. A person can manage their behavior and still not right their relationships. That is where self-righteousness comes from. Self-righteousness is just the outworking of hard-heartedness. People resist making their relationships right because they can’t come to grips with their own brokenness. 
J D Walt

Say what?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

Eugene Peterson says, ‘The gospel of Jesus Christ is more political than anyone imagines, but in a way that no one guesses’.”

The Cross
The Cross should not be seen as an event of divine payment, an arrangement that clears the way for us go to heaven. Nor should the Cross be reduced to a mere willingness to suffer patiently. The Cross is the way of life and is constantly set forth to us throughout the New Testament. It is the singular mark of a Christian: “Those who would be my disciples must take up their cross and follow me.”
Fr Stephen Freeman

the besieged city of Mariupol. 
“Food is running out, and the Russians have stopped humanitarian attempts to bring it in. Electricity is mostly gone and water is sparse, with residents melting snow to drink. Some parents have even left their newborns at the hospital, perhaps hoping to give them a chance at life in the one place with decent electricity and water. People burn scraps of furniture in makeshift grills to warm their hands in the freezing cold and cook what little food there still is. The grills themselves are built with the one thing in plentiful supply: bricks and shards of metal scattered in the streets from destroyed buildings. Death is everywhere. Local officials have tallied more than 2,500 deaths in the siege, but many bodies can’t be counted because of the endless shelling. They have told families to leave their dead outside in the streets because it’s too dangerous to hold funerals.”

Kenosis
“descending” to a place of “lower status” presupposes that the person is “high status” and on the top. Thus, to be a Christian in these locations is to let go of and to empty oneself of status. To humble and lower yourself.
But how does that work if you are already a low status person, especially an abused and oppressed person? How much lower are you supposed to go?
Victims are already Christian. Victims need no conversion.
Only oppressors and abusers require conversion.
Regarding kenosis, humility and taking up the cross victims have already been poured out, humiliated and crucified. Thus, victims have already been converted. In their victimhood victims already stand with and in Christ. Or, rather, Christ has already moved to stand with the victims–sanctifying them, divinizing them. Victims incarnate the Crucified Christ and, thus, they are already Christians.
Hanging already on the cross, victims need do nothing more to become “Christ-like” or to become like Jesus. As I said, victims require no conversion.
This, then, is the root of the problem with preaching kenosis, humility and taking up the cross to victims. You’re suggesting that the one already hanging on the cross do something more, to in essence crucify themselves again.  And it’s that demand for re-crucifixion–the attempt to convert and preach at the one hanging on the cross–that brings in the potential for abuse.
This is why I think notions like kenosis, humility and taking up the cross often become dysfunctional, hurtful and sadomasochistic when preached at those being abused or oppressed. You’re trying to convert the converted, to make people in these locations do something more, to go lower, when they, as victims, need do nothing more.
Richard Beck

Despair
The circumstance was not unusual; a men’s class on a Wednesday evening.  There was the routine ritual of prayer requests followed by the expected expression of needs for various illness and/or difficulties. The usual was interrupted when one man, a regular attender, stumbled and choked as he tried to express his grief and brokenness. With tears flowing he painfully told us, just a few hours before, his oldest and best friend had been killed in a tragic automobile accident. Many of us had heard about the accident but no one knew the victim was his friend. There was an immediate response of consolation and sympathy. We all shared the pain of the loss of a friend.  

As he continued to pour out the pain in his soul, it became clear his agony was not just grief for his friend but there was a deeper and a more inconsolable pain of guilt. His voice broke as he told us, “I never talked to him about Jesus”. My thoughts were immediately focused on the reports of the accident and the news that the victim was a colorful and well known proprietor of several strip bars. The presumption by all present was that the victim had died without knowing Christ and the hope of eternal life with him.  

I was struck by the reality of what he shared. There was nothing that could be done or said that would change the truth. He had not talked with his friend. What happened next and after the class was revealing. The truth was ignored and one after another, with real concern, offered some form of rationalization or explanation to mitigate his guilt. “You can never under estimate what kind of influence your friendship had on him”. “I’m sure he was good guy”. “You can never know what kind of good things can come out of this”. “It will be OK”. et al 

I believe such occasions require unvarnished truth. Not to be a cruel reminder, but as a light that illuminates our weakness and failure so clearly that we have no where to turn except to God. There are circumstances where we cannot be consoled or sympathized out of our guilt. We need to know that we are loved despite the truth about us. Only with God’s love is this possible.  
There was nothing that could be said that would change the truth. Only the real and abiding presence of God can ultimately sustain and heal us in our moments of despair.  
For the Joy of the Journey 2006

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

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If one man pushes an old lady in front of an oncoming bus and another pushes an old lady out of the way of an oncoming bus, it is simply preposterous to describe them both as “the sorts of men who push old ladies around.”
William F Buckley

We’ve come a long way
in 1958, 44 percent of white Americans said they’d move away if a black family moved in next door. Forty years later, that number had dropped to 1 percent. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, only 18 percent of white Americans said they had a black friend. By 1998, that number was 86 percent.
Jonah Goldberg

Opportunity
We have an opportunity in this moment of our great transformation. We can approach this time as survivors, desperately clinging to our structures and ways of being. Or, we can see ourselves as pioneers, setting out in the face of the unknown to discover new ways to live faith-filled lives. The inevitable decline of our structures gives us the chance to let go of what might hold us back from that adventure. Nothing today will be the same ten years from now. Why not architect the kind of faith movement we want to see twenty-to-fifty years from now? What do we have to lose?
Cameron Trimble, Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2019), 132. 

Self-censorship
The room felt tense. I saw people shift in their seats. Someone got angry, and then everyone seemed to get angry. After the professor tried to move the discussion along, I still felt uneasy. I became a little less likely to speak up again and a little less trusting of my own thoughts.
I was shaken, but also determined to not silence myself. Still, the disdain of my fellow students stuck with me. I was a welcome member of the group — and then I wasn’t.
Throughout that semester, I saw similar reactions in response to other students’ ideas. I heard fewer classmates speak up. Eventually, our discussions became monotonous echo chambers. Absent rich debate and rigor, we became mired in socially safe ideas.
By Emma Camp

Woman at the well
The issue here is how men have read the story about her marriages, as if she was some unfaithful woman. But, she didn’t divorce. Men did. Maybe this was being passed around by five men in a levirate marriage custom. Nor is there indication her question about the temple is a smoke screen. She’s a victim and she’s been revictimized by Christian readers about her. She was unmarried. That’s a source of shame. No one would have her. Jesus sees this woman and makes an instrument of gospeling.
Jesus changes her question from Where do we go to worship? to Where does God go to get worshipers? God’s claim is on the world; not on one mountain in one place.
And Jesus is the well of water that satisfies. Drinking of his water gives them water to offer to others, which the Samaritan woman does and brings them to the well to drink from the source.
Scott Mc Knight

Back in the day
We knew who we were by where we were when there was a junior or senior high dance going on. Someone among us once quipped that our youth leaders were against sex because they were afraid it might lead to dancing. 
Scott McKnight

Ask Amy: Our son and his wife just told us they’re polyamorous
Amy DickinsonMarch 7, 2022 at 12:00 a.m. EST
They told us they are involved in polyamorous relationships where each has another partner, lover or person they each spend a lot of time with outside of the marriage.
We are having a hard time understanding this choice and accepting what this will mean for our relationship going forward, and for our larger family. We are the only family members they have shared this information with so far, and we are sworn to secrecy.
They may have eased their consciences by telling us, but now we are left with troubling and unsettling information and no place to go with it. We assured them that we will never stop loving them, but this is awkward for us.
What can we do to ease our troubled minds?
Bewildered:
Let’s start by talking about divorce. Not that long ago, divorce meant a total severing of a relationship. But then Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin highlighted the concept of “conscious uncoupling,” where a couple ceases to be married, but continues to love one another, even as they move on to other relationships.
You may define marriage as monogamy until divorce or death, but as people explore their freedom to redefine the boundaries of what it means to be married, they may choose “ethical non-monogamy,” which is where they remain lovingly married, but are free to engage in other romantic relationships in a way that they believe is open and honest. They don’t define this as infidelity. It is about consensual relationships.

In my opinion, the important question is how these polyamorous relationships will affect children growing up in families with three or four adults who all identify as parents and partners. If all the adults are stable, loving, and committed to the children, then I imagine the kids will be fine.
Take a breath, do some reading about polyamory, and understand that you define marriage one way, while they define it differently.

Unless you and they are religious, this doesn’t make it “wrong.” It just makes it “what is.”
This is their life and their choice, and if they want to remove the taboo surrounding polyamory, you should discourage them from defining this as a deep, dark family secret.
They (not you) can explain themselves to other family members when the time comes, and yes — it’s bound to be awkward … until it isn’t.

A LOOK BACK

Life is a journey. We will never arrive at “some particular place” that promises peace and safety, short of our promised home in eternity with God. Life as a journey is filled with transitions. Transition is not about just doing better what we have been doing but it is about beginning something we have never done before.  Transition brings both an ending and a beginning.
GE 2006

A New Birth
Feb. 26th, 2006 | 
This past Friday evening our grandson Kyle Gabehart was baptized. As his family looked on his dad Byron baptized him. Kyle is a wonderful grandson who has the heart of a servant. He is very serious about his decisions and was clear about his desire to have his sins forgiven.
As is always the case when a young child (Kyle is 9 years old)wants to be baptized, the nagging question of whether they “know” enough to be baptized comes up. The question, while legitimate, is mostly a product of our Enlightenment mind-set which is centered in knowledge and education. The problem is that just answering that question does not address the heart of the matter. 
I was thinking about the blind man who cried out to be healed and Jesus asked him “What do you want me to do for you?”. Did he know enough to be healed? Was he knowledgeable about the requirements of the law or the implications to his life after he was healed? I think not. Why should we expect any more from a child who has begun to feel the pain of their rebellion and wants to be forgiven?

Incompetent 
March 5, 2005
For the last few days we have been enjoying Disney World with grandkids and their family. One of the things that has struck me is the crowds with their great diversity …appearance, speaking, attitudes, social standing. I am also struck by the lack of resemblance to myself, at least as I perceive myself. I have thought about those people. How could I possibly “share the Good News”? What would I say? How and where could it be said? Quite frankly, I am fearful and feel completely incompetent. 

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Mature Religion
The true purpose of mature religion is to lead you to ever new experiences of your True Self. If religion does not do this, it is junk religion. Every sacrament, every Bible story, every church service, every sermon, every hymn, every bit of priesthood, ministry, or liturgy is for one purpose: to allow you to experience your True Self—who you are in God and who God is in you—and to live a generous life from that Infinite Source.
Richard Rohr

“He came to himself.”
These words form the turning point in the story of the Prodigal Son. They are words of judgment, apocalypse, and revelation. When the younger son demanded his inheritance from his father, he was not himself. When he traveled to a far land and wasted everything in wild pleasure, he was not himself. Only when everything was lost and what was in front of him became disgusting do we hear, “He came to himself.” The unfolding of that reality took time.

Disgust is not the revelation of the self. Disgust is the reaction that makes us want to spit something out. It is tasting something horrible and wretched. As unpleasant as the sensation is, it remains a guardian and protector, a shieldagainst poison and disease. Disgust is a discernment of something that is “not the self.” Still, knowing that something is “not the self” is not the same thing as seeing the self as it truly is. For the younger son, the revelation of the self begins when he says, “I will go to my father.” It is his recognition that he is a son, and that “who he is” can only be known in that context that constitutes “coming to himself.”
Fr Stephen Freeman

Pruning
When a Japanese gardener “prunes open,” Marsha explained, he or she cuts away not only dead branches and foliage, but also often a number of perfectly healthy branches that detract from the beauty inherent in the tree’s essential structure. Pruning open allows the visitor to see up, out, and beyond the trees to the sky, creating a sense of spaciousness and letting light into the garden. It also enables an individual tree to flourish by removing complicating elements, simplifying structure, and revealing its essence. The process of pruning open turns the tree inside out, so to speak, revealing the beautiful design inherent within it. . . .

The truth is, God does not wish for us to stand stubborn like the autumn oak tree, cloaked in a façade of protection, our truest, most authentic selves obscured beneath a tangled bramble of false security. Rather, [God] desires us to live like the Japanese maple tree, our true essence revealed and flourishing, our true self front and center, secure and thriving. God yearns for us to live wholeheartedly and truthfully as the unique, beautiful, beloved individuals [God] created us to be. Most of all, God’s deepest desire is for us to know [God], to root our whole selves in [God] like a tree rooted by a stream, and to know [God’s] deep, abiding love for us. . . .
Richard Rohr

‘Litany of Humility
O Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being loved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being honored,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being praised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being approved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being despised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected,
Deliver me, O Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I go unnoticed,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
Richard Beck

Leading
Pregame at a D1 college basketball game: ROTC brought out the flag, and everyone stood dutifully for the national anthem. The distinguished-looking soloist was introduced as a member of the faculty in the musical theatre department. In a beautiful baritone, he started acapella: “Oh, say, can you see?…” Then he started moving his arms, and by “what so proudly…” it was clear we were all invited to join in. Without missing a beat, he stepped back from the microphone, stopped singing entirely, and conducted a choir of some 15,000 people (who had come here to yell, not sing) through our musically awkward national anthem. I swear he made eye contact with every soul as he guided us through the words we all know but don’t always know how long to hang on to. We even came in at the same time with “o’er the la-and of the free…” He could have sung it way better. A handful would have sung along, and everyone would have clapped and settled in for some basketball. But instead, he stepped aside and made everybody think we could sing. He led us. And I paid attention.
Jennifer Sawyer

Still On the Journey