50 Days of Easter: Honored Women

 In this season of Easter, we’ve seen that women were indeed the first witnesses and proclaimers of the Resurrection. Yet, they rarely are celebrated. We know the early church clearly honored them because their names are remembered and written down.

Mark Roberts of the DuPree Center reminds us, “During the years of his messianic ministry, not only were women taught by Jesus, but they also became teachers of others (see John 4:4-42). Jesus had no problem with using women to help spread the good news of the kingdom of God. That openness to women as messengers of the gospel continued after Jesus’s death and resurrection. It’s striking that women were not only the very first witnesses to the resurrection, but also the very first proclaimers of the resurrection. They were the first ones to tell the male disciples that Jesus had been raised from the dead…It seems likely to me that one reason for this is that God wanted to make it clear that in the church of Jesus Christ, women would be empowered and authorized to proclaim and teach. And the recipients of their proclamation and teaching would include men.”  

Mary and Martha of Bethany. Mary the wife of Cleopas, the Samaritan woman (Photini) are others mentioned in the Gospels. So are Lydia, Junia, Syntheche, and Phoebe, Priscilla, Chloe, Euodia and Syntyche, Apphia, Claudia who are all in the Epistles. Women played an important roll in the early church.  

Women today have a deep well of Biblical wisdom from the New and Old Testament women from whom to learn. There is an impression that there aren’t important women mentioned—untrue. There is the idea that women don’t need to study with other women—also untrue. There is a misconception that women’s ministry is all teas and knitting—untrue.

As Madeline L’Engle says, “Nothing, no one, is too small to matter. What you do is going to make a difference.” The Bible women make a difference, and so do each of us.

Women have been leaders and inspirers of faith across the ages. As women of faith we can learn from them how to live in our own times of change and challenge. During the season of Pentecost we’ll be looking at some of the stories of Bible women with the intention of learning what they can teach us about living in this ever-changing world.

God is Creating

For Hildegard of Bingen, creation was not secondary to spirituality. In fact, for her, all creation works together and glorifies God. “All creatures should see that God has neither beginning nor end, and for this reason they will never have enough of looking at God…there is no creature without some kind of radiance-whether it be greenness, seeds, buds, or another kind of beauty. Otherwise, it would not be a creature at all. But if God did not have the power to make all things, where would God’s creative power be?”* Everything has some of the Light of God  in it. It is that very Light that makes the creature what it is. This is true of animate and inanimate creation.

Hildegard saw humans as somewhat superior to other creations, because the human mind has intellect and in that intelligence we are linked to the Creator. Madeline L’Engle, in her book Walking on Water, notes “unless we are creators we are not fully alive…Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.” For L’Engle, like Hildegard, it is our ability to create that sets us apart from the other creatures.

Recently I stumbled across a blog by Mark Altrogge that noted, we sometimes think creating isn’t what Christians should be doing. Aren’t we supposed to be praying and preaching, instead of ‘wasting our time’ on creative things? This blog author says “Christians should play banjo and decorate cakes, knit sweaters and make movies, do photography and write poems” Just like Hildegard and Madeline L’Engle, Mark Altrogge says “when we create we act as those the Creator made in his own image…God didn’t make a strictly utilitarian world. He decorated it with weeping willows and tiger lilies….arts are a way to bless others…[and] bring joy to us.” Altrogge notes that “when we see a cool painting or hear a moving symphony it points us to the author of all beauty. When I hear the theme from Jurassic Park I don’t simply think of John Williams’ talent, I think of God.” In using our gifts and talents as unto the Lord it “reminds us of the Giver of every good and perfect gift.” 

Stop to think about whether you think that what you do on a day-to-day basis is creative. Why or why not?

Even if humanity had a special relationship with God because we are co-creators, Hildegard still saw that all of “Creation is allowed in intimate love, to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. Creation is allowed to ask for a pasture, a homeland. Out of the Creator’s fullness, this request is granted to creation.” (From Hildegard of Bingen by Gabriele Uhlein)

If all creation is alive with the Spirit and Light of God, and if we are co-creators with God in and through creation—then we must have a unique responsibility to honor creation as a part of God. This might mean that we begin to live more intentionally conscious of what our actions can do to the world around us. Does my buying pre-packaged dinners create extra trash? Do I really need another pair of shoes? What about global warming?

Stop and ask yourself if you see all creation as filled with God. What could you do to care for creation?

Even though Hildegard’s times were very different from ours, people had the same needs and wants and feelings. For her, it is our creative actions that link us to God. “From [God] human beings have the ability to be active in the world…human beings love the things they make because from their recognition they see that they gain reality.”* Madeline L’Engle notes that we should remember “the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.” (Walking on Water)

Even though we are ‘dust and to dust shall return’ as the Ash Wednesday prayer reminds us, we are gifted to be, in fact we are required to be, co-creators in making the world and in re-making the world. Like little painted stones, we are unique in how that happens and it is an amazing responsibility that God has given to us. Wouldn't it be a fun activity to take a rock and paint on it what your creative image is?

Stop and think about how you create and co-create. Is it in art, music, writing, games, or something else entirely? 

Next time we’ll take a look at what Hildegard says about the Earth itself.

*Praying with Hildegard of Bingen by Gloria Durka

No Body now but Yours

You may have heard this poem/prayer of St. Theresa of Avila (at bottom of post) at some time. It has been beautifully set to music by John Michael Talbot and others. In the next few weeks, during this season of Epiphany 2014, come explore the prayer with me. Can the words of a 16^th Century nun and mystic help us to follow Christ’s example more closely? Can the words help us to be a ‘thin place’ where the Light of Christ can shine through to the world?

“Christ has no body but yours,” says the first line. This brings to mind the words of St. Paul “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (I Corinthians 12:27). Very often the term Body of Christ is used to refer to the Church as a whole and to individual congregations. It is indeed that, and more. Paul says we are “individually members”, too. That is to say, we are like cells making up the Whole.

Each of us is important and necessary to make the Body complete. Earlier in I Corinthians 12, (verse 14) Paul states, “Indeed, the Body does not consist of one member but of many.” We each have a different, but integral function to play in the completeness of the Body of Christ.

Paul continues with his analogy in I Corinthians 12:15-21 by suggesting that it would be strange and terrible if the hands, eyes, and feet started arguing with each other about who is most important. I’m sure I don’t need to point out how destructive that is in real life. In verse 24-26, Paul notes, “God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

If you have read Wind in the Door, part of Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quartet, you’ll recall that it is the microscopic mitochondria which are the core of Charles’ malaise. The tiny interior cell parts are so important that their sickness makes the boy ill. It is only through the sacrifice of others that he is made well (and evil averted).  

This is the core of being a healthy Body-all parts care for one another and no member takes precedence. The hand understands that the tiny unseen cell in the big toe is just as important as the hand himself. Conversely the little cell doesn’t consider herself less just because she isn’t as visible as the hand. And, like in the book, the most minute mitochondria inside it all must take responsibility and “deepen” in order for all to be well.

What if we looked at others in the world around us in the same way? What if we looked at the world with love instead of competitively? What if we saw in the homeless man ranting on the corner a bit of Christ, might it make our response different? If we knew that the politician in power is no more important than the hungry child in Africa, how might we live? What if we understood that, as Jesus told the disciples, “But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.” (Luke 22:26)

The Body of Christ is more than the Church. The bread and wine of Eucharist feed us the Holy food of the Body of Christ which empowers us to live more fully as the Body of Christ in our place in the world. We may never do a mission trip to Africa or Calcutta, but we might be just the word of hope or smile of greeting a hurting neighbor or stranger needs. The Body of Christ is each of us in the world, too. “Christ has no body now but yours” say Teresa. What we do and how we act presents Christ to the world. Awesome power and not to be taken lightly… Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore how we can perhaps be hands and feet of Christ in the world in 2014.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

God of Ordinary Time

So we come to the end of this series of thoughts taken from Madeline L’Engle’s book, A Stone for a Pillow and Richard Rohr’s book Things Hidden, chapter 9. At the same time, we are drawing to the end of the season of Pentecost-that long stretch between the Feast of Pentecost and the start of Advent, sometimes called Ordinary Time. Because it is such a long season of the church, we might think that we can just ignore it and go our way without considering the actions of God much during those 6 or 7 months. Just because there aren’t any grand high feast days doesn’t mean that God is napping. In the Northern Hemisphere, the months of the season of Pentecost are the times of ‘seedtime and harvest’. In the Southern Hemisphere, the months are the times of rest and fallow for fields. As city-dwellers, we forget that the land needs fallow times to regenerate, just like we do. This ‘Ordinary Time’ is the opportunity to see God at work all around us, if we open our eyes!

Madeline L’Engle says, “We do not ever stop being part of God’s plan, part of the unity, part of the work of the coming of the Kingdom when all shall be made new.” Whether your life is in the time of seedtime or moving into the harvest time, each of us is part of God’s whole and holy plan. Times of rest and laying fallow are to be welcomed because there is a new seedtime coming and new fruit to bear. If you are in a time that seems fallow-rejoice, for new growth is coming.

In God’s plan, L'Engle reminds us, we are given “vulnerability…We are promised not that we won’t be wounded, that we won’t bleed, but that we will be transformed. We are promised not that we won’t die, but that we shall live.” Rohr agrees. He says, “to hold the contradictions with God, with Jesus, is to be a Christian and to share and participate in the redemption of the world.” Throughout the Bible and our lives, we see how times of trial and wounding bring forth new ministry, new direction, and new faith. You have only to look at the martyrs and saints to see that their lives were not a garden path, yet their faith grew and strengthened because they knew God was in it all.

The whole process of planting and growing, harvest and fallow fields reminds us of this cycle of seeming to die, in order to live. Jesus himself uses it as a metaphor: "Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24) As part of that new creation we can grow deep roots into God. This graphic (from a Facebook post) reminds me of that truth and calls each of us to work for the peace of God in our own lives and in others.

Joseph, son of Jacob, although he has much reason to seek vengeance tells his brothers, “Fear not, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Genesis 50:19-20) Like many other people of God, he understands that God WAS present in all that he endured and as Paul reiterates, “in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Because God is in all parts of our life, Rohr says the Cross with “those two bookmark images, the blood being the price of letting go and the water being the invitation to union and divine feeding” is the guidepost we need. Through the mystery of the cross we learn “how to stand against hate without becoming hate, how to oppose evil without becoming evil ourselves.” He asks, “Can you feel yourself stretching in both directions-toward God’s goodness and also toward recognition of your complicity in evil? If you look at yourself in that moment, you will feel crucified.”

According to Rohr, the revelation of the cross is that we see “the opponent is not so much evil as a symbol of a greater evil of which he or she is also the victim.” Only then can we “agree to carry that victim status together with Jesus. We agree to bear the burden of human evil, of which we are all victims and are all complicit.” In that acceptance and being open to the vulnerability and contradiction we learn “we can’t do it alone…only by a deep identification with the Crucified One…[do we become] his ‘new creation.”

The vulnerability, scary though it can be; and the wounding with the scars it brings, are instruments of our transformation. It is an odd and Divine paradox that very often plays out in the ‘ordinary times’ of our day-to-day lives. It can be easy to forget that God is in the vulnerability, fears, wounding and scars because they are all around and within each of us. That is exactly where God is, too-in the midst of us! God is with us even, maybe especially, in the ‘ordinary times’ when we think we are abandoned.

Are you in a time of planting or harvesting, in a time of fallow or growth? How can you, as the graphic says, pull others into your peace-which is grounded and rooted in God alone?

God's Eyes

I took a break last week, but now we’re back to looking at some insights from Madeline L’Engle’s book, A Stone for a Pillow and Richard Rohr’s book Things Hidden, chapter 9. This week we consider seeing the world through God’s eyes.

Rohr claims that mystics throughout the ages, “knew … by gazing upon the one that we have pierced, praying from a place of needed mercy [allowed] Love which changed them from the bottom up…God gazed at them through the suffering and sad eyes…to stand under is still the best way to understand.” It is not just mystics but artists and musicians who name this paradox and this reality. George Studdart Kennedy’s protagonist in his poem Well knows that the eyes of the London whore are God’s eyes. Gordon Lightfoot sings about a “child born to a welfare mom…a week, a day, they’ll take it away…” and even the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in the Suite Beethoven’s Last Day finds Beethoven at the point of having to choose whether to exchange longer life for himself for the life of a poor child in the street. “It’s the arching of a life…”

Because “God is the God of love and love will not rest while there is any suffering left, any rebellion, any anguish” Madeline L’Engle notes we have to be willing to accept the vulnerability of our call to live in love and to name and empower those we encounter. She goes on, “Jesus said, ‘what I want is mercy, not sacrifice’.” All we are really called to do and be is open and involved in the cosmos. To be a butterfly on a leaf and let the wings we flutter echo in the universe and beyond.

We are called to see the world through God’s eyes. We must see that the London whore and the beggar in the street are just as important as royalty on a throne or the latest teen idol. According to Rohr that happens when we stand under the Cross-then we see that in and through the Cross “God [is] somehow participating in human suffering instead of just passively tolerating it and observing it…that also changes everything-at least for those who are willing to ‘gaze’ contemplatively.” In the Cross is the “very pattern of redemption…Jesus is, in effect saying…’I’m going to take the worst thing and turn it into the best thing, so you will never be victimized, destroyed or helpless again!’”

There is nothing outside the control of God. As Paul said, “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:31-39)

Because the Cross changes everything, we can agree with Paul, that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us…We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved.” (Romans 8:18-24)

Rather than bemoaning the inequalities and the pains of our circumstances, we can instead be like this child who knows that “God is SOOOO good!” That might just free us to be more like the butterfly exalting in being freed from her cocoon and experiencing the first breath of air on her wings!

Would changing the way you look at the suffering of the world and the challenges of your own life change if you really believed Paul’s words, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”? What if you understood in your heart that Jesus’ work on the Cross was in effect saying “I’m going to take the worst thing and turn it into the best thing, so you will never be victimized, destroyed or helpless again”? Would you then be more able to see the world and our fellow humans in it through God’s eyes? Something to think about, for sure.

Next week will be the last in this series based on L'Engle and Rohr's work.

God of the Cosmos

Moving deeper into insights from from Madeline L’Engle’s book, A Stone for a Pillow and Richard Rohr’s book Things Hidden, chapter 9 we discover that both authors express the truth that God is greater than the entire universe. L’Engle quotes Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who states, “for a soul to have a body is enkosmismene (roots in the cosmos)” We are part of the entirety of the universe and like the butterfly whose wings cause ripples across the cosmos, so too our actions have far reaching consequences even if we never see them.

Rohr thinks Christianity slipped away from the Cosmic proclamation of Love toward the forensic and judgmental God image. He says that the cosmology of “True Christianity beguiles, seduces, invites, cajoles, creates spiritual yearning and draws humanity into ever more desirable mystery, healing, and grace.” The Love of God pulls us into union with God rather than Fear of retribution.

Part of the universality of God is that God is present in the joys AND in the pains of life. Rohr says, “Holding the mystery of pain and looking right at it and learning deeply from it” is necessary because “God’s heart has always been softened toward us, even and most especially in our suffering. This softens us toward ourselves and all others who suffer.” In other words, our pain helps us feel and understand and empathize with others’ pain. Then we are willing to be vulnerable enough to open ourselves to the world and even the cosmos that is filled with human pain.

One way that we can be open and impact the universe is in and through prayer. Prayer is sitting in the presence of God whether with or without words. L’Engle notes, “God can take my fumbling faltering prayers and make something good.” St. Paul knows that we may not always know what to pray. In Romans 8:26, he writes “In the same way, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, since we do not know how to pray as we should. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.” God’s Love will breathe life into the prayers of our deepest pain, and when we open ourselves to bear others pain to God in prayer. It can be difficult to be willing to be that open and vulnerable to God and to the world, yet it is how we are transformed.

Madeline L’Engle quotes Parker Palmer as saying, “the self becomes real only when reacting with other selves. We do not become real in isolation, but in response to the others we encourage along the way, and who call us into being. Not only that, according to L’Engle, “we act on those whom we meet and we call them into being. We are in a very real sense “Namers” and not the ecthroi who are ‘un-namers’ bent on removing the identity of those they encounter.”

I am reminded of the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, who only became real by being loved by the Boy. “He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about. He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter.” The Velveteen Rabbit is real to the Boy, but you recall that ultimately the Rabbit becomes really Real-really ‘Named’ and whole only after being cast off after the Boy is ill. “Instead of dingy velveteen he had brown fur, soft and shiny, his ears twitched by themselves, and his whiskers were so long that they brushed the grass. He gave one leap and the joy of using those hind legs was so great that he went springing about the turf on them, jumping sideways and whirling round as the others did, and he grew so excited that when at last he did stop to look for the Fairy she had gone.”

In order to be more whole and holy we seek atonement or at-one-ment with God. Rohr says, “we [have] emphasized paying a cosmic debt more than communicating a credible love…the cross became more an image of a Divine transaction than an image of human transformation.” At-one-ment with God happens when we allow God to transform us-to make us ‘Real’, like the Velveteen Rabbit, through LOVE.

With L’Engle we might do well to pray “At-one me with You and Your love…whenever we pray, we are tapping the power of creation and that’s a mighty power…we have to try to turn to love, to know that the Lord who created all, alto loves all which was made.” L’Engle notes that in Genesis “God did not say, ‘It is finished’, that did not come until the Cross. What God said after making the world was, ‘It is Good. It is very Good’.” We have the opportunity, the option to take God at God’s word-to drink and eat life in Eucharist and in communion with life and living. In that living we are vulnerable and we are changed.

In the Loving hand of God we are transformed and as Chardin says we have “roots in the cosmos”. Like the picture above illustrates (by Melanie Weidner, ListenForJoy.com, from a Facebook posting), we can withstand the storms and pains of life because we are rooted in the Holy and in the Cosmos.

The meditations from A Stone for a Pillow and Richard Rohr continue in November.

God of Grace and God of Glory

Continuing with thoughts from from Madeline L’Engle’s book, A Stone for a Pillow and Richard Rohr’s book Things Hidden, chapter 9. Last time we pondered the contrast between a ‘forensic’ God and a God of Love. According to both L’Engle and Rohr, we too often believe that God is keeping score. Instead, our God is, as L’Engle notes “the image of God within us is Love.” This time, we will consider how that God of Love is manifest-as the God of Grace and God of Glory.

One of my favorite hymns is by Harry Fosdick (see below for full text or here for a video). The hymn is triumphant praise to the One who is in control of all things. Fosdick starts out by calling on the God of Grace and God of Glory to pour out power on the People of God and bring the Church (which is the people-the Body of Christ) to true and ‘glorious flower’.

Fosdick’s hymn starts in the right place-by asking God to work in us. The fact is that we cannot by ourselves become holy or even good. Indeed such efforts can have the opposite effect. “If I, self-consciously, try to make myself good, I am unwittingly separating myself from those I love and would serve…I learned that if I was what I had considered selfish, that is, if I took reasonable care of my own needs, we had a smoothly running household,” say Madeline L’Engle. We try so hard to be perfect and good that sometimes we cannot see the Holy spark within us, and fall into the trap of thinking we aren’t any good.

So we try to make ourselves over into what the world (or the church) says we should be. Too often that comes at the cost of relationships and even our soul. Rohr states, “it is precisely my ego self that has to die, my need to be right, to be in control, to be superior…the longer you gaze [on the Crucified One], the more you will see your own complicity in and profitability from the sins of others.”

Fosdick’s hymn reminds us of the “hosts of evil ‘round us [who] scorn Thy Christ”. Those hosts might just include our own need to control and work out our own salvation. When we are working in our own power to be ‘good enough’ for God, we live in the “fears that long have bound us”. Instead God would “free our hearts to faith and praise.” This doesn't happen overnight. In looking at Jacob's life in the Bible and in L'Engle's book (A Stone for a Pillow) you can see that transformation was a life long process filled with lots of errors. AND GOD STILL LOVED HIM! God loved Jacob enough to make him the patriarch of Israel-father of the 12 tribes!

The start to this process, for many of us, is learning to love and forgive ourselves. L’Engle insightfully remarks, “[the] most difficult of all is learning to bless ourselves…[to] accept ourselves as blessed-not perfect, not virtuous, not sinless-just blessed.” Both L’Engle and Rohr know that we have to forgive ourselves before we can really love ourselves or anyone else. Rohr notes, “Forgiveness is probably the only human action that demands three new ‘seeings’ at the same time: I must see God in the other, I must access God in myself, and I must see God in a new way that is larger than ‘an Enforcer’.” Because God is Love not Judgment, we must shift our paradigm to see ourselves as we are seen: in and through the lens of God’s Love.

Too often we find it difficult to release the aim of making ourselves holy because we fear the retribution of the angry God if we fail. Fosdick calls on the God of Grace and Glory to “bend our pride to Thy control. Shame our wanton selfish gladness, rich in things and poor in soul.” The problem is that we really, deep down, like ourselves the way we are. Yes, we admit to having some faults and know we could be ‘better’. However, we don’t really want to get rid of the image we have created of our identity.

Rohr compares the paradigm shift to the “Passover commemoration [where] we have an image of the death of something good, innocent, and even loved”. He says we are called to put to death “what I deem necessary to my identity; it is what I cannot live without. It is these seemingly essential and good things-when let go of-that break us through into much deeper levels of life.”

Not an easy thing-letting go of the identity I carefully have built up. It is only in looking to the Cross and living Fosdick’s refrain “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage…” that we can start to change. Slowly we see, with Rohr that the Cross is “not an image of the death of the bad self but, in fact, the self that feels essential, right, and necessary-but isn’t necessary at all.”

The final verse of the hymn calls on God to “save us from weak resignation…let the search for Thy salvation be our glory evermore.” When we let the God of Grace and God of Glory live and rule our lives we will be able to live with our “feet on lofty places…armored with all Christ-like graces in the fight to set men free.” It is in the letting go of our image of being in control and in charge that we find true freedom and forgiveness. Then we learn that what Archbishop Desmond Tutu said is true. “God loves you! And God’s love is so great, God loves your enemies, too.”

It is not easy to live a life of openness to God’s love. That Love demands a response. L’Engle emphasizes the paradox “our faith is a faith of vulnerability and hope not a faith of suspicion and hate”. We are called to enter into a life of openness and vulnerability instead of insisting on our own way. Then we can with Fosdick live as  “Serving Thee Whom we adore.”

Rohr says God’s love calls for relinquishment of those things in life and esp. those things in ourselves that we think we cannot live without. What might God be calling you to give to God? L’Engle says we must learn to see ourselves as “blessed”-not perfect, just blessed. Do you really believe that you are blessed? Fosdick’s hymn says we need to lean on the God of Grace and Glory “lest we miss Thy Kingdom’s goal”. Can you trust God enough to let God be in charge?

 God of Grace and God of Glory, Harry E. Fosdick, 1930  

God of grace and God of glory,
On Thy people pour Thy power.
Crown Thine ancient church’s story,
Bring her bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the facing of this hour,
For the facing of this hour.

Lo! the hosts of evil ’round us,
Scorn Thy Christ, assail His ways.
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days,
For the living of these days.

Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.

Set our feet on lofty places,
Gird our lives that they may be,
Armored with all Christ-like graces,
In the fight to set men free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
That we fail not man nor Thee,
That we fail not man nor Thee.

Save us from weak resignation,
To the evils we deplore.
Let the search for Thy salvation,
Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Serving Thee Whom we adore,
Serving Thee Whom we adore

Forensic God or Loving God

For the next few weeks, join me in considering thoughts from from Madeline L’Engle’s book, A Stone for a Pillow and Richard Rohr’s book Things Hidden, chapter 9. I read both recently and was moved by the similarities of thought even though the two writers are very different.

These two works offer insight into how we too often view of God as judgmental (forensic, to use L’Engle’s metaphor) rather than Grace-ful and Loving. L’Engle explores the story of Jacob in her book. She says that in many places church culture has shifted to a view of God Who seeks to punish and keeps lists of what we do wrong. If we really read the Old and New Testament we will find a God of love Who cares for and forgives even someone like Jacob who lies, cheats, steals, etc. When we image God as the One who tallies good and evil on a scale, Rohr says, “We end up making God very small and draw the Godhead into our own ego-driven need for retribution, judicial resolution and punishment…exactly what Jesus came to undo.”

Rohr’s work asks us to revisit the Cross because, he says, too often we do not see the Cross as the “revelation of a mystery” but rather as a “substitutionary tragedy”. We humans have “always needed to find a way to deal with human anxiety and evil…usually by sacrificial systems…[and] we think it is our job to destroy the evil element.” We find it too easy to point fingers at others instead of accepting our own role in whatever problems arise.

In the ultimate paradox and overturning of our systems, “Jesus took away the sin of the world, by exposing it first of all as different than we imagined, and letting us know that our pattern of ignorant killing, attacking and blaming is in fact history’s primary illusion…he shared with us a Great Participative Love, which would make it possible for us not to hate at all.” Our response to that Love needs to be seeing God in life. God loves us not matter how incompletely and imperfectly we accomplish that.

L'Engle says, “If our worship of God means anything at all, it must be voluntary, not coerced.” God gives us the choice to see and respond. Jacob, you may recall, finds himself fleeing from his brother’s (well deserved) wrath and discovers God, perhaps for the first real time at Luz. He does not encounter God who chastises him for his deceit and failures. He finds “the Lord is in this place…this is the Gate of Heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17) L’Engle notes, “Wherever I call upon my Maker is always God’s house”. Of course, we have free will to see or not the glory around us.  Jacob, in fact, even though he is awed, bargains with God. “IF God will be with me, and will keep me…THEN the Lord shall be my God.” (Genesis 28:20-22)

Rohr quotes Duns Scotus who states, “God’s redemptive action…[is] God’s perfect and utterly free initiative of love…God is in charge of history, not us and surely not our sinfulness.” Rohr insists “Jesus Christ is both the medium and the message…Jesus is pure gift, grace and glory!” Unlike Jacob, Jesus (God in human form) is the true image of God. According to Rohr, those gazing upon the ‘Crucified One’ with “contemplative eyes are always healed at deep levels of pain, unforgiveness, aggressivity, and victimhood.”

Our sacrificial, forensic metaphors and images limit how we are able to come to God. They are built from our own desire for control and power. Throughout history, we have chosen to seek power rather than healing which comes from 'gazing upon the Crucified One'. Rohr notes, “enslavement and exodus is the great Jewish lens through which history is read…the pattern of down and up, loss and renewal, enslavement and liberation, exile and return, transformation through darkness and suffering has become quite clear in the Hebrew scriptures.” We don't like the enslavement, exile, loss parts of the cycle and try to control our lives to prevent that, even if it means trampling over others in the process.

However, the real image of God is “Jesus on the cross [who] identifies with the human problem…He refuses to stand above or outside the human dilemma…instead becomes the scapegoat personified.” Scotus says, “Jesus was not ‘necessary’ to solve any problem whatsoever-he was no mopping-up exercise after the fact-but a pure and gracious declaration of the primordial truth, from the very beginning which was called the doctrine of ‘the primacy of Christ’.”

When we are able to turn and see God in the ups and downs, then we can respond differently than when we are trying to earn approval from a God who is all about judgment. L’Engle quotes Thomas Traherne who says “It is by your love that you enjoy all His delights, and are delightful to Him.” When we respond in love to God, we enter into His joy and that is the goal of all living and all worship. Later she notes that “The image of God within us is love.” Not only is the image within us love, but also we are to be that image to the world.

Take a moment or more to consider how you view God? As the Judge who takes notes of every wrong action to hold up at the final judgment or as God on the Cross holding out arms of all embracing Love? Is God in every place, for you, so that all is the Gateway to Heaven or only in selected places and times, when you are ‘perfect’ and ‘all is well with the world’? What difference do the two images of God make?

Next time we will consider the God of Grace and God of Glory based on L'Engle and Rohr's thoughts.

God Routinely Blesses

Baruch Atah, Adonai Elohenu, Melech Ha-Olam…

“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe…”

This ancient Jewish blessing is the start of many, if not most, Jewish prayers. The shofar calls the Jewish men to pause in their work and pray. According to Barbara Brown Taylor, an observant Jew will say “at least a hundred blessing prayers each day…upon waking up…before setting out…wearing new clothes…for pastries, fruit, vegetables, and wine.” This fall we’ve looked at various routines that can bring us closer to God. When we become aware of our routines, we wake up to their real purpose, which is to bring us blessing.

Even the interruptions and discomforts, even the pain and dis-ease of life are ways to find (and be found) by God. Perhaps we would do well to consider the practice of some of our faith predecessors who blessed even the seemingly bad things. Paul talks of being in chains as a way of preaching the Good News: "I want you to know, brethren, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel...the whole praetorian guard and all the ret [know] that my imprisonment is for Christ...the brethren have been made confident in the Lord because of my imprisonment." (Philippian 1:12-14)

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God,” says Paul later. (Hebrews 10:31) We have to be open to the blessings that happen every day, all around us! L’Engle adds “We live under the illusion that if we can acquire complete control, we can understand God…but the only way we can brush against the hem of the Lord…is to have the courage, the faith, to abandon control.” When we let go of control and are open to being blessed and to offering blessings for all things, we come closer to God than in the Cathedrals of the world. It is about how we live and are blessed by the One who imbues all things with Life.

A long time ago someone introduced me to the poem “Well” by G.A. Studdart-Kennedy. Studdart-Kennedy was a chaplain during WWI. He earned the nickname “Woodbine Willie” by giving Woodbine brand cigarettes to the wounded soldiers he ministered to. I've always been struck by Studdart-Kennedy's vision of meeting God after death and how that one word 'well?' sums up our response to God's blessings in all that happens, but esp. in our interactions with one another.

This poem is a soldier telling a dream. It’s a bit hard to read until you get into the rhythm of the Cockney accent. He dreams he dies and finds himself beside “a solemn kind o’ sea…A throng ‘o faces came and went, afore me on that shore.” The soldier sees everyone he has met and realizes “the dirty things I’d done to em, when I ‘and’t played the game.” Then “there before me someone stood, just lookin’ dahn at me…

And 'E said nowt, 'E just stood still, For I dunno 'ow long.

It seemed to me like years and years, But time out there's all wrong.

What was 'E like? You're askin' now. Can't word it anyway.

'E just were 'Im, that's all I knows. There's things as words can't say.

It seemed to me as though 'Is face, Were millions rolled in one.

It never changed yet always changed, Like the sea beneath the sun.

'Twere all men's face yet no man's face, And a face no man can see,

And it seemed to say in silent speech, 'Ye did 'em all to me.

'The dirty things ye did to them, 'The filth ye thought was fine,

'Ye did 'em all to me,' it said, 'For all their souls were mine.'

All eyes was in 'Is eyes, – all eyes, My wife's and a million more.

And once I thought as those two eyes Were the eyes of the London whore.

And they was sad, – My Gawd 'ow sad, With tears that seemed to shine,

And quivering bright wi' the speech o' light, They said, ''Er soul was mine.'

And then at last 'E said one word, 'E just said one word 'Well?'”

The narrator, knowing he has failed to live a good life, asks to go to Hell, but

“'E answered 'No

'You can't, that 'Ell is for the blind, 'And not for those that see.

'You know that you 'ave earned it, lad, 'So you must follow me.

'Follow me on by the paths o' pain, 'Seeking what you 'ave seen,

'Until at last you can build the "Is," 'Wi' the bricks o' the "Might 'ave been."'

(From The Unutterable Beauty: The Collected Poetry of G. A. Studdert Kennedy--you can read the whole poem here)

From the ground we walk on to the people we meet, all are incarnations of the Holy. When we are blessed, we ought to live in a state of returning the blessings. Like the observant Jew and in company with Paul, we ought to try to ask a blessing on everything that comes our way. Some things won’t be easy to bless or find a blessing in. In the Hebrew tradition, a prayer of blessing for bad news is “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, the Judge of Truth.”

It is up to me to be open and aware of the blessings in all things. L’Engle quotes H.A. Williams who says, “Justification by faith means that I have nothing else on which to depend except my receptivity to what I can never own or manage.” I ran across a gentle reminder of the importance of accepting each step as a blessing. Probably you’ve seen the “Daffodil Principle” since it circulates the email regularly. It’s the true story of a Rushing Springs, CA woman who annually, since 1958, planted daffodils on the hill near her home. Apparently tours ended in 2009 (at least according to the articles I found.) (If you haven’t seen it, one version is found on the internet here  and a video of the garden here.)

At the end, the narrator says, “’It makes me sad in a way,' I admitted to Carolyn. 'What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!'
My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. 'Start tomorrow,' she said.
She was right. It's so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, 'How can I put this to use today?'”

I hope this series of blog-meditations has left you with some thoughts about how to be receptive and open to the presence and blessing of God in all our routines. I hope this week I can remember to ask “how can I put this to use today?” Next week is Thanksgiving. See you then.

* Quotations from Walking on Water, L’Engle and An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor, unless otherwise noted.

Routinely Labeling or Naming

God is found in the routines of our lives. Whether we are hiking through a forest or plodding down a city street, God is with us. If we are aware of the sights and sounds and smells around us or if we are lost in numb repetition, the Holy lingers on the edge of consciousness waiting to be invited in. Finding God nearby can be as unexpected as coming across this squirrel I saw in a public garden in downtown Denver a couple of years ago.

George Eliot says, “If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat…As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.” That ‘stupidity’ keeps us from awareness of the One who created all and makes us prone to labeling things and people. We may say liquor or candy are bad, while milk and fruit are labeled as good. People are lumped into groups with convenient tags. In this election we’ve heard more than enough of candidates categorizing each other as pro-this or anti-that. It is too simple to make decisions based on such rhetoric, but we are all guilty. Someone poorly dressed and dirty approaches and we automatically assume they are homeless and planning to ask for money. Maybe the person is a day laborer heading home or even an eccentric millionaire.

Madeleine L’Engle insists, “To name is to love. To be Named is to be loved.” She says, “The name of God is so awe-ful, so unpronounceable, that it has never been used by any of his creatures…But we, the creatures, are named, and our names are part of our wholeness.” The converse is true, too says L’Engle. When we label those around us we are Un-Naming them according. She notes, “It seems that more than ever the compulsion today is to identify, to reduce someone to what is on the label…If we are pigeonholed and labeled we are un-named.

We have to be careful and aware of the way we encounter others as I blogged a month ago. It is easy to label or just ignore, but as Taylor reminds us, “At its most basic level, the everyday practice of being with people is the practice of loving the neighbor as the self…it is the practice of coming face-to-face with another human being, preferably someone different enough to qualify as a capital “O” Other—and at least entertaining the possibility that this is one of the faces of God.”

Seeing the Face of God in each other is an awesome responsibility. The group Casting Crowns song “If We are the Body” is a not so subtle reminder that as Christians we are the Body of Christ and as such we are the hands, arms, feet of God.

It's crowded in worship today

As she slips in

Trying to fade into the faces

The girls' teasing laughter is carrying farther than they know

Farther than they know.

But if we are the body

Why aren't His arms reaching?

Why aren't His hands healing?

Why aren't His words teaching?

And if we are the body

Why aren't His feet going?

Why is His love not showing them

There is a way? There is a way?

A traveler is far away from home

He sheds his coat

And quietly sinks into the back row

The weight of their judgmental glances tell him that his chances

Are better out on the road...

But Jesus paid much too high a price

For us to pick and choose who should come

And we are the body of Christ…

In the coming week, I plan to try to be more aware of times when I ‘label’ rather than ‘name’ people—and in some cases it won’t be easy. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll see in the ‘Other’ the face of Christ. Maybe, just maybe, I can be the hands or feet or face of Christ to someone else.

Next week will be the conclusion of this series with a look at the Blessings we can find when we see God in the routines.

* Quotations from Walking on Water, L’Engle and An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor, unless otherwise noted.

God when we Get Lost

Last week we looked at interrupted routines. Routines are like predictable paths. In fact, often they ARE predictable paths. I don’t know about you, but I usually take the same route to and from work every day. I know pretty well how to time the lights along the route so I don’t have to stop. It’s the same with my daily habits. If I don’t have time to do my morning journaling or check the email before work, I feel out of kilter.

It’s amazing how early in life we fall into routines. This week we, my husband & I, babysat for our grandson while his mommy was in the hospital having his baby sister. He’s 4 and already has a set way of getting ready for bed. First he puts away toys, then gets into night clothes, then you have to read two stories, then he looks at books for a little while in his room before climbing into bed. You forget any step of that routine at your own peril. In the morning he has a series of steps that can’t be hurried, even if Grandma has to get to her own house before taking him to preschool and going to work! (He really is excited about his sister, I just caught him with an expression that says 'quit taking pictures'.)

Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that there is a spiritual discipline in getting off the regular paths and getting lost “because once you leave the cow path, the unpredictable territory is full of life.” She also says that when you get lost you have the opportunity to “take a good look around to see where you are and what this unexpected development might have to offer you.”

Getting lost doesn’t necessarily have to be taking a wrong turn. It might be “getting lost looking for love…between jobs…looking for God…” Getting lost can be an opportunity to “move through my own chattering to God to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say,” according to Madeline L’Engle.

In thinking about this week when I was ‘lost’ from my routine I thought that the opposite had happened. Because I was rushing to get everything done I didn’t think I had really taken time to pray. Then I realized that I DID find some ‘out of routine’ prayer times. God woke me up in the middle of the night for some intense prayer time! Driving to work (and feeling rushed) I found myself praying the Lord’s Prayer to calm and center myself! Keble, in his closing stanza, notes that our daily goal should be to ‘live more nearly as we pray.’

Only, O Lord, in thy dear love,

fit us for perfect rest above;

and help us, this and every day,

to live more nearly as we pray

Getting lost from our routines, or in the midst of the routines, might give us just the interruption needed to turn back to God. Along our routine paths, God can become routine. When we are lost, God is very near. ‘Getting lost’ on purpose—taking a different way home or stopping at a park can offer respite with God. When life sends you down a path you weren’t expecting and you feel lost or just out of kilter, you may discover new ways of talking to God.

Sometimes we end up really lost, like the Prodigal Son, even feeding pigs like in this Bartolomé Esteban Murillo painting. We are far from the normal, comfortable home we envisioned. When we hit bottom, we are indeed at the “Ground of Being.” Paul Tillich, a 20th century theologian, coined that phrase for God as the source of all being. Like the Prodigal Son, that is often when we ‘come to ourselves’ and say “Father I am not worthy to be called your son/daughter. Make me as one of your servants.” (Luke 15:11-32) The good news is that God welcomes us back as if we had never left!

Max Lucado (Cure for the Common Life) notes that “We need regular recalibrations…But who has time…? You have carpools to run; businesses to run; sales efforts to run; machines, organizations, and budgets to run. You gotta run…Christ repeatedly escaped the noise of the crowd in order to hear the voice of God. He resisted the undertow of the people by anchoring to the rock of his purpose: employing his uniqueness (to "preach to the other cities also") to make a big deal out of God ("the kingdom of God") everywhere he could.”

Getting lost may just be the recalibration you need. Look back over your life to see where you ‘got lost’ from the path you had plotted out for your life. Taylor says, “the practice of getting lost is both valuable and undervalued…in this culture [where] the point is to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible…doing at least five other things while you are in transit.” Think about where God was in the times you felt lost. If you find yourself ‘lost’ outside your routine this week—look for the Holy in the changed circumstances.

Next week we’ll look at how labeling one another is a way of keeping our norms and routines ‘secure’.

* Quotations from Walking on Water, L’Engle and An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor, unless otherwise noted.

God in our Interrupted Routines

There are many things that interrupt our routines. Some are delightful-like a family visit, some not so much-like pain or bad news. This month has been filled with interruptions for me. There was the visit from our daughter and her family, including 3 grandchildren, another grandbaby due to be born any day (different daughter), and preparations for the consecration of a bishop. All nice things, but they have kept me from my normal routines.


John Keble says,
The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we ought to ask:
room to deny ourselves; a road
to bring us daily nearer God

It is true that the daily routine can and does lead us closer to God. It is comforting to have a nice, set routine to follow. We don’t like to have our well organized lives interrupted and do our best to cling to the ‘trivial round, the common task’. However, sometimes it is the interruptions that present us with the opportunity to find an even more intimate experience of the Holy One.

The visit from our daughter reminded me of how enthusiastic children are. They visited during Balloon Fiesta and were delighted every time a hot air balloon was sighted near our house. A trip to the zoo was also a full of eager exploration. As noted in previous posts, the routines of life can numb us to that sort of delight. Sometimes an interruption reminds us, as adults, of the need to be passionate about our relationship with God.
Sometimes it is in the uncomfortable and even painful interruptions that God finds us. As CS Lewis points out, in The Problem of Pain, “[when my house of cards tumbles down] for a day or two [I] become a creature consciously dependent on God’s grace…Let Him but sheathe that sword…and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over-I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness.”

Barbara Brown Taylor notes that many of the world’s great religions grew out of an experience of suffering. She says, “Pain makes theologians of us all. If you have spent even one night in real physical pain, then you know what that can do to your faith in God, not to mention your faith in your own ability to manage your life.”

We look for the reason for our pain when something goes wrong and often blame God. However, if we embrace the suffering, we discover something astonishing and even miraculous-God is with us in the agony. In our pain we discover common ground with others because all of us does experience some sort of sorrow or pain or grief. Like the hummingbird hovering over this flower, there is beauty even in the hurt.

Our culture often makes us believe that life is meant to be a bed of roses and that obtaining just the ‘right’ car, house, dress, etc. will make us happy. Lewis shines a different light on the reason for difficulties. He notes that trials and tribulations are a way of reminding us that our “modest prosperity and happiness…[is] not enough to make [us] blessed…all this must fall from [us] in the end, and if [we] have not learned to know Him [we] will be wretched.”

Madeline L’Engle tells of the time when her 9 year old granddaughter was hit by a truck. She says that all she could do was “say with Lady Julian of Norwich, ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,’ and then to add, ‘No matter what.’ That was the important part, the ‘no matter what’…It made me affirm to myself that God is in control no matter what, that ultimately all shall be well, no matter what.”

Problems have a way of leveling the playing field, too. Think of the way communities suddenly pull together in the face of a natural disaster and families often come together around the bed of a sick member. In the commonality with each other, we find communion and ultimately healing.


Disruptions of routines can be blessings if embraced as gifts from God. They can turn into times when we encounter God. Over the next couple of weeks, I will try to look at the ‘interruptions of routine’ as opportunities to find God not distractions from God.

Next week we’ll look at how Getting Lost—an interruption of routine, too, can help us find God.

* Quotations from Walking on Water, L’Engle and An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor, unless otherwise noted.

God Met in Routine Encounters

The anonymous author of a devotion I read recently reminded me that “we are not merely [individuals] …It is as a people gathered…that we find sustaining strength.” The writer is referring to Christianity, but the same holds true for all human interaction. We need each other.


Keble agrees. As the hymn says,
Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,
as more of heaven in each we see;
some softening gleam of love and prayer
shall dawn on every cross and care.

Our friends help us see heaven because they share our views and love us. There are many other people, though, who aren't in our circle. We like to think we outgrow wanting to be in the 'in crowd' when we get out of Middle School, but it's not necessarily true. Barbara Brown Taylor states “there are people in all of our communities who do not belong to any of the same groups we do...Some of them stand right in front of us. [The clerk] is someone who exists even when she is not ringing up your groceries, as hard as that may be for you to imagine.”

It is not easy to be aware and actively engaged with each person you meet. Many of us would rather remain safely with our carefully selected friends. Madeline L’Engle warns that we easily fall into the trap of judging those who don’t agree with our beliefs and even with our likes and dislikes, but we can move beyond that. She notes that her husband likes beets, which she does not. “We do not have to enjoy precisely the same form of a balanced meal.” Likewise, we don’t have to each like the same art or worship in exactly the same way. L’Engle admits, “But how difficult it is for us not to judge.”

Keble talks about ‘old friends’. Isn’t there a possibility that we might find heaven in new friends if we are open to seeing one another as beloved creations and children of the same Father? Taylor states, “Encountering another human being is as close to God as I may ever get-in the eye-to-eye thing, the person-to-person thing—which is where God’s beloved has promised to show up.”

At first it sounds odd and even frightening to think of being that open and vulnerable to everyone we encounter. ‘How can I look at the drunk, homeless man in the same way I look at my child?’ we ask. ‘What if I am friendly and open, but the clerk is snippy or ignores me?’ It is easy to come up with rational excuses to not really look at the person in front of us, isn’t it?

The Christian music group Casting Crowns has a song called “There is Hope” that offers a new way to look at ‘every man’. Watch the video and see what you think.

There is Hope

As the musicians remind us, Jesus is the Hope.

There is hope for every man

A solid place where we can stand

In this dry and weary land

There is hope for every man

There is love that never dies

There is peace in troubled times

Will we help them understand?

Jesus is hope for every man

Jesus told his followers (and us), “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) That is the kind of love Taylor and Casting Crowns are talking about. I like the way Taylor paraphrases Jesus: “love the God you did not make up with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and the second…to love the neighbor you also did not make up as if that person were your own strange and particular self.”

How can we offer hope to others and give them 'a solid place on which to stand'? This week, I challenge you to really look at just one person as if they were, as Taylor says, “as if that person were your own strange and particular self.” Maybe hope is as simple as a real smile to the clerk who is tired or the bus driver who has been fighting traffic all day.

Next week we’ll look at how finding God in the routines can be healing.

* Quotations from Walking on Water, L’Engle and An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor, unless otherwise noted.