Me too

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Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are

Kristen Stewart

 

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

 

Before pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean.

Bob Marley

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Sitting in a box

With thousands of precious souls

 

Seeking discernment and direction

For a flawed church

A church blessed and cursed with human creatures

 

I am gathered with people who love God

And embrace God’s way

But still manage to make a mess of things, as often as not

 

Who love each other,

Or at least try to

Wildly and imperfectly

 

We do not all agree

We are not all alike

 

There is every color of the rainbow here

Varying theologies

A full spectrum of genders (and yes, there is a spectrum)

 

There are liberals and conservatives

Farmers and bankers

Urbanites and people from towns so small

You’d miss them if you blinked

 

All seeking to hear

All desiring to be guided by the Sacred

All wanting to be the church,

 

The feet, the arms, the hands

Even the voice of Jesus

Now

 

But we struggle

 

Our problem is that we are convinced

Of our rightness

 

That we have a right view of Jesus

Salvation

Ministry

Gender

All of it

 

My understanding (we say to ourselves)

Is right!

 

Maybe

Maybe not

 

And we don’t know what to do

With those we think are not right

Whose views differ from ours

 

Because in our rightness

They are wrong

Dead wrong

 

And so we judge this person or that

For this stance or that

Because

 

We are right, and they are wrong

And meanwhile, they return the favor

 

So there we are

Divided

Judging (yes, we are)

 

As I sit in the middle of all this

Feeling more righteous at times than I should

 

Two thoughts come to me

 

I have to step away from my rightness

Because even if I am right and in some ways

It is likely I am not right in others

 

I need humility

I need to embrace unknowing

 

I might be wrong

 

I also need to leave space for grace

I am not sure how else to put it

 

But that person, who believes so differently from me

Got there by their own path

 

Would I be different if I had walked that path?

How would I believe if shaped by the parents, teachers, pastors, and life events that person has been shaped by?

 

Can I, even if I still strongly disagree, seek to understand

Seek to find a place of grace from which to

See that other

Who is, after all, as much a child of God as I

 

I am aware it is complicated

What do we do with belief and people who harm?

Who reject, exclude, and diminish?

 

I know I must stand for what I believe is right

And stand up for those who are minimized and oppressed

 

But how do I keep that

Awareness

Of my own fragility

Of the ways in which I, too, am “not right”

 

That keeps me humble and open

Full of love and compassion

 

It is going to be a long week

#GA227

 

Better or bitter

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All I am now going through

Will make me better or bitter,

Break down or break through

Learning this patience – it takes so much patience

It’s a great education

But why is the tuition so High?

Why God, why?

          Brian McLaren – Naked Spirituality

_____________________________________________

 

 

I watch as people like "Dr" Oz and RFJ Jr. spew inaccuracies.  While people like MarkWayne and Mr Mortgage Guy take over critical services they know nothing about.  I listen to tRump and JD and Rubio lie.  I suffer while Huckabee spews Zionist nonsense.  I read the comments of the MAGA faithful as they talk about "true American culture" (white, European-based) and about immigrant "trash."

 

I see America kill kids by shooting missiles at them, or denying them healthcare and food via funding (USAID).  I see us support genocide and apartheid.

 

I watch us dismantle systems that reveal the truth about what we are doing to the planet, like the Oceanic Observatories Initiative, to save 48 million a year, while we spend a billion a day blowing up things in Iraq (and losing).

 

I see our current government destroy the agencies that serve people while bankrolling the agencies that control and abuse people. 

 

I see all the ugliness that permeates our country from the top (Trump) to the bottom (the MAGA faithful on FB, Threads, and Truth Social).

 

And I hate it.

 

Brian McClaren talks about the fact that sometimes we end up in what he calls the “season of perplexity.”  Times when there is “no winning.  There are no solutions, answers, or consolations in sight…”

 

This may be such a time.

The words for perplexity are when, no, and why

 

When will it end?

No, this is not right!  No.  You should not allow this to happen, O Sacred One.  No, this person should not flourish.  What the…..

 

Sometimes we pray with Meister Eckhart, “God save me from god.”

 

Why?  I do not understand.  OK, perhaps I understand that some of these people who are causing this are those who, in order to gain the world, have lost their souls, who are no longer who they were created to be: people, children of God, creatures reflecting God’s image.  Trump.  JD Vance.  Lutnick.  Musk. So many of the MAGA leadership.  They know what they are doing is wrong.  They don’t care (IMHO).

 

There are those who have just been seduced by power and wealth and are being used by the evil ones.  Poor MarkWayne.  He doesn’t have a clue (IMHO, it's all just how I see it).

 

There are those who may actually believe the garbage they are spewing.  RFK Jr., maybe.

 

There are those who are misled, misinformed, ignorant, programmed, acculturated.  All those White Nationalist Christians programmed by intense White Nationalist preachers who have left the Gospel of Jesus far, far behind.  Those who watch FOX, and OAN, and all the others.

 

There are those who for whatever reason, perhaps fear, choose to see what they want to see.  That the butt naked Emperor has clothes, that Trump is strong, sane, mentally with it, effective, and the greatest President ever, like never before.

 

All I know is that it sucks the life out of me.  The joy out of everything.

 

I am tired of “no”

I want to get back to “yes”

 

I want to be in that place where, in the midst of the fury, doubt and feelings of abandonment, I sense that God is, and reach the point where even in the midst of it all,

I catch glimpses of sacred, of love

 

And so this morning, and every morning, I say the words from a 15^th century prayer book.

 

God be in my head, and in my understanding;

God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;

God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;

God be in my heart, and in my thinking;

God be at mine end, and at my departing.

 

God, be

 

 

 

Just out of reach

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I cannot reach up

Or rather I can, just not very well

And when I have stretched my arm as far as it will go

I can’t do anything with it

At all

 

That repaired supraspinatus

Just can’t bear the weight

 

And so I am left

Looking at that object on the shelf

And cursing

 

Then I ask for help

 

I hate it

Having to ask for help

Not being able to make that reach upward

Myself

 

Please

I’d rather do it myself!!

 

But that is the thing

I can’t

I can’t reach that file box, high in the closet

I need help

I can’t be the person God would love for me to be

I need help

 

Not just the help of the Holy Spirit

Although that, for sure

But the help of others

The encouragers

The ones who hold me accountable

The ones who have gifts I don’t have

 

Which is why I still believe in the church

Even though it is tainted

Even though, instead of being a servant church

It seeks power and wealth

 

Even though it can be dysfunctional

Fragmented

Judgmental

Exclusive

And self-absorbed

 

Because we need each other

 

And if we don’t do this faith thing together

Seeking (in the power of the Holy Spirit)

To be the presence of the Sacred

The hands, feet and voice of Jesus

In this world

Together

 

We will find so much

That is good

That is powerful

That is love

 

Just out of reach