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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Friday, April 18, 2025

Good Friday

The crucifixion of Jesus is the preeminent example of God’s love reaching out to us. It is at the same moment the worst and best thing in human history. The Franciscans, led by John Duns Scotus, even claimed that instead of a “necessary sacrifice,” the cross was a freely chosen revelation of total love on God’s part. 

 

In so doing, they reversed the engines of almost all world religion up to that point, which assumed that we had to spill blood to get to a distant and demanding God. On the cross, the Franciscans believed, God was “spilling blood” to reach out to us! This is a sea change in consciousness. The cross, instead of being a transaction, was seen as a dramatic demonstration of God’s outpouring love, meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back toward trust and love of the Creator.

          Richard Rohr

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It is an age of horrors

With hate sitting in high places

People snatched off the streets

and “disappeared”

 

A time when racism is flaunted

compassion is a sin

and justice is denied

 

The air is thick with free-floating anger,

resentment, and feel

we are choking on our own bitterness

 

We want to claw our way

out of this dark, brooding place

we are desperate

for one clean breath of love

 

we are tired of stumbling in this sullen gloom

we want to once again walk in the light

 

Jesus of the cross

You know our pain

It is your pain

 

What assails us put you there

hanging on that tree

 

looking down at a world

that cried out for deliverance

 

You suffered to deliver

not to deliver us from suffering

but to teach us how to live with suffering

 

the poor will be with us always

so too the tyrants

the small, bitter souls that delight

in the pain of others

 

there were those who stood underneath your cross

delighted

there were more who simply turned away

overwhelmed by their own pain

unable to bear anymore

 

unable to see and feel the pain

oozing from the very earth

which cried out in its travail and shook when you died

 

but you bore it all

and in your near silence

you preached love

 

Yes, love

because only one thing has power completely

and that is love

 

Love seeks not power, or wealth

Love seeks not control or retribution

 

True love is freely given

and in that freedom is its power

it does not need

anything

 

 

 

love not seeking

can give

love not protecting can reach out

 

from the dawn of time

we human creatures have misunderstood

how You work

 

we have seen you as distant and demanding

and we have sought you out of fear

 

in fear

we have spilled blood on innumerable altars

and endless battlefields

seeking to please You

hoping to find favor and blessing

 

We have killed in your name

doves, and lambs, and fatted calves

and children

your beloved children

 

but in Jesus

in Jesus on the cross

you revealed your limitless love

from the cross You love poured out

 

like blood pouring from a pierced body

 

the cross is an insult

it shocks us, confuses us

and it changes us

 

we cannot describe a love such as this

but we can see it, experience it, accept it.

 

we can let love come to us

and freely, joyously, sacrificially

not only return it

but pass it on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Sunday, April 13, 2025

From meritocracy to grace

It takes all of us a long time to move from power to weakness, from glib certitude to vulnerability, from meritocracy to the ocean of grace.

                                                          Richard Rohr            

_____________________________________

 

God is not at all

like we might want our God to be

 

we love to point to the God of creation

and focus on omnipotence and omniscience

 

we look for God in mighty acts

acts of power

acts of dominance, even wrath

 

and since think of God this way

our faith is defined

accordingly

 

to follow God means power

to follow God means safety and ease

wealth and success

 

and we stand, Pharisee like

on our pillars of righteousness

believing (although we may not actually admit this)

that we have done something

to earn our place

in the circle of God’s love

 

and we stand secure, and comfortable

 

Palm Sunday

The Upper Room

Gethsemane

The Cross

 

should remind us

that God’s ultimate act of power

was profoundly expressed through vulnerability

and weakness

 

through yielding

and giving

all

 

that there might be an end to hate

and the birth of love

 

Forgive me, for all those moments

when I fail to see you in the little acts

of vulnerability and love

 

Forgive me Lord, for the times I forget

that is it when I am vulnerable

when I am a server (not the served)

that is when I am willing to

give pieces of myself

 

that I am most intensely on Your Way

 

Forgive me when I think that being yours

Is a matter of merit

 

Help me Lord, drift gently on the ocean of grace


Monday, March 31, 2025

The remnant rocks

Yahweh works slowly and humbly to reform any society, starting from the edges and the bottom… It is the consistent biblical theme of themes.  The victims are the victors...

The holy nation… emerges by a divine winnowing process.  The whole group never gets the message, but a smaller group (the remnant) carries the love and hope and restoration forward after each purification (that is after the trials and tribulations the people endure)…

          Richard Rohr (The Tears of Things)

 

“In your midst I will leave a humble and lowly people, those who remain will seek all their refuge in Yahweh” (Zephaniah 3:12)

 

The normal power systems of the world worship themselves and not God

          Richard Rohr (The Tears of Things)

________________________

 

Ah, the patience of Sacred

perhaps the creative power

woven into all

 

that amazing diversity

of color

shape

gender

function

 

that is

the mountains and rivers

skies and clouds

wind and rain (and snow)

 

that is elk and deer

foxes and skunks

rats too

 

that is you and I

that is black, brown, white

every shade imaginable

 

that is the colors of the rainbow

every gender possible

 

knows something we do not

 

that the love and ingenuity

that is part of each of us

that sacred presence

we carry with us

knowingly

or not

 

through all of our enfleshment

 

is more powerful

than small people trying to be big

weak people trying to be strong

 

is a reality that will prevail

over fear, hate, and greed

 

that will overcome cruelty

and all the machinations of

malevolent and malicious people

 

God has always had special place

In God’s heart for “the least of these.”

 

Even more profound is the fact that God uses

that which is humble, even small

to move the work of love forward

 

don’t look to the pulpit

the White House (especially there)

don’t wander through the halls of power

hoping to find the answer

 

look in the immigrant camp

in the prison in El Salvador

in the homeless shelter

 

wander through the foodbank

 

that is where God is to be found

where hope is to be found

 

in the tiny, often powerless remnant

that remembers

to hang on to love

to Yahweh

to kindness and compassion

 

God knows

that is where restoration is to be found

 

and patiently nurtures

the tiny seed

that ultimately

will change everything

 

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”  (I Corinthians 1:27-29)