The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It’s not the gathering of the saved.
The good, the true, and the beautiful are always their own best argument for themselves – by themselves – and in themselves.
We moved from wondering to answering, which has not served us well at all.
Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.
God does not decide to love, therefore, and God’s love can never be determined by the worthiness or unworthiness of the object. But God is Love itself.4 God cannot not love, because love is the nature of God’s very being.
Each one of us has to find such a relationship in the suffering that we ourselves experience, be it the loss of a job or a home, the death of someone we love, rejection by our parents or our children, the breakdown of a marriage, institutional injustice, social violence or whatever. The causes of our personal suffering are many. And when we find the living, liberating answer that gives us meaning in the midst of suffering, we realize that it is a very personal answer.
Once we can accept that God is in all situations, and can and will use even bad situations for good, then everything becomes an occasion for good and an occasion for God, and is thus at the heart of religion. The Center is everywhere.
In fact, the best of modern theology is revealing a strong “turn toward participation,” as opposed to religion as mere observation, affirmation, moralism, or group belonging. There is nothing to join, only something to recognize, suffer, and enjoy as a participant.
Grace is just the natural loving flow of things when we allow it, instead of resisting it. Sin is any cutting or limiting of that circuit.
The Crucified One is God’s standing solidarity with the suffering, the tragedy, and the disaster of all time, and God’s promise that it will not have the final word. The Risen One is God’s final word about the universe and what God plans to do with all suffering.
God oft-times doesn’t give a lot of answers but just keeps telling us who we are. God just keeps inviting us into that place where love is alive and where God is in love.
In the first half of life, we fight the devil and have the illusion and inflation of “winning” now and then; in the second half of life, we always lose because we are invariably fighting God.
Our temptation now and always is not to trust in God but to trust in our faith tradition of trusting in God.
As Jaroslav Pelikan so wisely put it years ago, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, and I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives Tradition such a bad name.
You will have many more Aarons building you golden calves than Moseses leading you on any exodus.
You normally have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing or confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity.
Frankly, Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its early stages.
Love is always stronger than death, and unto that love you have now returned.
The problem is solved. Now go and utterly enjoy all remaining days. Not only is it “Always Advent,” but every day can now be Christmas because the one we thought we were just waiting for has come once and for all.
If your prayer is not enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not an occasional “threat,” you probably need to do some growing up and learning to love.