Monthly Archives: May 2016

Daily Riches: The Only Thing That Matters (Brennan Manning)

Posted on by under Community & the Church, contemplative virtues, Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Listening, Loving Well, Success, The Love of God, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, True Greatness

“The apostle Paul may have understood the mind of Jesus better than anyone who ever lived. He sums up his whole understanding of the message of Jesus in Galatians 5:6 when he writes, “the only thing that matters is the faith that expresses itself in love.” According to Paul’s criterion … the person who is the most Christlike, closest to the heart of Abba, is not the one who spends the most time in prayer. It’s not the one who has the most PhDs. It’s not the one who has the most responsibility entrusted to his care. It’s not the pastor of the biggest megachurch. No, it’s the one who loves the most. That’s not my opinion. Those are the words in Galatians 5 that will judge us. According to that mysterious substitution of Christ for the Christian, what we do to one another, we do to Jesus.  …Jesus expected the most of every man and woman, and behind their grumpier poses, their most puzzling defense mechanisms, their coarseness, their arrogance, their dignified airs, their silence, and their sneers and curses, Jesus sees a little child who wasn’t loved enough–a least of these who had ceased growing because someone had ceased believing in them. How have we gotten it so screwed up?” I was speaking to the Navigators not long ago and they asked, ‘Do you have a word for us?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do. Instead of being  identified as a community that memorizes Scripture why not be a community of professional lovers that causes people to say, ‘How they love one another!’ Why do we judge Jesus’ criterion for authentic discipleship irrelevant? Jesus said the world is going to recognize you as His by only one sign: the way you are with one another on the street every day. You are going to leave people feeling a little better or a little worse. You’re going to affirm or deprive them, but there’ll be no neutral exchange. …We’re denying to the world the one witness Jesus asked for:

“Love one another as I’ve loved you.” Jesus, in John 15:12

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Are lots of people in your church working really hard to become “professional lovers?” Is your pastor regularly calling for that?
  • Your church is probably great (as are the Navigators), but have you settled for something other than loving the least?
  • What would this look like in a church? How would you have to change?

Abba, let me be known for love.

For More: The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. – Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

 

Daily Riches: Impending Cosmic Disaster (Thomas Merton and Boris Pasternak)

Posted on by under Awareness, Contemplation and Activism, dissent and resistance, Loving Well, truth and illusion
“I know from my own experience that in the last twenty years, the world has moved a very long way towards conformism and passivity. So long a way that the distance is, to me, both frightening and disconcerting. I have been all the more sensitive to it because I have spent this time in the isolation of a contemplative monastery, and have only recently come back into contact … with the America which I used to know as a rather articulate, critical and vociferously independent place. It is certainly not so any more. Not that the people do not complain and criticize, but their complaints and criticisms, indeed their most serious concerns, seem to be involved in trivialities and illusions–against a horrifying background of impending cosmic disaster. It seems to be that for all our pride in our freedom and individuality we have complete renounced thinking for ourselves. What passes for ‘thinking’ is mass-produced, passively accepted, or not even accepted. We simply submit to the process of being informed, without anything actually registering on our mind at all. …If we stop to think about what [Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago] says, we will realize that if Pasternak is ever fully studied, he is just as likely to be regarded as a dangerous writer in the West as he is in the East. He is saying that political and social structures as we understand them are things of the past, and that the crisis through which we are now passing is nothing but the full and inescapable manifestation of their falsity. For twenty centuries we have called ourselves Christians, without even beginning to understand one tenth of the Gospel. We have been taking Caesar for God and God for Caesar. Now that ‘charity is growing cold’ and we stand facing the smoky dawn of an apocalyptic era, Pasternak reminds us that there is only one source of truth, but that it is not sufficient to know the source is there—we must go and drink from it, as he has done.” Thomas Merton (1959)
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“Sin will be rampant everywhere,
and the love of many will grow cold.”
Jesus in Matthew 24:12
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Moving From Head to Heart

  • People on both the political “left” and “right” believe they are “thinking for themselves”–and consider others misguided–as passively repeating mere slogans. Do you have a practice that forces you to critique your assumptions?
  • If politics as we know it is a “thing of the past”, and we’re facing “an apocalyptic era”, where do we turn?
  • One thing surely–we must turn to “love”–but not merely as a concept or belief, but as what we “drink”–moving beyond that “one tenth of the gospel.” What might this mean for you?

Lord, help!

For More: Disputed Questions by Thomas Merton

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Thanks for reading! – Bill

Daily Riches: Those Who Are Hardest to Love (Anne Morrow Lindberg, Dorothy Day, Roy Croft and Socrates)

Posted on by under Change Yourself First, Loving Well, Marriage, The Love of God

“I only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” Dorothy Day

“I love you…

For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.” Roy Croft

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity–in freedom. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits–islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides.” Anne Morrow Lindberg

“Those who are hardest to love need it most.” Socrates

“…be kind to each other,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another,
just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”
Ephesians 4:22

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have you “looked far enough to find” beauty in someone which is overlooked by others?
  • Look through Lindberg’s words. Can you ask God to show you where you might be straying off course?
  • Have you ever thought of the one who is “hardest to love” in your life as the one who needs your love the most?

Loving Abba, may your love for me drive and shape my love for others–especially those that are hardest to love.

For More: Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindberg

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest! Please leave a comment or question. –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: What We Do With Our Pain (Richard Rohr, Simone Weil and John Wooden)

Posted on by under Death Daily, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, God's Grace, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace, Wholeness and Brokenness

“All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. …By trying to handle all suffering through willpower, denial, medication, or even therapy, we have forgotten something that should be obvious: we do not handle suffering; suffering handles us in deep and mysterious ways that ironically become the very matrix of life. Suffering–and sometimes awe–has the most power to lead us into genuinely new experiences. As Simone Weil said, ‘Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.’ When life is hard we are primed to learn something absolutely central. Our wounds are God’s hiding place and hold our greatest gifts. It is no surprise that a dramatically wounded man became the central transformative symbol of Christianity. Once the killing of God becomes the redemption of the world, then forevermore the very worst things have the power to become the very best things. Henceforth, nothing can be a dead end; everything is capable of new meaning. We are indeed saved by gazing upon the wounded one–and loving there our own woundedness and everyone else’s too (John 3:14, 12:32, 19:37). We can dare to be mutually vulnerable instead of trying to protect ourselves and impress each other. This is the core meaning of the Christian doctrine of Trinity; the very character of God is mutual deference, recognition, and love, not self-assertion, much less domination or manipulation of the other. …Followers of the Crucified One will pray for the grace to do what he did: hold the pain until it transformed him into the Risen Christ. If you do not transform your pain, you will almost certainly transmit your pain to others through anger, blame, projection, hatred, or scapegoating.” Richard Rohr

“Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.” John Wooden

“I want to know Christ—yes,
to know the … participation in his sufferings”
Philippians 3:10

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Has God used your “woundedness” to “acquaint” you with yourself? with him?
  • Do you deal with personal pain in a way that makes you more useful to others?
  • What would it look like for you to “hold your pain?”

Abba, in my pain be near, and do your necessary work in me.

For More: Adam’s Return by Richard Rohr

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  Please leave a comment or question. –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: God Will Use You Anyway (Brant Copeland, Joachim Neander and Thomas Chalmers)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Being and Doing, Faith and Doubt, God's Grace, Jesus the Savior, Learning Your Proper Place, Patience with Yourself, Wholeness and Brokenness

“The striking thing about the Twelve is their utter lack of qualifications. …The fact is, by the time Luke takes up the story of the early church, most of the Twelve have become bit players. Peter has a supporting role, but it is Paul and James, the brother of Jesus–not members of the original Twelve–who take center stage in Acts while the Twelve dissolve into the wings. …What strikes this pastor is the close resemblance between the Twelve and the folks in ordinary congregations. The Twelve might not impress, but they sure do look like church. …It is through intimate, day-by-day association with Jesus that these twelve misfits become the twelve apostles. They do not cease to be what there are …–but after having been with Jesus, they are sent out with power and authority to accomplish amazing things (Mark 6:7-13).” Brant Copeland

The typical and first response to God’s call is often “I am not worthy.” Think of Moses or Isaiah–or of many people asked to lead in the local church. Are you weak and unqualified? God will use you anyway. Are you “who you are”, afraid you many never change, you may never overcome that “signature sin” of yours? God will use you anyway. Does your church, your missions group, your outreach team resemble a “bag of mixed nuts”–a phrase my Pastor sometimes affectionately uses to describe our church? God will use you anyway. But, the God of heaven, in all God’s power, won’t automatically use you. God won’t do what God expects you to do. You have to do your part–show up, leave your couch, forget your comfort zone. God won’t do it without you, but God will certainly do it through you. After all, mixed nuts is a very nutritious snack. It’s not everything. It’s not perfect. But it works. God won’t be limited by you and me and our abilities, bad habits, bad track record–even by our besetting sins. God uses what (who) is available. Are you available?

“Praise to the Lord, Who doth prosper thy work and defend thee.

Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,

If with His love He befriend thee.”

Joachim Neander

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • On judgment day, if you could only be praised for one thing–correct doctrine, powerful ministry, or love for Jesus–which would you choose? What does your answer say about you?
  • The Apostles could get by without qualifications, but not without “being with Jesus.” They had to know him (not necessarily understand him!). They would be defined, motivated and empowered by their love for Jesus himself. Are you spending enough time with Jesus for this expulsive power (of affection for him) to be transformative for you?
  • Have you settled for having a proper understanding of Jesus (orthodoxy), or even for serving Jesus (ministry), when Jesus is calling you to a deep love relationship with him?

Jesus, you have befriended me in your love. Draw me deeper into a new affection for you.

For More: The Expulsive Power of a New Affection by Thomas Chalmers

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Thanks for reading and following my blog! – Bill
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Having just returned from a local missions outreach to the homeless, I want to dedicate this post to the “bag of mixed nuts” I was part of in that outreach, and to New York City Relief, whose teams of mixed nuts do it every day.

Daily Riches: Jesus and His Convulsive Earthquake (Brennan Manning and Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under Asceticism, Death Daily, dissent and resistance, Downward Mobility, Jesus the Savior, Learning Your Proper Place, The Call to Change

“Jesus Christ has irreparably changed the world. When preached purely, His Word exalts, frightens, shocks, and forces us to reassess our whole life. The gospel breaks our train of thought, shatters our comfortable piety, and cracks open our capsule truths. The flashing spirit of Jesus Christ breaks new paths everywhere. His sentences stand like quivering swords of flame because He did not come to bring peace, but a revolution. The gospel is not a children’s fairy tale, but rather a cutting-edge, rolling-thunder, convulsive earthquake in the world of the human spirit. By entering human history, God has demolished all previous conceptions of who God is and what man is supposed to be. We are, suddenly, presented with a God who suffers crucifixion. This is not the God of the philosophers who speak with cool detachment about the Supreme Being. A Supreme Being would never allow spit on his face. It is jarring indeed to learn that what He went through in His passion and death is meant for us too; that the invitation He extends is Don’t weep for Me! Join Me! The life He has planned for Christians is a life much like He lived. He was not poor that we might be rich. He was not mocked that we might be honored. He was not laughed at so that we would be lauded. On the contrary, He revealed a picture meant to include you and me.” Brennan Manning

“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth!
I came not to bring peace, but a sword.”
Jesus, in Matthew 10:34

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Is yours a “comfortable piety?”
  • Is the “convulsive earthquake” of Jesus continuing with you?
  • Do you need to reacquaint yourself with Jesus of the gospels?

Why should I want to be rich, when You were poor? Why should I desire to be famous and powerful in the eyes of men, when the sons of those who exalted the false prophets and stoned the true rejected You and Nailed You to the Cross? …My hope is in what the eye has never seen. Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards. My hope is in what the heart of man cannot feel. Therefore let me not trust in the feelings of my heart. My hope is in what the hand of man has never touched. Do not let me trust what I can grasp between my fingers. Death will loosen my grasp and my vain hope will be gone. Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in Your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources. –  Thomas Merton

For More: The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning

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Thanks for reading/sharing this blog! – Bill