Category Archives: Desolation’s Gift

Daily Riches: The Suffering of Passionate Love–God’s and Ours (Alan Jones, Karen Drescher, Jürgen Moltmann and Origen)

Posted on by under Being the Beloved, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, God's Grace, Jesus the Savior, Loving Well, Suffering and Grace, The Love of God

“In his mercy God suffers with us; for he is not heartless.” Origen

“What, then, has our pilgrimage to do with suffering? Is this not simply yet another instance of religion’s morbid and masochistic fascination with the subject? The believer has always struggled with the issue of suffering, both with his own and with God’s. Does God suffer or is he ‘apathetic,’ without suffering? The doctrinal tradition always insisted on God’s ‘apathy’ as a way of insisting that God was above human emotions and passions. God was unchangeable. Unfortunately, it comes to be believed in such a way that God seemed uncaring and untouchable. The concern was for God’s faithfulness. God is indeed, unchangeable; but in the sense that his love and his faithfulness are constant and steadfast. Moltmann is one of the few modern theologians who insists on God’s passion. The word ‘passion’ has a useful double meaning here. There is suffering that is passion, and there is a passion for life. God’s Passion is not the glorification of suffering, nor an admission of it’s terrible necessity. God’s passion shows us a passion that is ‘the voluntary laying oneself open to another and allowing oneself to be intimately affected by him; that is to say the suffering of passionate love.” Alan Jones

“Search the Scriptures,
for in them you will find
this God of the loveless,
this God of Mercy, Love and Justice,
who weeps over these her children,
these her precious ones who have been carried from the womb,
who gathers up her young upon her wings
and rides along the high places of the earth,
who sees their suffering
and cries out like a woman in travail,
who gasps and pants;
for with this God,
any injustice that befalls one of these precious ones
is never the substance of rational reflection and critical analysis,
but is the source
of a catastrophic convulsion within the very life of God.”
Karen Drescher

“You have abandoned me
and turned your back on me,” 

says Yahweh.”
Jeremiah 15:6
 .

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Consider how “the voluntary laying oneself open to another” describes God’s interactions with us in Christ, and otherwise.
  • Are you attempting to have redemptive relationships without such risky openness? …without allowing yourself to be “intimately affected” by others?
  • How much of God’s “suffering of passionate love” has come to characterize your love for others?

Abba, teach to me accept the risks and even the suffering involved in loving others. Thank you for loving me.

For More: Soul Making by Alan Jones

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and God seeks you. My goal is to share something of unique value with you in 400 words or less. Thanks for reading/sharing! – Bill

Daily Riches: Wilderness Times (Barbara Brown Taylor, Terry Tempest Williams, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Richard Rohr and Ben Johnson)

Posted on by under Asceticism, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace, the dark night of the soul, Wholeness and Brokenness

“He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity. Heaven prepares good men with crosses.” Ben Johnson

“Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure. When we fall ill, lose our jobs, wreck our marriages, or alienate our children, most of us are left alone to pick up the pieces. Even those of us who are ministered to by brave friends can find it hard to shake the shame of getting lost in our lives. And yet if someone asked us to pinpoint the times in our lives that changed us for the better, a lot of those times would be wilderness times.” Barbara Brown Taylor

“If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.” Terry Tempest Williams

“No water tastes so sweet as that which springs amid the desert sand. And no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity. Tested faith brings experience. You would never have believed your own weakness had you not needed to pass through trials. And you would never have known God’s strength had His strength not been needed to carry you through.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.” Richard Rohr

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have the events of your life ever led you into a “wilderness?” …into a kind of “descent?”
  • Did you make discoveries there? …about yourself? …about your God? Was it transformative? If not, why not?
  • Are you so willing for God to change you and shape you that you can be thankful for wilderness times?

Abba, thank you for meeting me in the wilderness.

For More: An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and God seeks 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: Darkness As A Friend in Marriage (Alain De Botton)

Posted on by under Awareness, Change Yourself First, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Loving Well, Marriage, Wholeness and Brokenness

“You know, some of the reason why we marry the wrong people is that we don’t really understand ourselves. I mean, sometimes I say to people, ‘Do you think you’re easy to live with?’ People who are single. And the ones who say, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty easy to live with, it’s just a question of finding the right person.’–massive alarm bell rings in my mind. …And so we go into marriage unable to convey that knowledge to a partner. We don’t understand them. They don’t understand us. We don’t understand what marriage is. Let’s stress that. …Be incredibly forgiving for the weird behavior that’s going to start coming out. You will be very unhappy in lots of ways. Your partner will fail to understand you. If you’re understood in maybe, I don’t know, 60% of your soul by your partner, that’s fantastic. Don’t expect that it’s going to be 100%. Of course you will be lonely. You will often be in despair. You will sometimes think it’s the worst decision in your life. That’s fine. That’s not a sign your marriage has gone wrong. It’s a sign that it’s normal, it’s on track. And many of the hopes that took you into the marriage will have to die in order for the marriage to continue. That some of the headiness and expectations will have to die. …It’s very dark. But in love, darkness is a real friend of relationships. Because so many of the problems of love come from unwarranted optimism. And so we need to be dark about so many things. …I think that there are aspects of a good marriage that should encompass a kind of melancholy, as we realize that we’re trying to do such a complex thing with someone. We are trying to find our best friend, our ideal sexual partner, our co-household manager, perhaps our co-parent. And we’re expecting that all this will miraculously go well together. Of course it can’t. We’re not going to be able to get it all right. There will be many areas of misunderstanding and failure. And a certain amount of sober melancholy is a real asset when heading forth into the land of love.” Alain de Botton

“Most important of all,
continue to show deep love for each other,
for love covers a multitude of sins.”
1 Peter 4:8

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • What is your response to this very dark portrayal of married life?
  • Did you enter marriage with “unwarranted optimism?” If so, how exactly?
  • Can you accept that darkness, melancholy and despair might be part of your married experience? …a valuable part?

Abba, in the darkness may I find your light.

For More: Essays in Love by Alain de Botton

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Thanks for reading/sharing my blog! – Bill

 

Daily Riches: We Are Made By What Would Break Us (Krista Tippett)

Posted on by under aging well, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Mystery, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace, Wholeness and Brokenness

“I’m not surprised by the fact that inexplicable and terrible things happen in a cosmos as complicated as ours, with sentient beings like us running the show. But I am emboldened by the fact that surprise is the only constant. We are never really running the show, never really in control, and nothing will go quite as we imagined it. Our highest ambitions will be off, but so will our worst prognostications. I am emboldened by the puzzling, redemptive truth to which each and every one of my conversations has added nuance, that we are made by what would break us. Birth itself is a triumph through a bloody, treacherous process. We only learn to walk when we risk falling down, and this equation holds—with commensurately more complex dynamics—our whole lives long. I have heard endless variations on this theme—the battle with illness that saves the life that follows; the childhood pain that leads to vocation; the disability that opens into wholeness and a presence to the hidden wholeness of others. You have your own stories, the dramatic and more ordinary moments where what has gone wrong becomes an opening to more of yourself and part of your gift to the world. This is the beginning of wisdom.” Krista Tippett

“Joyful is the person who finds wisdom,
the one who gains understanding.”
Proverbs 3:13

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have you experienced being made by “what would break” you?
  • In what ways have terrible difficulties in your life become “an opening to more of yourself?” How would you describe that new self?
  • Have difficulties or tragedies helped to shape your “gift to the world?” What do you understand as your gift to the world?
  • If you haven’t been shaped or made more valuable by great difficulties in your life, why is that?

Abba, make me a good student of the mystery and art of living.

For More: Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and God 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: Face Everything And Recover (David Benner)

Posted on by under contemplative virtues, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Patience with Yourself, Suffering and Grace, Wholeness and Brokenness

“Shame lies at the core of our resistance to knowing and embracing our brokenness. It arises in response to a profound sense of vulnerability. It is being caught in God’s garden with your pants down and a half-eaten forbidden fruit in your hands just at the moment when you hear God calling your name and walking toward you. That’s naked vulnerability–something that is so intolerable and unstable that it quickly resolves into shame. What the Genesis story of the Fall tells us is that our fundamental problem lies in the fact that we want to be a god, not human. We hate the vulnerability that comes from being human. And when we experience it, we grasp anything available to try and cover our nakedness rather than embrace it. Shame and vulnerability make us want to run and hide. …The vulnerability I am speaking of is intentional, never circumstantial. It is a choice, a willing allowing of ourselves to remain undefended at a point of acute rawness and fragility. It is choosing not to run and hide from our nakedness. This is why it is a spiritual posture, not a personality trait…. It is choosing openness and trust. It’s a vote for our true self and is always, therefore, at the expense of our false ways of being in the world. …This [relates to] Henri Nouwen’s notion of the wounded healer–our capacity to help others not despite our own brokenness but precisely because of it. Wholeness doesn’t come from eliminating brokenness but trusting openness to life in the midst of it. In the same way, we don’t come to God by eliminating our sin but by receiving the joyful news of our acceptance by God in the midst of it. Paradoxically, our sin is a gift because it makes us aware of our need for God’s grace. In the same way, our wounds are a gift because they make us aware of our lack of wholeness and can be a threshold to healing and further wholeness. …paradoxically, we have to embrace our brokenness if we are to avoid being stuck in it. That embrace is not an embrace of resignation. It is an embrace of acceptance.” David Benner

“They sewed fig leaves together
and made coverings for themselves.”
Genesis 3:7

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Is your goal to be vulnerable before God–”to remain undefended at a point of acute rawness and fragility” rather than hiding or blaming?
  • Are you learning to be “undefended” in other relationships as well?
  • Could accepting or embracing your brokenness be the next step to God’s healing you?

Abba, I renounce my disguises and excuses. Work your healing work in me.

For More: Surrender to Love by David Benner

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Thanks for reading/sharing my blog! Bill

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: The Inaccessibly Transcendent Christ (Charles Marsh, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Myles Horton)

Posted on by under awe and wonder, Community & the Church, Desolation's Gift, Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Loving Well, Social Justice, Suffering and Grace, The Love of God, The Poor and Disenfranchised, The Upside-Down Kingdom, Wholeness and Brokenness

“A Union student from east Tennessee named Myles Horton met him after he returned from his first visit to Abyssinian [Baptist Church.] Bonhoeffer, Horton recalled, was in an expansive mood and eager to talk. Horton accompanied him on a most animate walk down Riverside Drive, the whole way Bonhoeffer speaking excitedly–in both English and German, which Horton did not understand–of the preaching, the congregant’s participation, and ‘especially the singing of black spirituals.’ He conveyed the thrill of the flock voicing ascent with the preacher. Completely unguarded, at one point Bonhoeffer stopped abruptly and told Horton that this morning in Harlem was the only time ‘he had experienced true religion in the United States.’ Indeed, he had never seen such joy in worship anywhere before, certainly not in the melancholy north German plains. Bonhoeffer concluded that ‘only among blacks, who were oppressed, could there be any real religion in this country.’ His presence at Abyssinian that year coincided with important changes in Powell’s vocation as an urban minister. A skilled administrator as well as an eloquent preacher, Powell had already been senior pastor at the neo-Gothic church for more than twenty years. But with the Great Depression sweeping over the neighhorhoods of Harlem as bad as anywhere, he felt summoned to new convictions. For most of his ministry, he had traded comfortably on a notion of Christ as inaccessibly transcendent, the God-man in majesty. Lately, he had begun to dwell on Jesus as the one who wandered into distressed and lonely places to share the struggles of the poor as a friend and counselor. Bonhoeffer’s later formulation of the ‘Christological incognito’ bears the impress of Powell’s decisive awakening, of Christ going incognito into the world, ‘an outcast among outcasts,’ hiding himself in weakness.” Charles Marsh

“Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem”
Isaiah 53:3

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Does your understanding of Christ make him so lofty and powerful that he seems distant and inaccessible? Is there a place in your religion for the “despised” sufferer of Isaiah–who “shares the struggles of the poor as a friend and counselor?”
  • Would the Christ that your congregation worships have sufficed for Harlem’s forgotten people in the midst of the Great Depression?
  • When you think of Jesus, do you think of “an outcast among outcasts … hiding himself in weakness?” Would making room for such a Jesus lead you to some kind of “awakening?”

Abba, grant me a decisive awakening to Christ incognito in my day, in my world.

For More: Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. I hope you’ll follow/share my blog. – Bill

Daily Riches: With Passion Withheld and Devotion Impaired (Margaret Clarkson and Walter Brueggemann)

Posted on by under Asceticism, Death Daily, Desolation's Gift, Detachment and Attachment, Ego Issues, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Well, Striving and drivenness, Success, Suffering and Grace, True Greatness

In the course of her life, Margaret Clarkson became intimately acquainted with pain. She suffered initially with “migraines, accompanied by convulsive vomiting, and then arthritis—two ailments that accompanied her continually. In Destined for Glory, she related sadly that her mother told her that her first words were ‘my head hurts.’ At age three …she contracted juvenile arthritis and became bed bound. She recalled the pain as well as the bald spot worn on the back of her head from lying in bed so long.” …And that was just the beginning of a difficult life of loneliness, financial strain and disappointment. Through it all, Clarkson also developed an intimacy with God, and a transformative perspective on Christian ministry. Her hymn “So Send I You” has been called the greatest missionary hymn of the twentieth century.

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“So send I you–to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing,
So send I you to toil for me alone.

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“So send I you–to bind the bruised and broken,

o’er wandering souls to work, to weep, to wake,

to bear the burdens of a world a’weary

So send I you to suffer for My sake.

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“So send I you–to loneliness and longing,
With heart a-hungering for the loved and known;
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one,
So send I you to know my love alone.

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“So send I you–to leave your life’s ambitions,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long and love where men revile you,
So send I you to lose your life in mine.

.

“As the Father has sent me,

So send I you.”

“So Send I You” by Margaret Clarkson

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“But we confess…
we love you imperfectly;
we love you with a divided heart,
with a thousand other loves
that are more compelling,
with reservation and qualification,
and passion withheld and
devotion impaired.”
Walter Brueggemann

.

“As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”
Jesus in John 20:21

Moving From Head to Heart

  • I was trying to imagine how this hymn would be received in church today. Can you?
  • “To leave your life’s ambitions, to die to dear desire, self-will resign, to labor long and love where men revile you”–is there room in our idea of ministry for this today? What emotions do these words stir up in you?
  • Are we hoping to be useful to God “with passion withheld and devotion impaired”–as “a privileged people?”

Abba, may I give myself for you, as you gave yourself for me–without reservation.

For More: Prayers for a Privileged People by Walter Brueggemann

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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 my blog. Thanks! – Bill

Daily Riches: The Chief Wounds of the Minister (Henri Nouwen)

Posted on by under Asceticism, Change Yourself First, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, God's Grace, hospitality, Solitude, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace, Waiting on God, Wholeness and Brokenness

“When loneliness is among the chief wounds of the minister, hospitality can convert that wound into a source of healing. Concentration prevents the minister from burdening others with his pain and allows him to accept his wounds as helpful teachers of his own and his neighbor’s condition. Community arises where the sharing of pain takes place, not as a stifling form of self-complaint, but as a recognition of God’s saving promises. Our loneliness and isolation have become so much a part of our daily experience, that we cry out for a liberator who will take us away from our misery and bring us justice and peace. To announce, however, that the Liberator is sitting among the poor and that the wounds are signs of hope and that today is the day of liberation, is a step that very few can take. But this is exactly the announcement of the wounded healer: ‘The Master is coming–not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery has passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.'” Henri Nouwen

“I lie awake,
lonely as a solitary bird on the roof.”
Psalm 102:7
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Moving From the Head to the Heart
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  • Can you relate to problem of loneliness in ministry, and the temptation to turn to others rather than God to sooth your pain?
  • Have you tried to accept your “wounds as helpful teachers of your own and your neighbor’s condition” – inviting God into that place of anguish, staying there with Him, receiving and learning from God?
  • In your own loneliness, have you learned that “the Liberator is sitting among the poor” (with you), so that you can testify to others that Jesus will care for the wounded, not when the misery has passed, not “in another place” but here and now?

Abba, help me take the difficult steps to seek you and find you in the midst of my woundedness and need.

For More: The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen

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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 daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

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

Daily Riches: The Human Chaos in Which We Are Stuck (Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Edwin Robertson)

Posted on by under Being the Beloved, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Faith and Doubt, God's Grace, Suffering and Grace, Wholeness and Brokenness

“Such a moment is strange to none of us, certainly not to any who have seriously sought to live with God. When we are disturbed by the chaos in our own personal life, when we are not ready to face it, when again and again every security fails us and there is no firm ground under our feet, when our life hangs between good intentions and shame, when it becomes inevitably clear that we are weak, when some unmanageable fate comes over us, a great sorrow or a great passion and we are horrified at the inevitable working out of this fate, when we can see only how faithless and hopeless we are caught in our errors or when friendships are finally broken, when with the best will in the world we cannot find reconciliation with the other, in short, when we take seriously the whole human chaos in which we are stuck–then it all comes over us and we say to God: Lord, I can bear no more. I can’t take any more. No, I don’t want any more. I am too deep in the mire. God, don’t speak any more to me, for I will not hear you. God, we have nothing more to do with each other. And then it happens that we want to hear something new and at that moment, we hear afresh: ‘Peace, courage.’ Courage, which God gives is like a mother taking hold of her child who is out of control with so many faults and failures, who is now very unhappy and begins to cry. She takes his hand and gives him a new chance: ‘Now, let’s try that once more.’ Courage, courage–so God speaks to us when we are disgusted with ourselves.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“‘How can someone like me, your servant, talk to you, my lord?
My strength is gone, and I can hardly breathe.’
Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, ‘for you are very precious to God.
Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!’”
Daniel 10:15-19
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Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Dare you admit to yourself or others the “human chaos in which we are stuck?” If not, why not?
  • When you’re “deep in the mire” and angry with God, do you feel safe being as honest with God as Bonhoeffer is here?
  • When you’re acting like a child and God wants to parent you, can you let God do that?

Abba, grant me courage when I’m overwhelmed and in despair. Take my hand. Hold me tight.

For More: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons edited by Edwin Robertson

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Thanks for your interest. When you feel I “got it right”, please share it in your network! – Bill

Daily Riches: A Blue Christmas: Grief, Pain, Fear and Struggle (Peter Smith)

Posted on by under Awareness, Community & the Church, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Faith and Doubt, Jesus the Savior, Joy, Suffering and Grace, truth and illusion, Waiting on God, Wholeness and Brokenness, Worship

“Congregants heard no triumphant organ fanfares, no joyous Christmas carols, only quiet readings and prayers in a sanctuary lit with votives amid the dusk of late afternoon. The music was a soft guitar strumming, accompanying a humming solo of the hymn, In the Bleak Midwinter. The event was a Longest Night service at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church [in Louisville, Kentucky] — one of a growing number of congregations across the country trying to reach those who feel little comfort and joy amid the celebratory season. ‘It’s a chance to say, “My life is not totally fabulous,” and to hear God is there,’ said the Rev. Martha Holland, children’s minister at St. Andrew. Some congregations call it a Blue Christmas service, reflecting the sadness of the song popularized by Elvis Presley. Others call it the Longest Night because it occurs on or near the winter solstice, with the year’s least amount of daylight. …Some people may be grieving for a loved one with whom they shared Christmases past, Holland said. For others, who may have experienced divorce, abuse or other family trauma, the last thing they want to hear about is coming home for the holidays. Still others simply may be stressed because of holiday expectations. …Blue Christmas services have become more and more common in the past two decades with denominations and other groups even adapting traditional December liturgies for the purpose. At St. Andrew on Wednesday, participants lit four candles on the Advent wreath in honor of grief, pain, fear and struggle, a contrast to their usual representation of love, joy, peace and hope. Such services help revive the historic meanings of the season of Advent, said the Rev. Chip Hardwick…. Throughout history, the season, consisting of the four Sundays before Christmas, was a stark, penitential period focused on a longing for the coming of the kingdom of God — something inaugurated by Jesus’ birth but that awaits a future fulfillment, Hardwick said. But a cultural message that ‘everything is shiny and happy for Christmas’ has overwhelmed the season’s original meaning, he said. … ‘Advent is the time when we wait for the world to be what we want it to be.’ …Some may need the service in a given year while others come annually with some ‘ongoing pain,’ Holland said. The church began the service after a hit-and-run driver in 2008 killed two children who regularly attended. ‘It’s a comfort to a lot of people. A very upbeat, celebratory Christmas is like salt in the wounds.’  …The Rev. Ben Maas, pastor of St. Andrew, said the goal of the service there was not to provide neat answers for why suffering occurs but to assure parishioners of what is ultimately the message of Christmas: ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it, no matter how much it seems like the darkness is winning,’ he said.” Peter Smith

“The light shines in the darkness”
John 1:5

Moving From Head to Heart

  • If your Christmas is “shiny and happy” are you making room for those for whom it is otherwise?
  • Is your congregation joining with the church around the world in waiting “for the world to be what we want it to be?”
  • Can you practice waiting in hope, including when there are no “neat answers?”

God of compassion, sit with us in our pain.

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Thanks for reading and sharing this blog! – Bill

 

Daily Riches: Advent and Learning to Wait (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Faith and Doubt, Hurry Sickness, Jesus the Savior, Patience with Yourself, Spiritual Formation, Striving and drivenness, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, Waiting on God, Wholeness and Brokenness

“Celebrating Advent means learning how to wait. Waiting is an art which our impatient age has forgotten. We want to pluck the fruit before it has had time to ripen. Greedy eyes are soon disappointed when what they saw as luscious fruit is sour to the taste. In disappointment and disgust they throw it away. The fruit, full of promise rots on the ground. It is rejected without thanks by disappointed hands. The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfillment of promise is never theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come. They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity. …The greatest, the deepest, the most tender experiences in all the world demand patient waiting. This waiting is not in emotional turmoil, but gently growing, like the emergence of spring, like God’s laws, like the germinating of a seed. …Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes. …But, not so quick! It is still in the distance. It calls us to learn to wait and to wait aright.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Rest in the LORD
and wait patiently for Him.”
Psalm 37:7

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Are you plucking the fruit “before it ripens?”
  • Do you know yourself “to be poor and imperfect?” Are you awaiting “something great to come?”
  • When you’re “troubled in soul” can you use that as a trigger to “wait aright?” …to “wait patiently” for the LORD?

“Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God.  …And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.”  Bonhoeffer

For More: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons edited by Edwin Robertson

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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! My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. Thanks! – Bill

Daily Riches: The Wine We Are Becoming (Henri Nouwen, Avery Dulles, Hellen Keller and St. John of the Cross

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Jesus the Savior, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace

“We never know the wine we are becoming while we are being crushed like grapes.” Henri Nouwen

“The good life does not have to be an easy one, as our blessed Lord and the saints have taught us. …Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils, but are normal ingredients in life, especially in old age. They are to be accepted as elements of a full human existence. Well into my 90th year I have been able to work productively. As I become increasingly paralyzed and unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute persons in the Gospels, grateful for the loving and skillful care I receive and for the hope of everlasting life in Christ. If the Lord now calls me to a period of weakness, I know well that his power can be made perfect in infirmity. ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord!’”  Avery Dulles

“Contradictions, sickness, scruples, spiritual aridity, and all the inner and outward torments are the chisel with which God carves his statues for paradise.”  Alphonsus Liguori

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller

“And I saw the river over which every soul must pass to reach the kingdom of heaven and the name of that river was suffering – and I saw the boat which carries souls across the river and the name of the boat was love.”  Saint John of the Cross

“it was fitting for Him
for whom are all things,
and through whom are all things,
in bringing many sons to glory,
to perfect the author of their salvation
through sufferings.”
Hebrews 2:10

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Think of people you know and all the reasons that people suffer. Do you think you can somehow escape suffering?
  • Jesus suffered in order to be perfected. Some things can only be accomplished by suffering. Can you embrace suffering in your life as not only inescapable, but necessary, even good?
  • “The good life does not have to be an easy one”, in fact, it can’t be. How are you making your life a good life “while you are being crushed like grapes?”

Abba, thank you for the boat that carries me across the river of suffering.

For More: St. John of the Cross: Selected Writings

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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 daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

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

Daily Riches: The Crack in Everything (Leonard Cohen, Richard Rohr, Bill Wilson)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Downward Mobility, Ego Issues, Embracing Losses and Limits, God's Grace, Humility, Jesus the Savior, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace

“Forget your perfect offering,

There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen (“Anthem”)

“Bill Wilson [the founder of AA] …understood that the only way to give everyone equal and universal access to God is to base salvation/enlightenment on woundedness instead of self-created trophies. If we are honest, this utterly levels the playing field. Julian of Norwich, my favorite English mystic, understood the great turn around and said proudly: ‘Our wounds are our very trophies!’ They are the ‘holes in the soul’ where the Light and the Life can break through. …The way of the Twelve Steps is remarkably similar to Jesus’ Way of the Cross, St. Francis’ Way of Poverty, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Little Way. These and many other saints and mystics teach the power of powerlessness either directly or indirectly. …Until you bottom out and come to the limits of your own fuel supply, there is no reason for you to switch to a higher octane of fuel. Why would you? You will not learn to actively draw upon a Larger Source until your usual resources are depleted and revealed as inadequate to the task. In fact, you will not even know there is a Larger Source until your own sources and resources utterly fail you. None of us go to the place of powerlessness on our own accord. We have to be taken there. Sad to say it, but it is largely sin, humiliation, failure, and various forms of addiction that do the job. Sometimes, having ruined your marriage, your children, your job, or your sterling self-image, you have to say, ‘My way isn’t working.’ Maybe there is another way, maybe I really do need to change. That is very often when you are finally ready to begin a sincere spiritual journey. At that point your religion morphs into a living spirituality.” Richard Rohr

‘Those who are well do not need a physician,
but the sick do.
I did not come to call the righteous
but sinners.”
Jesus in Mark 2:17

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have you experienced enough bone-crushing pain that you’ve begun “a sincere spiritual journey?”
  • Do you have “cracks” where the lights get’s in – and from which it shines?
  • Have you discovered the value of “cracks” and powerlessness? Do you give thanks for these things?

Abba, unleash the power in my brokenness for the healing of others.

For More: Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. If you liked this, please share it! I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Loneliness and Fear (Robert Frost, Macrina Wiederkehr and Jim Palmer)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Loving Union with God, Mysticism, Suffering and Grace, thirsting and longing for God

“Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and the day was past.
Sombre clouds in the west were massed.
Out on the porch’s sagging floor,
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.”
Robert Frost, “Bereft”

“My loneliness attracts me to the feet of Jesus. Like a magnet I am drawn there, longing to be all one with God. The separateness I keep choosing makes me desperately homesick, and so I am willing, at last, to surrender my divided heart. I am homesick to be one with God. Union with God is the only heaven there is, and it begins here on earth. …There is someone I must become. There is someone I must be grafted onto, and how lonely I am until it is accomplished. My loneliness blesses me because it shows me that I’m not enough all by myself, and so I am impelled to reach out my arms and heart to God and to others. My loneliness blesses me because it encourages me to allow myself to be vulnerable. My loneliness blesses me because it won’t let me hide in the illusion of my self-sufficiency.” Macrina Wiederkehr

“Fear, guilt and shame can be useful on your spiritual journey. When you experience these, follow the trail back to the idea, notion, belief or concept that was the source.” Jim Palmer

“Whom have in heaven but you?
I desire you more than anything on earth.
My health may fail,
and my spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever.”
Psalm 73:25, 26

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Have you experienced the loneliness, the fear of being alone, with “no one left but God?”
  • Can you “follow the trail [of that feeling] back to … the belief or concept that was the source?”
  • Is there a way that your loneliness “blesses” you?

Abba, may loneliness carry me to you.

For More: A Tree Full of Angels by Macrina Wiederkehr

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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 daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

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