My pot boils.
I don’t attend it until the liquid is gone
and a dark, dead scum is left
to scrape off and wash away.
Whole kettles have been lost.
Sometimes a simmer
bubbles all day, attended and fragrant,
and a deadly anger turns to action,
into something to be savored
like a done just enough stew.
If one is evil, vengeance is food,
the feast of the grave
waiting by the door, unmastered.
If one is good, the feast is justice,
like a dug up garden
soaking up love to produce good fruit.
So don’t leave your pot untended.
Follow the fragrance up to your room.
Kneel on your bench and listen well,
or your heart will grow dry
and your mind imprisoned by your fears.
Anger needs to simmer.
Some days it is stew.
Some days it is death.
If not cooked in God’s kitchen,
who would know?
I have been shocked, at times, by married couples who are committed to revenge. For instance, I discovered part of the engagement ritual for over 50% of millennials includes making a pre-nuptial agreement — for one of my clients, at least, it was to pre-game the inevitable vengeance they expected when they divorced.
Bush vows revenge. Click for video.
I wondered this week if such habitual revenge might be the American way. After all, it is 9/11 week and we paused to remember the thousands of people killed that day — and we’ve begun to remember who-knows-how-many first responders and others who were poisoned by the air they were encouraged to live in. What’s more, we endured the president trying to insert himself into the day as if he did something heroic in 2001– even if he did, no one would believe him at this point.
It is the week we are encouraged to reset our mind on revenge. Pete Hegseth connected the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11 to the present debacle in Iran, while quoting scripture inaccurately, saying the Pentagon is “ever vigilant” to “enemies who hate us.”
“We’re still sending terrorists where they belong—to hell. And tankers to the bottom of the ocean where they belong, and we are ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The economic pressure tightens every day.” – the gospel according to Hegseth
The ex-president, mayors, and billionaires came out to NYC so we could again be persuaded the 8 trillion dollars spent on the first 20 years of the Wars on Terror and the 900,000 people lost amounted to appropriate revenge.
Here in Pennsylvania, insult is added to injury since Senator Fetterman increasingly becomes some kind of Republican because he is convinced Israel’s ongoing genocidal revenge for the October 7, 2023 attack (by the ever-vengeful Hamas) on Israeli citizens is warranted. Maybe he is scared — if some politician questions the right of Israel to use overwhelming force in the cause of justice/revenge, they might be attacked by AIPAC. Although some Hasidic Jews are speaking out against it all.
It is obviously not just Americans who are vicious. I have Britbox now, so I know that one of the most popular shows is another remake of A Woman of Substance. The blatant theme of that story is revenge – what it does to ruin love and why the heroine does not care to be distracted from her purpose in spite of that fact.
Pray as you go
I wish everyone, especially married couples, would listen to the Pray as You Go session we heard as we walked on September 10. “Love your enemies” is what Hegseth should be quoting. If one cannot master the Sermon on the Mount she can skip the rest of the Bible until she does.
I loved the sweet song they offered. I might have altered the chorus to plead with God directly: “Lover of enemies, even the children of your Father, who can’t love their enemies, teach us to love.” Here is the link, if you want to try it out: [link].
The enemy is not in faraway Iran where we can bomb them from Las Vegas. The enemy is not just the Emma Harte in your life vowing to destroy your family. It is also the person you are love the most, who hurts you the best and arouses the temptation to take revenge. Let’s not give in, even if it seems normal.
Marriage is the lab of loving enemies.
Don’t get me wrong, I see people who have delightful mates who love them deeply even though they see them without rose-colored glasses.
But I am saddened by the many people I see who have been wounded, betrayed and even abused, deeply or slightly, who feel it is only right they should get even. Have we all been influenced by the War on Terror?
It is sad how petty we can be. We are tempted to monitor how we are being wounded, betrayed and abused in the most minute way. I hear people say,
“I know I am going to make them mad at me,”
so they are predisposed to to be hurt
and so feel justified to “get even”
even before anything has happened!
Their mate is under surveillance! What in the world is “even” in a relationship anyway? I can understand developing reciprocity, but let’s not measure it.
On our neighborhood group chat the other day, a wife suggested her husband should not go out and talk to the person shaking our windows with the bass they were blasting because, “There are too many hateful, crazy people out here!” So much for all you need to love.
Let me say again, being hateful to someone hateful results in more hatefulness. Assuming others are crazy before you know them is craziness. Keeping your sweet, religious husband from talking to strangers is stealing his joy. Avoiding the possibility of conflict or the work of reconciliation will not bring peace. We need to build love, sanity, joy and peace person by person, if necessary. Right? Marriage is a basic place to do it.
Is revenge how we “stay safe?”
Revenge is about control and certainty — my own power to keep myself safe. We can see how nations failed to succeed at that in Afghanistan and Gaza. I regularly see the same goal unmet by married partners who won’t give up on it. These are a few questions I had this week when I thought about that:
Can’t such a person see they are making their mate afraid to commit some tiny infraction?Whatever they do is scrutinized. “You did not say anything after I weeded the garden.” or “You left your socks out.” A lot of sentences include “you.” And a lot of them imply, I need to be able to rely on you to not mess up what I require — or else.
Do you really need to correct things your mate says?They seem to be in a competition for who is the rightest, as if being right will protect something. I am usually in a small group of married couples most weeks. It is common to have one partner tell a story and the other one to edit it. You need to defeat their sentence?
Do you really need a pre-nup? One person said they were afraid to get married if they couldn’t nip the potential revenge in the bud. I am sad if it was already budding during the engagement! I am almost positive the relationship is going to have a high hurdle of mistrust to overcome on the way to a harmonious life together. You hired adversarial, U.S. lawyers to preside at your pre-marriage ceremony?
Aren’t you spreading hopelessness when you can’t forgive you partner for not healing your childhood wounds? I was musing about someone wanting to “be found” last week. That desire is kin to being “seen” and “known” — experiences most people want. But digging in your heals in front of various doors to intimacy until you are satisfied your partner has met your demands may not be the best way to receive what you need. Certainty-or-else seems like a recipe for relationship disaster.
We have a lot of ways to get even. Therapists call them “micro aggressions” when they are relational paper-cuts getting infected. Sometimes the aggression goes nuclear and activates the pre-nup! Unfortunately, a lot of us think that’s just normal life.
Preoccupation with getting and being even, staying safe, exercising control undoubtedly has many good reasons behind it; none of the reasons create trust and deepen love. We might want to start unraveling it by considering how the U.S. society has been promoting revenge for the past 25 years. Maybe we’re trained for it.
Some of your fear about being invaded and your commitment to preserve first-strike capabilities might be in league with The War on Terror. But any hint of relational terrorism in a marriage sets off the cycle of revenge everyone is already afraid of. To be happy, we could at least not meet revenge with revenge. At best, we could love our enemies.
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It is John Chrysostom Day! Get to know this famous leader in the early church at The Transhistorical Body.
I have a love-hate relationship going with my memory of the entry closet of my childhood home. I remember it fondly because it was the first place I was given the privilege of painting (which might have been as soon as I could hold a brush in my situation). So it is symbolically a place where I was trusted and counted worthy.
But before I was painting it, it was a place I would hide. I think one of my earliest memories is hiding from my mother in the closet and waiting for her to find me. We weren’t playing hide and seek, I just disappeared. And she did not come to find me. I waited for what seemed like a long time in the dark before I peaked out the door. I could hear her voice in the kitchen talking on the land line. I came up to her and pulled on her dress. She looked down at me and did that sweeping up, “Shoo!” gesture and whispered, with her hand over the mouthpiece, “Go play.” I started to say, “But you did not find me.” But she had already straightened up and was laughing that wonderful laugh of hers. So I just went to my room to look around at the toys again.
I don’t think I ever told her about that. But as you can see, I never forgot that one small moment of being lonely, invisible, and not worth finding. It is no wonder we all seem to have shame sticking to the walls of our inner selves. The tiniest things collect and build up like plaque.
Maybe your mate wants to be found
I thought of myself not long ago when a woman was lamenting how her husband seemed uninterested in “finding” her. She used the word. And she was not the first to do so. So many partnered people have trouble when they feel their partner leaves them alone; they are like babies in the crib who woke up by themselves and aren’t sure someone is coming to get them. We really want our mates to meet us there. It feels like they should do something about this attachment issue that keeps popping up. Some of us might get anxious because we don’t want to risk the possibility that they won’t find us and will never share the deep fears and loneliness we might carry.
I hope you will be found by your loved ones. But I am not counting on it. I hope you will be sensitive enough to find people, even find yourself. But I would not be surprised if you had already blown so many opportunities to do that, you’re not sure you should make any promises.
The movies don’t help. Those people are getting found all the time! We love watching it happen — why else would we watch the Hallmark Channel so religiously? The first example that comes to my mind is “Dear Even Hansen.” That might be because I’ve seen a few choirs of young people giving their hearts to singing the main song: “You Will Be Found.” The hope of being found is apparently a universal feeling, so this song has been sung around the world a few times. The other side of the song is moving, too, so people feel terrible when they realize they didn’t look for someone before they got left alone. The the song has made a lot of people cry.
But I think the song promises too much. You might not be found and need to do something about it yourself. What’s more, everyone might be waiting for you to show up rather than looking for you, or might be kind of paralyzed by the idea you might not want to be found by them, or might not be too aware or even able to notice you’re gone. You might need more than what humans can provide. Wonder about those things as you listen to the song. I provided the lyrics for you.
Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear?
Well, let that lonely feeling wash away
Maybe there’s a reason to believe you’ll be okay
‘Cause when you don’t feel strong enough to stand
You can reach, reach out your hand
And oh, someone will come runnin’
And I know they’ll take you home
Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
And when you’re broken on the ground
You will be found
So let the sun come streamin’ in
‘Cause you’ll reach up and you’ll rise again
Lift your head and look around
You will be found
You will be found
You will be found
You will be found
You will be found
The message most people latch onto when they hear Evan Hansen sing is “You are not alone.” For all you people feeling alone even though you are in good relationships, I can say “You are not alone” – maybe you are not together with your loved one the way you wish you were, but there is more than your wishes. And for those of you who didn’t find someone who needed you, you are not alone, either. We all carry a lot of shame, but that doesn’t mean you are alone with it.
What we can do to be found and find
I remember thinking my mother decided not to find me and just left me alone. That hurt. I did not ask her about her motivation, but surely she could not have been unaware I was gone somewhere! – after all, she could hear me stealing candy from the cupboard a mile away! When I finally went out and pulled on her dress and got an irritated, “I’m talking on the phone!” That fact did not undo my feeling.
Your adult loved ones might be just as difficult. Dealing with your mate’s attachment issues can feel perilous, but it is so helpful if you do! Here are a few things to notice and try if you’d like to feel found and like to feel adept at finding people.
1) See one another.In my opinion, Mom should have put down the phone and given me some loving eye contact. That might have demonstrated I was important and not just a nuisance. Same for mates; they need validation and reassurance.
She also could have kept track of me. It is OK to keep track of your mate; you’re not impinging upon their freedom or losing your own if you do. You might need to negotiate how much closeness and how much distance your relationship needs in order to get to your “happy medium.” But you’ll probably be happier if you try.
I have known a few people who say, “I think I will be happier if I don’t try. That kind of noticing is way too much to ask.” In that case the song would be “You are alone.” Because everyone is working out how to attach their whole life. They at least need to be seen.
2) Be yourself, not God. If someone asks to be seen it does not make you God, as if you could be all-seeing, all knowing and the answer to someone’s prayers. Don’t say “No” because you already think you will fail. Everyone fails. You’re probably good enough, even if you are facing a need in your partner that demands more than you have.
Facing the “demand” is what a lot of people mean when they talk about “showing up.” You stop hiding and risk finding. Just don’t take on all those expectations as if you are responsible to succeed at them. Just keep moving into your true self.
3) Listen. Listening for someone matters. They might be making a distant noise in their closet. If it seems too demanding to be so intense, your heart might need to get bigger. All intimate relationships grow our hearts. For instance, a client assumed his wife was self-reliant, but she was really a person who had to fend for herself because no one else did. She would say how needy she was and then behave like she was not needy. It was easier to relate to the unneedy one. But she was left feeling the ancient feeling of being left alone she hated so much. He learned to listen better and to move into what he heard.
4) Try not to hide.When I expected my mother to find me when she did not have a clue about what I’d decided to to, it was a recipe for not getting what I wanted. Fortunately, I did not hide in the closet every day trying to train her to find me on demand! But it would not be surprising if you and I were stubborn enough to try something like that.
We feel it is unjust to have to change rather than someone else changing. “Others seem to get found, why shouldn’t I be cared for like that?” If we just suffer the injustice of it all, the person who is loving you the best they can becomes someone who just holds out on you, but all the while you’re the one in the closet. It may pain you to do so, but you may need to come out and make yourself known, rather than insisting someone else has to do the work.
5) Make sure someone is listening. It takes quite a bit of humility to ask for what we really want. When you dare to do it, be sure to help the one you’re asking hear you. If I say, “I want to feel found. I want you to see me” in a way they can’t hear, that’s not really their fault. If I am just hurt and angry and I make them seem like a fool or a fiend when I tell them, their defenses will spring into action. Then we won’t be on the subject of what I am really hoping any more. We need to help people hear us now that we are adults. The crib is long gone. Being weak in a strong way is rarely a good way to get what we need.
6) Be found by God. Jesus is well known for saying he is seeking the lost in order to give them life and joy. So there is ONE person who is interested in finding you. There is a hopeful verse in Jeremiah about this big part of God’s love:
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity. — Jeremiah 29:11-14
I love “I will be found of you.” The best way to be found by some one is to be found of them. You are more likely to be found if you let them see you and struggle gracefully with them. To be fair to Evan Hansen, the movie goes on to teach just that. He needs to let himself be known and go through the pain of being accepted as he really is. He gets way down the road to being his true self, as a result.
Artists like the people who made “Dear Evan Hansen” keep coming up with ways to tell the parables of living in love because 80% of us are preoccupied with how to be known and loved and how to know and be loving every day. We’re the sought seekers we were created to be.
Contemplative prayer is often, even typically, presented in the language of personal healing and self-discovery:
I enter stillness in order to purify my unconscious, heal the emotional wounds of a lifetime, find my true self, and so on.
But there is a natural self-corrective mechanism built right into the prayer itself if we are willing to take it far enough: my true self is found only in communion with others.
The personal can find its identity only in relation to the whole, which is the mercy of God.
— Cynthia Bourgeault in Mystical Hope
My own backyard
This month I kept running into hope. Sometimes it made me cry.
As soon as Pastor Sean began to speak at Algernon Baker’s memorial, I teared up. He insisted we turn into hope, since we knew our brother was ready to wake up into the dawn of his eternity. Then the young adult choir sang the most joyful song I have ever heard.
Then I watched my latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and felt something good is happening in the world because this moralistic, positive, super-woke show can still manage to get made and appear on the Ellisons’ network.
Then, a TikTok doctor and a new book I am reading reminded me that my grandmother’s attention was one of the ways God reached out to me and undermined the toxic shame we all deal with.
I felt a bit by Dorothy, who has always been strangely central to my theology:
Click the pic if you want to see the scene
We’re often like Dorothy waking up from her vision and realizing her heart’s desire was right under her nose the whole time and among those who love her. What a wonder it is that so many of us are drawn beyond our ordinary awareness and turn away from the death-dealing world to find God “in our own back yard,” so to speak.
Hope is that “quality of aliveness” we feel
As Cynthia Bourgeault ends her book Mystical Hope she tries to sum up her profound teaching about finding hope right under our noses — while rolling down Broad St., even, and especially in the moments of love we give and receive. She teaches us to find hope in a new way — not as merely an object of our desire, but as the Subject who is as near as the turn of our hearts. I am going to quote quite a bit of it for you:
I have tried to suggest a new way of picturing hope. In this new positioning, the underlying sense of corporateness is physically real, the that “electromagnetic field of love” is the Mercy – and the Mercy is the body of Christ. Through this body hope circulates as a lifeblood. It warms, it fills, it connects, it directs. It is the heart of our own life and the heart of all that lives.
Hope’s home is the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. When our innermost being is attuned to this pulse it will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives. Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life – a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.
And since that strength is, in fact, a piece of God’s purposiveness coursing like sap through our own being, it will lead us in the right way. It sweeps us along in the greater flow of divine life as God moves – and in the western religions, God does move – toward the fulfillment of divine purpose which is the deeper, more intense, more subtle, more intimate revelation of the heart of God.
Long before we knew Jesus, we had experiences of being swept up in the flow of God’s good purpose — maybe beside a stream like the one above. This “quality of aliveness” was called “righteousness” in the Old Testament, as in Psalm 23: “He restores my soul; he guides me in the paths of righteousness.”
Unfortunately, many people read that couplet as if the psalmist means we will be OK if we stay on the path, within the lines of a moral template so we will succeed at building an ideal replica of God’s kingdom and be justified by it. Far from that egoic reading, the psalmist is reminding us we live in a Spirit-charged “force field” (as we might picture it), a force field in which everything we do must move in order to come to fruit.
The reality of God with us, restoring and guiding us, is much more important than my ability to stay on “the path.” The psalmist is calling the inner (our souls) and the outer (our feet) to sync up, to move with the Great Mover who is giving us life. As our souls are restored and our feet are guided, Jesus says, we become good trees that bear good fruit. As Psalm 1 says, we are then like good trees planted by flowing streams of righteousness.
The quality of aliveness “in Christ”
In the New Testament, Paul calls this territory “in Christ.” In Christ we find that quality of aliveness we were made to enjoy, in which we hope.
To [his saints] God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ….I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself,in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge…As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving…For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. – Colossians1:27-2:10
The phrases “Christ in us” and “us in Christ” are another way to say “moving in the Mercy.” For Bourgeault, the mercy of God is a place of assured understanding, a place of lovingmystery which continues to unfold as we experience it in our hearts. As we are “encouraged and united in love,” Christ in us is the “hope of glory.” In Christ we come to “fullness.”
Paul sounds a lot like Cynthia Bourgeault as she piles up metaphors and viewpoints, circling around the mystical hope she can feel better than describe. Her everyday way to live “in Christ” is meditation that turns her in toward that golden kernel of her true self, protected and saved by God. In a somewhat seamless movement, that everyday prayer then turns her out to write her book, knowing that no self-giving love is wasted in the world, not on her and not on us, either. Our prayer, especially the prayer of meditation, is not only what saves us from the world, it is also the key thing we do to save the world. It is our way to hope, our way to become a people of hope, and our way toward embracing others with hope.
I have enjoyed sharing these five posts inspired by Bourgeault’s book. I’d love to hear how your own prayer was encouraged or developed as a result. Let me know.
I’m still savoring the memory of Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, Mystical Hope, laying in my lap, a tear trickling down my cheek and a smile broadening across my face in deep relief and joy. I had just reached the part in which she quoted a little piece of a Thomas Merton cassette (!) speaking to his novices. As I read it, I laughed out loud, since he recalled an image that was very similar to one I had experienced in prayer during a rich period of my thirties — an image that has sustained me ever since.
God is near to us at the point that is just before final destruction. Take away everything else down to that point of final destruction, and the last little bit that’s left before destruction, a little kernel of gold which is the essence of you–and there is God protecting it…And this is something terrific. …[We] don’t normally get into that center unless we’re brought to the edge of what looks like destruction. In other words, we have to be facing the possibility of the destruction of everything else to know this will not be destroyed.
Merton sounds a bit like he is inviting his novices to jump off a spiritual cliff, doesn’t he?! I suppose he is. I suppose I jumped. But he is also inviting relative beginners into a life of prayer, like my three previous posts have been doing. It is a life that leads to the place of surrender and revelation he describes in the quote above. It is a life filled with the mystical hope that does not come through ordinary means.
Meditation “puts us immediately in touch with that ‘little kernel of gold which is the essence of’ us and allows us to begin to recognize it and trust it.” That might be the best feeling in the world.
Unfortunately, your faith journey may not have led you into meditation yet. So much religion these days relies on a “good offense” or a “good defense.” On the one hand, many Christians offer victorious living when they promise an overcoming hope that seems hollow in the cancer ward, or when the baby is born with disabilities, or when the house is destroyed and a lifetime of memories seems washed away. On the other hand the Buddhist track and most of what “mindfulness” is about teaches us an equally deficient approach when they call us to release our preoccupation with death and suffering in order to experience blissful, mindless oneness with all life.
Deeper than having a good offense or good defense and more in line with the Lord’s example is mystical hope. On the other side of suffering and death is hope. Bourgeault says, “Only if we are still hanging on…only in the measure that we fail to yield completely into the mercy of God, will hope fail us. If we are willing to take it all the way, it will take us all the way.”
Jesus went beyond destruction to hope.
This the journey of yielding completely Jesus took all the way. When he was arrested, he told his disciples to put away their swords because he, like us, needed to pass through his own powerlessness and hopelessness. He purposely did not put his hope in some nuclear arsenal of angels or call on a victory-making God to save him. When he was in the garden praying and meditating (as the disciples fainted), he found that “protecting nearness” at the center of reality. How he went “to the edge of what looks like destruction” is an example for us. It is the Lord’s death as well as his resurrection that is our salvation.
Words on a page don’t work as well as art to explain this basic Christian truth. But this old song gets to it:
O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there;
The wonderful old movie, Babette’s Feast, gets at it, too. In this film the wonder centers around a sumptuous meal that reveals many secrets. It is like another last supper, only this one is full of old Danish people facing death. They are gathered full of faith and full of their regrets. The General gets up and names the wonder that is happening among them, the same wonder that was seen when Jesus, the living truth, yielded himself faithfully into the Mercy. The General says, “Mercy and faithfulness have met; justice and peace have embraced.” And all the joys and regrets become one in love as the Alpha and Omega is present in fullness.
There is hope
In our Transhistorical Body blog, we look toward the people who have gone before us for the assurance that this wild thought is true: if I move over the edge of destruction, God will still protect the golden kernel of the true me. If I dare to meet the living God, my old self — my fallen, scarred, angry, abandoned, intolerably vulnerable self, might die, but I will live. We get this assurance not only from our ultimate example, Jesus, but last week we celebrated Claire of Assisi, who could have quoted Albert Camus: “In the middle of winter I discovered in myself an invincible summer.”
There is hope.
I remember a letter to the our old church from a new member. He was telling the church his story before he made a covenant at the Love Feast. He had gone through so much — and went through a lot more, but even now he has hope. He wrote, “There had always been an emptiness inside me and after my mom passed, I fell into the grips of addiction. When I moved to Philadelphia to get sober, I was fortunate enough to meet Jimmy , in what will always be a “God shot” to me….I was immediately drawn to Circle of Hope and I now realize I was also being called to Christ. This journey brings me joy and deep connection. At times Circle Of Hope is all I felt I had, but the fellowship, my Cell, and my growing relationship with Christ have filled me and helped me to thrive again.”
There is hope.
God is protecting that golden true self at the heart of each of us, calling us to meet in that open-to-the-Spirit place where life moves us and draws us. The everyday way to living comfortably and securely outside our present-oriented injuries and fears and into our eternal now with God is the listening, feeling and releasing prayer of meditation. It seems like a new way, as Bourgeault says, “beyond linear, discursive thinking” into “inspired visionary knowing where Christianity finally becomes fully congruent with its own highest truth and its mystical treasures can be received into an awakened heart.”
If all that beautiful teaching from Merton and Bourgeault seem a bit much to you, just listen to Jesus and see where he leads. Or meditate on Claire of Assisi when you pray. Or appreciate the love that guards the members of the church, even when they have just been called back from far away.
We took a road trip to Monticello. My grandson bought an oversized nickel as a memento. The preservationists who maintain Thomas Jefferson’s lifelong rehab project posted a sign on the way up the mount to remind us we were entering a “sacred” space. Jefferson’s star-studded, science-driven plantation is an altar for the religion of America.
The mansion overlooks Charlottesville. That’s the city lately famous for a torch parade, the white supremacist march on August 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and alt-right activists stormed through the University of Virginia campus. They chanted antisemitic and racist slogans as they marched around Jefferson’s statue. The spectacle served as a prelude to the violent “Unite the Right” rally the following day.
Jerry Falwell Jr Says Donald Trump Offered Him Education Secretary Job
Not long after we left Charlottesville, we approached Lynchburg, VA, home of Jerry Falwell Airport and Liberty University, where the Moral Majority was born in the 80’s — that movement mobilized millions of politicized Evangelicals to combat what it viewed as the moral decline of the United States, championing traditional family values and heavily influencing postmodern American politics. (Falwell Jr., above, played the champion when dad died, but missed the morality). On the way there, I shouted as we turned a corner, “Look at that Confederate flag!” It was huge. Someone bought a gigantic flagpole and some company made an enormous flag to threaten me. The Christian radio station nearby had just aired a serious news story featuring Mike Johnson saying the Congress needed to pass the SAVE Act and he intended to attach it to a budget reconciliation bill soon.
The Thomas Jefferson impersonator at the Monticello Theater, had pointed out that in 1824 only 6% of the population was eligible to vote (white male landowners) and only 3% voted. Trump is now trying to get voting back to white people, at least. I think he can find many supporters in western Virginia.
Then WWE chairman Vince McMahon has his head shaved by Donald Trump and Bobby Lashley after losing a bet in the Battle of the Billionaires at the 2007 WrestleMania in Detroit, Michigan.
Monticello took some Kayfabe
Yes, traveling makes you think. I started connecting dots, like Jefferson and UFC.
Trump’s birthday fight on the White House lawn was a lesson in performative domination with the goal of ginning up support for his white-centered dictatorship [see Stephen Miller last week]. I learned a new word when I was wondering what he was trying to do by tearing up the White House grounds for a mixed martial arts arena. A.I. took the spectacle seriously, and even called it “historic” when I looked it up:
UFC Freedom 250, a historic mixed martial arts event held on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14, 2026. The unprecedented spectacle celebrated both the United States’ 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s birthday, and drew national headlines as a major, high-stakes sporting event.
A.I. sounds like a publicist for UFC. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is an American MMA promotion company based in the Las Vegas metro. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, a “premium sports” and entertainment company formed in 2023 by the merger of the UFC and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). WWE is a majority-owned subsidiary of The WME Group (William Morris Endeavor), the world’s longest-running talent agency. Ponder that.
Swallowing Jefferson’s Frenchified Monticello as a sacred space, was a bit like rolling over for what WWE/Trump does, and maybe it’s like what most Evangelical church members are doing most of the time. They all take some “kayfabe.” [Check out this scholarly article].
Kayfabe is the tacit agreement/code professional wrestlers keep as they present staged matches, scripted rivalries, and predetermined characters as completely genuine even though they are fake. The term originating as secret carny slang to keep audiences in the dark, as in “Keep the kayfabe.” Postmodern kayfabe is used to maintain emotional immersion in the fiction rather than strict deception. Maybe you know all about this.
Like I noted, in the era of social media, kayfabe has evolved. Rather than attempting to fool the audience, postmodern kayfabe functions as a type of psychological storytelling where fans are in on the secret but willingly suspend their disbelief to enjoy the narrative. The term has also bled into mainstream culture, often used to describe performative political theater or calculated, winking online behavior.
At Monticello we were asked to play our part in the same story Jefferson enacting when he lived there. He is the Declaration of Independence writer who owns slaves. We overlook the slaves, even though we know they exist, in order to keep his shrine in Washington D.C. making sense. He is the UVA founder where a white supremacist mob rolled over people protesting the domination he enjoyed and employed. We overlook how he managed the white supremacist Constitution so he always looks enlightened.
Jefferson was not as expert or as self-conscious as Trump and his followers are when it came to kayfabe, of course. I never knew how much Trump was practicing it until I wondered about that bizarre UFC fight. I may be the last person in the country who finds such a thing odd.
It is not just politics, it is the church
The term has increasingly crossed over into mainstream culture. In everyday contexts, “kayfabe” is used to describe a tacit agreement to pretend that something is real, sincere, or competitive when it is actually performative—often used to describe political theater, marketing, or corporate posturing
Trump’s first election was straight out of the pro wrestling playbook. Voters knew it was fake, but they loved it. [See this article from The Guardian]. They knew he was playing a character (he kept talking about himself in the 3rd person!) and they knew who they were in the story. Here is a representative fan homage:
WWE is a hybrid form of sport, street fight, ballet, spectacle, and soap opera that defies easy categorization. Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame. His WWE pedigree influenced his political campaigning style. It developed his boisterous, over-the-top character. The way he argues, insults and makes crass remarks all make perfect sense in the context of Trump the WWE entertainer. Trump’s pro-wrestling role is a celebrity who is a “no bullshit” straight talker who gets things done better than anyone else
Naomi Klein (2017) claimed that pro-wrestling is “invisible as a cultural force to most liberal voters.” I am one of them. My ignorance might go back to my father, who would not allow pro wrestling from KTLA, Channel 5, on his TV because it was all fake — which we doubted. We could, however, watch roller derby because we all knew that was staged. Now I am supposed to play along and help enact simulated emotions to produce alternative realities as if life were WWE. It’s a leap.
I can’t really do kayfabe. It is intrinsically unChristian, of course, but I also didn’t encounter it early enough, I think. I didn’t even play Dungeons and Dragons(D&D). Kayfabe now describes a form of audience engagement that involves, in the first instance, a willing suspension of disbelief within which performers, promoters and the audience, ALL “keep kayfabe.” For the latter, keeping kayfabe involves the active choice to participate in “performance conventions” such as cheering the “face” and booing the “heel.” In doing so, fans do not simply pretend to be fooled by the “game;” rather, in the new kayfabe, everyone is invested and involved in the playing of the game itself — Magic: The Gathering(MTG) with flying folding chairs, perhaps.
To refer to the “real” of wrestling today is to refer to backstage politics, writers’ rooms, booking decisions, and corporate judgments about who has star potential, who is popular in the locker room, or who is unpopular with management. It is a kind of real that, strangely, even contradictorily, embraces the fake. When it leaks into everyday life, newscasters always talk about the strategies of politicians and who is winning the latest contest rather than informing the listeners about the substance and consequences of what is going on.
Politics and church have largely followed suit
To enjoy WWE, fans must not only be aware of the inner workings of the business (the off-camera, backstage processes) but also able to construct hypotheses about them when they lack knowledge. The whole thing has become an active, collaborative relationship, a co-production in which fans both create and sustain kayfabe while simultaneously dissecting it, parsing the elements that construct the performance with a discerning eye on how well performers “follow the rules of the performance practice and play their role” and “read through the fiction to glean hidden truths.” If this sounds to you like conspiracy theories being monetized, you might be right.
Part of the fan’s participation becomes “a game of prediction and interpretation to which they apply their understanding of wrestling techniques, character histories, performers and WWE as a company.” For instance: Why did the bookers decide upon that outcome? Does the fact that the wrestler is “selling” the leg (acting as if it is injured) mean the match “finish” will involve that limb? Did an aggressive “promo” signal a “heel turn” by a “face?” It seems like anything can be “gamified” these days to increase fan devotion and profit.
So it was not surprising that at his post-2016-election thank-you rallies, Trump was able to level with his voters about the manipulative nature of his campaign tactics. When he referred to the redundant “Lock her up!” chants at his events, Trump now laughed with his supporters, telling them, “You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’ Screaming ‘Prison! Prison! Lock her up!’ I mean you are going crazy!” The chants, he told them, contemplatively, “plays great before the election. Now we don’t care.” Far from his revelations undermining their enthusiasm for his Presidency, Trump’s supporters laughed along – after all, only marks truly believed all that stuff even if, while self-conceived smarts, they too chanted along.
That last point is the key to understanding Trump’s appeal. The country (and the church) may be more WWE, UFC, gamified, prediction addicted, and back-room cynical than you think. Politics happens like pro-wrestling — the chance that Mitch McConnell is actually dead is more interesting than his actions as a Senator or the future of the democracy. In WWE the smarts differentiate themselves from the imagined marks (the people who actually believe WWE is a contest). Nevertheless, the “smarts” retain the “overt knowledge that the core wrestling narrative relies, to a significant degree, on their successful performance as dupes not in on the con” – that is, the capacity to suspend disbelief is predicated upon the collected audience playing the part of a “true believer” sports spectator. To retain its “dramatic appeal” pro-wrestling requires smarts to perform as marks when attending events. Just like Marco Rubio (and Lindsay Graham, RIP) act like they are taking Trump seriously, a successful WWE event or Trump rally requires its attendees cheer and chant, performing their role as supporters-who-believe in their own exposition of smart fandom.
The evangelical church has always been a step away from such carnival, since the carnival works better than actual faith to draw a crowd and fill the plates. One of the reasons it is hard to make a Christian in the U.S. is the thin line between willingness to disbelieve and actual faith. The atmosphere is filled with Christians who picked up Trump just like they picked up Jesus. They were in it for the feels and vicarious sense of power, not the truth.
When Kelly Conway blithely talked about alternative facts, it was exposing kayfabe. When Paula White compares Trumps “sufferings” to that of Jesus, it is performing kafaybe. She actually stated, “No one has paid the price like you have,” likening his experiences to being “betrayed, and arrested, and falsely accused.” Furthermore, she has publicly declared that “to say no to President Trump would be saying no to God”
People on my feed shake their heads and say “Trump lives in his own world.” True. When he talks about Trump in the third person, he is talking about his persona, his WWE Hall of Fame persona. What he does as the real Trump may be lost on him at this point, I don’t know. But “his own world” is shared by millions who live in “their own world” with him. They are perfecting the unreality which accompanies the world we all share.
As we came home over the Walt Whitman Bridge, we snapped a picture of our smoke-dimmed home town. Canadian fires are climate-change induced — some facts are difficult to undermine. As the smoke started rolling in last week, the president got on TV to repeat his lie about the 2020 election. He said that China had meddled because it obtained voter registration info that anyone with enough money can purchase legally. He did not hit anyone over the head with a chair, which probably would have garnered even more attention, but he did implicitly call on us to “keep the kayfabe” with him as the world burned.
The super-analog Proverbs in the Bible includes this one: Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment (12:19).
Latest album cover: “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love”
Maybe I like Olivia Rodrigo because she says what is on her mind and dares you to do something about it. Plus, I like that she does not have any pretense of being profound — she knows she became famous when she was 17 and knows she is still figuring things out on her latest album.
I first caught up with her when I realized, “Hey, Olivia Rodrigo is Nini from High School Musical on the Disney Channel! (something to occupy grandchildren and Papa during Covid). I loved how talented she is — but when I heard her songs I really liked how hysterically brazen she is.
She is a strange kind of prophet as she analyzes her own dualities and takes down the presumptions and misconceptions all around her.
This quite often makes her depressed.
A mural on Melrose announced the new album
the cure
Today’s song “the cure” (#3 on Spotify recently) caught my attention for how it reveals things about the dialogue each of us is having inside and hints at how one’s view of God makes a difference.
About the song, she says, “It’s karaokable if you’re sad.” Try it!
“the cure” was first teased in May, when two lyric snippets were painted on Olivia’s wall mural in Los Angeles (above). She officially announced the song’s release the following day. She hosted an hour-long session of NTS Radio, where she played sad songs to tease her album, and ended her set by premiering “the cure” two hours early. The mural had fans in a tizzy. As you can see, Google calls it an L.A. tourist attraction. If I were out there, I would probably go see it, too.
Rodrigo has said quite a bit about how this song was written, since it is one of her favorites on the album — and maybe her favorite, so far, in her rather successful career. She says:
I remember trying to fit “I’m unraveled” into another song and thinking that was just a really perfect, poignant way of describing what it feels like to know someone really deeply and feel like, “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.” I think when you’re in a deep, intimate relationship, it just sort of feels like everything you thought you knew about yourself kind of comes unraveled, a little bit, and you’re just naked. I thought that was a really cool choice of word. I remember trying to fit it into this song, and it works perfectly.
I like how, in the verses, the lyrics are super specific. “Tally up the girls that he fucked ‘til I start to cry,” does it get more specific and dark than that? And then, the chorus opens up into this metaphor. There’s poison in my blood and you try to cleanse me of it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s who I am. I just like the dichotomy of those two living together.
She was a rather wise teenager, and she sounds more like Qoheleth all the time.
Her view of self
We have an internal dialogue going most of the day. The messages we speak to ourselves reveal our view of self (VOS) and affect emotions and behaviors. Most days, therapy includes inviting clients to identify and examine their self-talk (those internal messages) in order to see who they believe they are and so mitigate depression and anxiety. If our self-talk affirms our worth and enhances our ability to endure or overcome life’s stressors, then we are more likely to have a healthy response to those problems. If our self-talk contains a distorted or destructive narrative, then it is much more likely that we will feel and act accordingly.
For instance, imagine sitting down for that first cup of coffee in the morning and just as you are placing the cup to your lips, you spill it all over the front of your clothing. If your self-talk goes something like, “I can’t believe you did that! Stupid! This is going to be an awful day,” then your chance of carrying a lousy mood through the day increases. (VOS: I am a clumsy idiot). But if your self-talk sounds more like, “Oh no! I really love this shirt! Better get some water on that and get a new one,” then you are probably going to feel temporarily annoyed but you will be able to move past the incident and not set yourself up to have a bad day. (VOS: I am a person who overcomes troubles).
Olivia is having a profound internal dialogue in her song.
All the pretty girls in the foreground of my mind I thought I’d done enough, but they keep moving the line
VOS: “I’m not good enough” keeps playing in my thoughts. I’m competing with other girls to to be worthy of attention and love, but I never seem to make it.
I thought I found the antidote this time
VOS: I’m waiting for someone to find me and know me. If you love me, I am good.
And all the nights I spent fighting bad thoughts in my room Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon I thought I found the antidote with you
VOS: If I just had another person I would not feel so alone with my terrible self, talking back to the terrible self-talk I do and feeling defeated.
But my head is full of poison, and my heart is full of doubt I got toxins in my bloodstream, you tried hard to suck ’em out And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
VOS: My head, heart and body are yucky and out of control.
The chorus keeps repeating the dichotomy she is examining – great mentalizing! She’s not known for being a Christian, but she often sounds like one. Here she is considering her mind, her heart and her body and wondering why what feels like medication isn’t quite enough:
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore It’ll never be the cure
VOS: I’m beyond relying on someone else’s love to make me someone.
Most of the time, the view of self that used to dominate us is still around, but smaller, as our new development takes hold. It has been fun to travel with Olivia Rodrigo as she matures in her art and psychological health. The realization above is one many people twice her age are still working on! — Who I am starts in me, it does not come from you.
I thought I found the antidote this time
But I’m unraveled (I’m unraveled)… Why can’t it ever be enough? (I’m unraveled) It’s not enough…
It will never be the cure It’ll never be
VOS: Like she said in her interview: “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.”
She did heart, mind, strength and now soul as she unravels down into it. I think this is her favorite song on the new album because a new consciousness is being unveiled by love. Becoming naked at the deepest level reveals her own sense of “I am.” For her, singing about it solidifies her confidence in being herself. I appreciate her sense of wonder as she watches it happen.
View of God
Olivia is not singing a song about God, per se. But God is never far from her process, it seems. On the #1-played-song on Spotify, also from her new album: “stupid song,” she says:
Walking through the park with my head high Past all the college girls and the drunk guys And if there is a god, he’s the bond that’s between us two
She mentions God (or “a god” in this case) quite a bit in her songs. I love how she identifies the mystery of love in the bond she feels as God between them. She could be writing 1 John.
In the song of the day, “the cure,” she veers right up to the edge of God:
And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure
She is bold enough to beg the question, “If this loving guy is not the cure, then what is?” I think her basic answer, so far, is: “The cure is being myself, troubles and all, and accepting my place in the world.” This is amazing for a 23-year-old! It might be easier for her, since she is worth $45 million.
But I get the impression she does not think she is, ultimately, the cure, either.
There has been a lot of consideration, throughout history, about the correlation between spirituality and health. One of the most interesting findings recently is how much of a difference your view of God can make in your well-being, especially your mental health.
Since many of my clients come to me because I am a Christian, we often get into their concept of God or their relationship with God. Many people are skeptical or distant when it comes to God because they have an entitlement mentality or a punishment mentality. They see God as either being out to get you, or God is there to give you whatever you want. Neither matches who Jesus reveals God to be, but they are common views. And neither view will make us pleased to keep getting to know God better.
Research demonstrates how much your view of God can impact your health. Over the past several years Baylor University has conducted several surveys on religion among American adults, and many scholarly articles have been produced using the data. The most recent survey revealed more on the connection between one’s view of God and mental health.
The general views of God fell into three broad categories:
A “deistic” God. God is real, but He is not significantly involved in what happens on this Earth or in one’s daily life.
A “punitive” God. God is angered by sin, is looking to punish sinners, and one has little hope of meeting His high demands.
A “benevolent” God. God is good. He is closely involved in the world and in one’s daily life, and His involvement results in good things.
The Baylor University data showed how powerfully one’s view of God can predict the presence of mental health problems. Briefly, belief in a punitive God means more anxiety, paranoia, and other symptoms. Belief in a benevolent God is associated with fewer such symptoms.
This effect holds true even in prayer. If one is unsure of one’s connection with God, or trying to avoid God (possibly out of fear), prayer only results in more anxiety. If one’s connection with God is secure, prayer decreases anxiety and related symptoms.
We will see where Olivia ends up. I hope she’s still making music when she is 30. It would be interesting to see what she thinks about this lyric then:
And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure
I’d like to ask her then, “What do you believe to be the cure now?”
*******
The is Peter and Paul Day! Catch up with how the two influential disciples of Jesus became tied together in the history of the Church at The Transhistorical Body.
That beautiful blonde hair behind the the statement red head on the left is our treasure.
I will miss the day when my granddaughter no longer invites me to hear her perform with the Commonwealth Youth Choir. Their very existence moves me to tears, and then they start singing. I prayed they could feel and ponder their selections as they sang the other night. Their songs were showing us the way out and in.
The concert was a fine ending to a good day. We got up early and walked on the beach. Then we listened to Till We have Faces on the way home and finished it just as we turned into our street.
As I often explore with my clients, the good moments need to be elongated, shared and revisited. That makes them stick with us instead of slipping away into nothing. Especially these days, when every day seems to have a new indignity or bit of destruction to torment us (as if we didn’t already have enough), we need to dwell on what is good.
So let’s do that together.
The song right on the edge of freedom
Fortunately, one little song on the concert program that night was very sticky: “Who I Want to Be” by Coty Raven Morris (arr. Saleel Menon) [link].
I lead with my spirit
keeping love in the circle around me,
expressing my spirit,
loving what I see and cannot see.
I take care of the vessel I’m in.
I love the me that’s under this skin,
taking care of my mind,
envisioning the me
I want to be.
At one point, selected singers went to the mic to voice the goodness that is in them. It was a blessing to hear what every psychotherapist must wish their clients were singing.
However, I have to admit there was a bit of a trap waiting in the song for the unsuspecting. It so firmly begins with “I” — and it is such a burden to be in charge of one’s spirit! But at least they were keeping a circle of love around them — love is so uncontrollable, it disabuses us of the idea we can control everything. And they included expressing love for what they “cannot see,” which led to the deeper places in the next song.
The song about the Great I Am
If they missed the connection with God I hoped they would make as they led with their spirits, the kids had another chance to connect with something bigger, along with the rest of us, during “Spirit,” Beyonce’s contribution to Disney’s live-action Lion King[link].
The wind is talkin’
for the very first time
with a melody that pulls you toward it
paintin’ pictures of paradise…
Spirit.
Watch the heavens open…
Go into that far off land
and be one with the Great I Am.
Beyonce grew up singing in the choir of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Houston. Methodism can come with lots of rules and labels, but it is hard to miss the personal and universal spirituality John Wesley experienced within it. The “strangely warmed” places are where the Queen B has landed.
Her song is not too far from Jesus offering some of my favorite sentences in the Bible [link]:
Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”[ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. — John 8:54-59
Here are the seven “I Am” statements of Jesus in John [link].
The quote about entering the the far off land
People come to the Great I AM in strange and mysterious ways. I think sometimes they are with Jesus and don’t even know it. Often, quoting a Bible verse is no more help to people than their latest walk in the park — and could prove to be much less helpful. C.S. Lewis is honest about that. If you read his spiritual memoir, he is just being honest about his own journey.
We bought the audible book of Till We Have Faces in March and finished it in June — we have not become preoccupied with the immense library of stuff we can listen to. But the timing turned out to be just right. The ending was a great prelude to the questions the kids were singing. At least they were questions I hoped they were asking as they began their journey into the “far off land,” rather than just consuming nice words and music, as we are tempted to do.
C.S. Lewis gets at the heart of why our spiritual journeys are often long and convoluted [Audible]:
When the time comes to you
at which you will be forced at last
to utter the speech which has lain
at the center of your soul for years
which you have, all that time,
idiot-like been saying over and over,
you will not talk about the joy of words.
I saw well why the gods to not speak to us openly,
nor let us answer.
Till that word can be dug out of us,
why should they hear the babble
that we think we mean?
How can they meet us face to face
till we have faces?
I know it is not obvious what Lewis is talking about in that quote. It is not crystal clear if you read the whole book! But it is at least as clear as Beyonce calling us to be one with the Great I Am. Crystal clarity is way over-rated.
About the video: Aneel Aranha is good at A.I. He came to faith later in life, but he is making the most of it.
The quote that sticks in my mind
No matter what scraps of truth and love I find along the way to my destiny, I rely on God to make a feast of them and to host the feast, to boot. Though we try to sit in God’s seat and host our own party, grace is new every morning. We are pulled toward the light like my lilies, growing more in the shade than they should be. I see myself, my children, grandchildren, and my clients stretching toward the light all the time.
They lean, even though they are, like we are all, to a degree:
hearers of the word and not doers,
they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away,
immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law,
the law of liberty,
and persevere,
being not hearers who forget but doers who act—
they will be blessed in their doing.. — James 1:23-25
Every little doing of reaching out and up matters, no matter what your core story keeps repeating. Every step of keeping love, of going to the “far off land” — both that vast inner territory and the vast times and places yet to be known, matter.
May the good songs elongate in your head as you go. May God bless us children as we take our first steps, next steps and repeated steps, and bless us all as we persevere on the journey.
We planted a dogwood tree in our little back yard. It is how we respond to Trump and his flailing fascism project. We likely won’t see it come into its full glory. But, as we say, we will stay in the game of hope, realized or not, until the last buzzer.
In 1893 the U.S. Marines overthrew the government of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii; later that year the Panic of 1893 kicked off a economic depression. About that time, Lucy Larcom wrote a poem:
He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope;
Leaves unfold into horizons free.
So man’s life must climb
From the clods of time
Unto heavens sublime.
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree,
What the glory of thy boughs shall be? — from Plant a Tree
1n 1973 AIM activists occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded knee surrendered to federal authorities after 71 days; later that year Alexander Butterfield informed the Senate Watergate Committee that President Nixon had secret recordings of incriminating conversations. Wendell Berry wrote a poem:
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. — from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Spend a minute with me and let’s nurture some seeds of hope with the poets.
We have a shortage of hope
One of our old friends was visiting last week so we invited the family over for dinner. I was impressed by her being impressed by their sense of security. They give me hope.
But they are inheriting a world full of insecurity. We’ll see if they become tree planters, or if they have grandchildren of their own.
You are probably aware that the birthrate is going down all over the world — especially in places where women have the right to choose their own destiny rather than being subject to a man. Their choice seems to be a strange thing to need to point out, but equality in the U.S. is not a done deal AT ALL. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and we can see how fragile that was.
There are many reasons women are not giving birth at rates that sustain their nation’s population. In the New York Times this week, Anna Louie Sussman said the main reason is hopelessness. Married couples cannot justify launching their child into uncertainty. Sussman is the author of the forthcoming book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty.
Prospective parents may be hopeless because they are godless people who think they are stuck with gaining enough power to rule their private world — and they can’t control it well enough. Or they may be hopeless because the rulers of the world in the last 30 years (here is your list of billionaires) have infested the ground with weeds of disaster that overwhelm their every positive step.
Sussman provides an example of this new instinct among potential procreators:
Raleigh Rivera and her husband had spent five years fine-tuning their parenthood plan: In 2025, they would move from Los Angeles, where they have been living since 2023, back to Ms. Rivera’s hometown, Minneapolis, where they could afford to buy a home and start a family. “We both have been baby- and kid-crazy for our entire lives,” she said.
They had planned to start trying when Ms. Rivera turned 30, a birthday she celebrated last summer. But that same year, everything that had felt stable to them started to crumble. It began with the Palisades and Eaton fires decimating parts of the city they called home. The prospect of a first-time home buyer credit, something Kamala Harris had campaigned on, had disappeared. By summer, Ms. Rivera’s parents in Minnesota were choking on smoke drifting over the border from Canadian wildfires. Her husband is a citizen, but since he is Mexican American, she worried that racial profiling policies put a target on his back. Ms. Rivera, who has a master’s degree in public health, worried about sending a future child to school with unvaccinated classmates. “We felt like we had worked hard on ourselves, making sure that our finances and our health and everything was in order,” she told me when we spoke in August. “And those plans are on pause right now because everything is — it’s just impossible to know.”
An age of uncertainty
Researchers run into this sense of impossibility wherever they go. I run into it in my therapy office almost every day. If you are trying to make useful policies for the future or you are predicting what future demographics will be so you can get ready, you need to factor in that young people bring an inescapable and crushing sense to the discussion — that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Sussman says, “Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.”
The future has never been assured, but it feels as though we are living in a time of spectacular uncertainty. Here are the reverbs concocting a vibe:
In the United States, workers spend less years at a job and experience less stable income.
Life expectancy, once inevitably increasing, has fallen for less-educated women and men.
Many of the forces our economy is built on — A.I., immigration, global trade — feel distressingly volatile.
“Disruption,” once a byword for a disturbance or a problem, is the governing ethos of a terrifyingly powerful sector of our economy.
The rise of prediction markets has turned the world into one large casino.
Even declining fertility rates feed the vibe: How will society function if each generation is smaller than the last?
The two generations currently of childbearing age bear the psychological and financial scars of coming of age during world-scale catastrophes. Their trauma amplifies the vibe:
Older millennials entered the labor market during the Great Recession; many watched their parents lose their jobs or homes.
Members of Gen Z, whose lives were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, now find themselves competing against A.I. for entry-level jobs and even prospective partners.
Now the man running America seems single-mindedly devoted to chaos at home and abroad.
You can probably feel the anxiety rise in you as you read all this stuff, right? If not, turn on a screen. The Great Recession’s outsize impact may also be due to its status as the first economic crisis in the era of a nonstop digital information deluge, which rendered it, and the sense of dread it engendered, all but inescapable, even for people not financially affected. The same kind of impact is now generated by natural disasters, political upheaval and war from anywhere in the globe; no one is insulated. We don’t just bear our own uncertainty, we bear the amplified uncertainty all around us as well. It is hard to disentangle from what concerns mostly others to concentrate on what concerns mostly you.
Faith boosts fertility
In some studies, researchers have found an element that boosts fertility: faith. And I don’t think they were just collecting J.D. Vance sermons. For many believers, faith provides deeper certainty.
The famous Romans 5:1-5 is basically a poem about hope in the hands of the paraphraser, J.B. Phillips:
Since then it is by faith that we are justified,
let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace,
and here we take our stand,
in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—
we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.
Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance;
this in turn will develop a mature character,
and a character of this sort produces a steady hope,
a hope that will never disappoint us.
Already we have some experience of the love of God
flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.
To read these lines in the manner Paul wrote them, we need to exercise our spiritual awareness deepening into Holy Spirit awareness. We can all get there.
But it might be hard to get out of the gnawing fear we feel to do so. The ordinary awareness of this present age is rifled with uncertainty. That has always been the normal state of humanity separated from God. But today it is even worse, as humanity is wrapped up in a virtual oneness under the thumb of the purveyors and manipulators of an artificial intelligence.
My family experienced a large dose of uncertainty last month due to death and illness in the clan. I’ve watched us reach for the resilience to cope with loss and change. Some have turned to faith, and love. And I think there is some shaky hope that some did not live by until they needed to. It is sad to find yourself old and in need of hope in the most uncertain of times – your old age in the age of Trump.
Phillips gets at what Paul has to say to to encourage us — young and old alike, very well, I think:
Grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.
We can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.
Character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us.
I don’t know about you, of course, but when I read those lines a few times, I felt better. I made myself read them again just now because I want to feel better.
When the Tennessee legislature bends the knee to Trump and turns back the clock that briefly marked an attempt to undo the racism of the U.S. society, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and we take our stand in that.
When I drove over the line from gentrification to devastation in North Philly last night, I knew we could be full of joy here and now even in our trials and tribulations, not because we don’t care that the world is an uncertain, cruel place, but because the love of God is being poured into it.
So we plant trees. We have children in hope. Not because we are certain the world is worthy of our love and trust. But because we trust the love being poured into it.
We grasp the peace and take our stand in the certainty that God has hope for US! Jesus is joy, itself, no matter what the passing-away powers do. If anything can change the world and change us to see the goodness built into it, it is people who hope like that.
I attended a psychology conference recently with a large contingent of Evangelicals among the presenters and participants. All day long, as people explored the meaning of faith, there was an intrusive theme I kept hearing, “I am on the outside getting in.” God may be welcoming us in. Or we may be struggling to get in. But the existential reality with which most seemed to agree is that we are all on the outs with God.
I felt outside of their “outsideness.” My “other” existential reality never dawned on me so acutely. I have not stopped thinking about it ever since. I really do feel I am in with God, in Christ, right now. Undeservedly but absolutely inside.
All weekend long I kept taking issue, in my own thoughts, at least, with the extreme sense of autonomy some people were stuck with. It is a dilemma. For psychologists, autonomy is a fundamental truth to be protected. For Christians, it is a good thing but not THE thing.
Autonomy
You can get a definition of “autonomy” by watching The Pitt. The doctors on that TV show are protecting it all the time; it is a main element of their ethics. They painstakingly hold back their opinions and even advice so the patient can exercise their freedom to choose. On one episode the ER gave a dying woman a long time in a scarce bed to make up her mind about how she was going to die.
As a result of all this painstaking, the doctors end up very much like God, I suppose, letting us unfold without bossing us around. Of course, the opposite is true, too. The doctors are often portrayed as having no choice at all, constrained by science, protocol, profits and time. They are constantly complaining about being trapped by the needs of the emergency room, enslaved to their paperwork, and subject to their foibles and their relationships. They seem to feel they have no autonomy at all.
The definition of autonomy is, simply, the capacity to think your own thoughts and take action on them, not be dominated by someone else and enslaved to their will. We’re all committed to it, all feel we don’t have enough, and all feel subject to something or someone that thwarts it all day.
As a psychotherapist, much of my work is to help people exercise their autonomy to think and feel as they desire and make new choices accordingly. Mostly, my clients want to be free of what ties them up so they can love and be loved, and so they can contribute to society and receive from others.
The Evangelical clients tend to have a further dilemma, because they believe if they think anything but God’s thoughts it is a sin, and if they feel their feelings (most of which are immoral or prone to be), it is likely a sin. They seem to be determined to take orders from Jesus the King, which releases them from the need to listen to themselves and change. It is a theological nightmare. They are strangely condemned to be in charge of their future, very autonomous and alone, but they are totally subject to someone else’s will, which is quite beyond their ability to accomplish but which is a life and death matter to accomplish, nonetheless.
For instance, the last verse of the version of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded we sang on Good Friday had this final verse:
My days are few, O fail not, with thine eternal power,
to hold me that I quail not in death’s most fearful hour;
that I may fight befriended, and see in my last strife
to me thine arms extended upon the cross of life.
Did I hear the theology right? This seems to be the gist of it: “I need God’s power to hold me (I pictured a tractor beam) because I am on the other side of death; I’m outside of the place Jesus lives. I have to fight to stay on my quest to be inside, where Jesus, one day, will greet me with open arms.
My friend protested on Facebook on Good Friday: God doesn’t love us because Jesus died. Jesus died because God loves us. Even though this is common New Testament, many of the Christians at my conference were still working out a transaction. Jesus died for me, so I have to die for him to seal the deal and get into eternity. Jesus died for me so I could gain the power to do my assignment and so be good enough to get into heaven.
To sum it up: Evangelical Christians often feel “outside” God’s presence due to a performance-based spirituality that equates grace with legalistic obedience rather than a free gift. This mentality stems from a “sin-fixation,” whereby believers constantly scrutinize their actions to measure their spiritual standing. This approach often leads to a cycle of shame, where failing to meet high behavioral standards feels like losing God’s favor, creating a perpetual need to get back in.
Let’s unpack the elements of that a bit.
Performance
A twenty-something friend told me she could not attend Jr. High summer camp as child because she had not yet spoken in tongues. She faked it. I still marvel at this. How could someone make the ecstatic experience of tongues, totally uncontrollable by definition, into a criteria for getting into camp? I understand the delight of having the Holy Spirit “come upon me.” And I think tongues were, in the Bible and continue to be, a sign of God’s presence. But make the experience a general rubric for goodness or acceptance? Teach the junior highers the need to perform the trappings of faith well? 1 Corinthians is an argument against people who would do such a thing. But if we are all outside, we will likely invent a criteria for getting in — and, unfortunately, for keeping people out.
Measurement
Many evangelicals define their standing with God by how well they obey set rules—such as church attendance, tithing, and avoiding specific sins. When they “stumble,” they feel as though they have fallen out of grace, confusing sanctification (the process of becoming like Christ) with justification (being declared righteous). People measure their sanctification to prove their justification as if they were in charge of their salvation!
I went to a conference session by a Christian Psychologist (who I love) and he was using research models to measure love, since why should God be outside the religion science has made for itself? It was a nice attempt to put measurement back where it belongs.
Self-control
An intense focus on personal sins can lead to “creeping legalism,” where believers spend more time obsessing over controlling sin than experiencing the freedom of grace. This “sin-fixation” results in a constant need to apologize for being human, leading to a feeling of being “outside.” It often results in the need to control oneself, others and the world which never goes well.
Self-control is one of the fruit of the spirit. There is a long history of people using the word to keep themselves undefiled, especially by sexual impurity – because they want to get in. But a more accurate meaning of the fruit is: the healthy empowerment one feels when they experience autonomy, the gift of being one’s true self. In Greek philosophy, self-mastery was basically the best one could do, it was the best to which one could aspire in a cosmos full of impersonal, often irrational gods. But Christians live in a world given by a Creator who loves them and leads them, day by day. Self-control is the calm capacity to give as grace has been given to each of us.
Permission
Some evangelical teachings can create a mindset where grace is viewed as permission to sin, but simultaneously, “unmerited favor” feels fragile and easily lost. People are in a balancing act between feeling good about where they are and waiting for the other sin shoe to drop. This dichotomy leads to anxiety about one’s standing with God. The idea is, “Once I’ve given in to sin I am tainted.” This leads some people to fake being in, even when they feel tainted. It leads others into self-exile, since they know they will never be fully in.
One serious teen I knew became a Christian and showed up exhausted to talk to me one day. When I asked him why he looked so tired, he finally revealed. “I have to stay awake because I have a lot of sins to confess. I especially don’t want the sun to go down on my anger.” He really loved the idea of not getting away with anything, but he could not permit God be in charge of the forgiving. He was perpetually in charge of making the right choice to get permission to come in.
Promises
The gap between the promise of a transformed life and the reality of human brokenness creates a sense of disillusionment. The idea is, “If all the promises are not being fulfilled in me, I must be out.” Validating their own authenticity according to God’s performance can make it difficult for believers to accept they are already “inside” God’s grace. Especially when we are sick in body or mind, we assess our well-being according to what we think ought to be true. For many believers, any sin or suffering mars their perfection in Christ.
Assessing ourselves according to how well the promises of God are realized in our life is a recipe for being perpetually out of the exquisite feeling of swimming in the ocean of grace into which we were launched at birth. If the test tube truths the religion of science teaches dominate us (which are often disappointing in their own limited universe), God is regularly disappointing and we are usually disappointed or disappointing, depending on how we respond. We can end up loaded with a false guilt about how bad I must be for God not to fulfill in me what he fulfills in others!
Obedience
Dallas Willard explains how many Christians mistakenly see Christ’s teachings as laws to obey to gain grace, rather than as reflections of the life that comes to them through the new birth. This fundamental misunderstanding keeps believers striving to “get in” to a kingdom they are already part of.
This misunderstanding is so universally assumed that the TV show The Good Place could have it as a central premise. Kristen Bell does not believe she should be in the (what comes to be revealed as an ersatz) “good place” because she is selfish. It seems almost everyone is convinced that salvation requires being good enough to deserve it and obedience to arbitrary rules is key to achieving it.
In Christ
I guess I should not blame the Evangelicals for falling into heresy, since it seems like from the Middle Ages onward, Europe was a long road to re-centering humans. Christianity was reduced to a penance system long before they got there.
DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man put’s the idea of the dangerous kind of autonomy into a picture. The circle represents divine or spiritual perfection (cosmos), while the square represents the material, earthly world. By bridging both, the figure highlights the human body as a microcosm of the universe. Humans are central, especially men.
According to DaVinci’s chart, I am autonomous. I am innately free to choose. In relation to God, I am exiled or welcomed in. I relation to others I can make relationships or end them.
But how did I get out of relationship if I were never in? From the beginning to the end of the Bible (the Evangelicals purportedly love), our sense of being out is a matter of being removed from where we were. Being in with God is our natural human state.
Paul is always referring to being “in Christ.” The phrase is a spatial metaphor which signifies the believer’s renewed sense of being safe at home as opposed to their previous uncertainty before faith and baptism. Being our true selves in Christ or our false self in our autonomy is Paul’s version of being in our out. The way Paul sees it, Jesus was at the creation of the world and we all bear his image. And according to Jesus, we are all are touched and called into abundance by God’s love. We are all in the love of God whether we think we can choose that or not. God sees us according to who we are in Christ. We have the freedom to turn away. But that is not natural or inevitable.
Being outside where nothing but the power to do “righteousness” proves our worth and where our successes give God the glory he craves results in the psychopathic Pete Hegseth and the infamous prayer he prayed at a meeting last week:
“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.”
I think it takes little convincing to admit “the peace of the righteous,” as Hegseth describes, has nothing to do with Jesus and nothing to do with peace. The U.S. has NOT been at war, undeclared or declared, for about 15-20 years since 1776. If you can’t get into heaven, you make yourself a god on the earth, right? At least that is what a lot of people who would like to follow Jesus are struggling with in the United States.
DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man put’s the idea of the dangerous kind of autonomy into a picture. The circle represents divine or spiritual perfection (cosmos), while the square represents the material, earthly world. By bridging both, the figure highlights the human body as a microcosm of the universe. Humans are central, especially men.