Jerome Daley's Blog, page 3

Shine.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples. (Isaiah 60:1,2)

A few days ago I drove up to one of our Airbnb properties (that Kellie manages) and couldn’t believe my eyes! The little decorative wheelbarrow that sits so merrily in front of the house was turned over. It didn’t fall over. It had to have been driven into! Because it was completely flipped, with its load of soil underneath it. 

I felt stunned and angry. How could someone do that and not tell us? Was it a guest, or was it some random passerby? What’s certain is that you couldn’t hit the wheelbarrow with that kind of force and not realize it. So someone hit it…and decided to keep it a secret. They didn’t even turn the wheelbarrow back upright. Who does things like this?

Kellie and I got into the Airbnb business three years ago. Everyone wants to get away to the mountains, especially in COVID. So the business has done well, and we have found joy in discovering hidden gems of houses and creating charming, welcoming retreat spaces. But I’ll tell you what: It has opened a window for me into the dark side of human nature like never before.

We get to see both sides. Most guests are pleasant, respectful, and appreciative of our labors. A few go above and beyond to leave thoughtful notes, to write glowing reviews, or to leave an abundance of cash for something small that got broken. And then there are the wheelbarrow crashers!

We’ve had shower curtain rods pulled out of the wall, glitter paint spilled on furniture and rugs, rotting food left on the counter with juices dribbling down into the cabinets, sheets with bubble gum on them, lamps broken…all without a word of explanation, apology, or reimbursement. And of course, when these things happen, like Paul, I rejoice in my persecutions. I delight in being wronged. I pray blessings on my enemies. Uh, right.

It’s disheartening to be wronged by people, isn’t it? To have someone take your kindest efforts for granted or to disrespect your time or possessions without the slightest tinge of regret. We all experience this at some level. Sometimes customers or clients. Maybe someone you work with. Drivers in traffic are notoriously rude. And then there are our children; they never take our sacrifices for granted or disrespect our property, do they?! Nope.

Courtesy, it seems, is in crisis everywhere. [Don’t worry, this article is going to get happier.]

I’ve been musing lately on how fragile is the connective tissue that brings us together…or holds us together. Most casual exchanges seem to come off quite nicely, but the opportunities for miscommunicating, misunderstanding, or hurting people’s feelings are a virtual minefield. Church friends, extended family, even (or especially) our spouses: no relationship is immune to the risks.

We often say one thing, yet another is heard. Good intentions are misinterpreted. And when the response is ugly, often my first instinct is to be ugly back. And even if I bite my tongue and don’t reply in kind, I often think ugly thoughts. Haters are going to hate, I say to myself…smugly sliding the offending party into some such damning category.

And on top of all our personal conflicts, real and imagined, we are barraged almost daily by the hostility of speech and action on the public stage. Political villainization followed by self-justification. Nationalism pits party against party, country against country, each drowning in its own rhetoric. The human condition is truly grim. Must our human solidarity really be so brittle? So easily fractured and torn?

The prophet Isaiah didn’t sugarcoat the problem in his day: “Darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples.” We’re blinded by self-interest and self-reinforcing narratives, he laments. But in the midst of that dim assessment, he sees a fantastically optimistic picture emerging…and I wonder if we might dare hold this larger view as we enter into a new year surrounded by portent.

But the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy. (Isaiah 60:2-3,5)

Isaiah saw a dawning of hope and light that heralded the rising of the very glory of God, a brightness manifesting itself across nations with radiant, redemptive impact. Can we really imagine such a thing? Should we? I think that we can and should—for one reason. Because the glory of God resides within us, and that’s why Isaiah call us out! “Rise up,” he challenges. “You shine your light! The light comes from Me but it flows through you…and if you don’t let it out, it will not come forth.”

I find that idea completely intimidating yet compellingly hopeful. It incites me to believe that God-in-me and God-in-you can make a substantial difference in our land. That we could even change the story unfolding on the planet. I know, it’s a stretch. But I think that God could be that Big in and through us. And is there really any other game in town worth playing?

ThriveTip

So what might it look like for us to “Rise and Shine”? Maybe it looks like cultivating gratitude instead of fear. Like showing small kindnesses to strangers. Like expressing interest and compassion where we sense that people are in pain. Maybe it looks like giving ten bucks…or a bottle of water…or a meal to the dirty panhandler who makes us feel immensely uncomfortable. Maybe like turning off the news with all its manipulative provocations. Who knows, you decide.

Take a moment now to think of your own next step, of how your brightness might leak out this week!

 

Takeaway

God is in the business of hope and healing.

Mandorla Redux

God can be pretty tough to figure out sometimes. I wonder if God likes it that way.

My daughter Ashley and her husband are just finishing up building their house—building it themselves—and the last step was installing the septic system. That was supposed to happen this week; now it will never happen.

Turns out that the septic field next door encroaches into their land, and there’s no room for two. They have a Plan B with a composting toilet, but it was not at all what they wanted. Life disappoints us on somewhat regular intervals. It doesn’t have to be devastating to be disorienting, and sometimes we wonder what the heck God is thinking.

I woke up this morning carrying that disappointment and wrestling with God. Was this circumstance evidence of God’s intervention, sparing them some larger loss…or setting them up for a better blessing? Or was this just the natural course of events that God had nothing to do with…but will work for good somehow despite the loss, as God promises to do in Romans 8:28? It seems like those are the two most common ways of understanding God’s presence in the world. I grew up in the charismatic tradition that emphasized the former; I have come over time to be more comfortable with the latter. But honestly, I’m not terribly comfortable with any of it.

We confront situations like this all the time, don’t we? I have two friends on chemo right now—the tumor has disappeared for one of them (my brother-in-law) but not for my other friend who is suffering the effects both physically and emotionally. Thousands of prayers have been said for both of them. Is God intervening…or redeeming? God seems to do both at times, but we can’t seem to predict the results.

On a hike this morning with my friend Eric, he reminded me of my Mandorla blog post and insightfully applied that truth to just this kind of situation. God initiates in interventions, and God responds in redemptions. One is not true at the expense of the other; both are fully true, and somehow we’re invited to live in the overlap between those two realities. I don’t find this paradox completely satisfying, and that led to Kellie’s input to me this morning!

Listening to me wrestle with the conundrum, she finally said, “You want to figure it out, so you can control it, huh?” Sometimes I wish she was less direct. “Well,” I hedged, “maybe not control it but at least know more what to expect. I want to protect myself from disappointment.” She responded, “I think it calls us to humility”…and what can you say to that? Ah humility, the topic seems to keep dogging me!

So I’m doubling down on the Mandorla by adding two more circles into the mix, at least as it relates to how God shows up in our world. See what you think of this. In addition to “Intervention” and “Redemption,” I’m adding “Transcendence” and “Mystery.”

Here’s what I mean by those. Transcendence refers to the big overarching story God is telling in the world. Don’t get me wrong, God is seriously vested in my small story…and yours. But woven among all of our small dramas is one Grand Drama: God’s remaking of the entire planet toward a “new heaven and new earth” (Rev. 21). And it’s our expectation of that Grand Drama and its good ending that sets our small losses into perspective so we can rest untroubled, or at least substantially less troubled. I think this is part of the transforming story that shows up in our small septic system drama.

And then there’s the giant X-factor: Mystery. The unknown. The reality that God doesn’t tell us all of the divine story because we can’t handle it. That keeps God God and me me. The invitation is to embrace humility, to surrender my frantic efforts to understand and control, and simply to worship. Here’s the way this paradigm translates into my responses: Faith, Hope, Rest, and Worship.

As true and informative as this may be—and it’s helping me—diagrams are just diagrams. They remain human attempts to reconcile our limited logic with the otherness of God. But within the humor of that effort, there is one essential truth that we cannot negotiate without utter tragedy: what lies at the epicenter of the Venn diagram, that tiny but utterly necessary center: the goodness of God. This is what the enemy of our souls was gambling for in the Garden, and this is the place where I still find myself vulnerable when disappointment overcasts my soul in darkness. But I will not yield it. I will not release the center. I hope you will join me in rooting yourself to that small but mighty plot of land and taking your stand on it, come hell or high water.

The goodness of God is everything. To lose our confidence in that is cataclysmic. When Jesus’ disciples found themselves at the breaking point of logical frameworks, Peter uttered the inevitable: Where else can we go, Lord? We don’t get it…but You are the only thing we can hold onto. You are the one thing we know is True in the tumult of this world (Jn. 6:60-69). From this secure center, I can lean into these multiple realities, these paradoxes. I can lean as needed into God’s willingness to intervene, God’s commitment to redeem, God’s triumph to transcend, and God’s delight to mystify. These powerful ideas help me let go of the striving and fall into good, safe Arms.

ThriveTip

Take a few minutes to journal some thoughts on these questions…

Do you find your commitment to the goodness of God challenged in your experience? How does that show up for you?

Of the four themes that describe God’s presence in the world—intervention, redemption, transcendence, and mystery—where do you typically land?

Operating out of that paradigm, where do you still encounter pain or disappointment?

Which of the four perspectives do you most need to lean into? And what would that look like?

 

Takeaway

God’s goodness is the anchor of life.

Boundaries.

Most of us know the experience of getting spread too wide and too thin—finding ourselves in a place of inner depletion where it feels like the grace has run dry. If you followed my sabbatical reports in October, then you’ll know my most recent experience of this…and no doubt you can name some of your own. In a very real sense, we have all experienced that kind of stretching this year where stresses that would have been fairly easy to adapt to and recover from in the past were amplified to overwhelming in the age of COVID.

Many of us carry an instinct to try to push against our boundaries and accomplish more…because that’s what society rewards. And that’s how we often feel a sense of worth. We live in a performance culture, wouldn’t you agree? Maybe it wasn’t much different in the first century, where God had to admonish Paul to stop “kicking against the goads” (Acts 26:14)—to stop pushing back on the boundaries God had set in place for him. If there is one message from 2020, it might be that, like Paul, it’s time to own our humanity in humility… and honor our boundaries by surrendering to these constraints.

And while it’s easy to chafe against our boundaries, God actually sets these up for our protection. And when it feels like the grace has run dry, well, it probably has! This is not a deficiency in the grace; it’s usually a transgression of the boundaries. I’ve been hanging out in a fresh translation of Psalm 16:6 this week, and it goes like this…

Within the boundaries you set for me there are nothing but pleasant places! What a delightful inheritance I have!

There are a number of profound implications in this exclamation from King David:

That God is the one who sets certain kinds of boundaries in our lives.

That when we stay within those boundaries, our experience is pleasant.

That when we move outside those boundaries, it’s not so pleasant.

That God’s intentions for our lives are incredibly good!

I’m allowing David a bit of poetic license to use some hyperbole when he says that our lives within God’s boundaries are “nothing but pleasant”; pain and loss are woven into the fabric of life in this realm, even when we are precisely where God wants us. At the same time, I think it’s possible to experience pain and loss that still fall within a larger recognition of the goodness of our divine inheritance in this world… and I explored that paradox in my recent post called Undisturbed. Life can be both hard and good at the same time.

But my takeaway from this psalm is that I often make life much harder than it needs to be by stepping outside God’s loving boundaries. Does that make sense? Can you relate to that idea?

When I talk about boundaries, I’m not talking about sin. Yes, those are obvious boundaries for our protection, but there are other, more personal and seasonal boundaries. Also designed for our protection. Let’s dig into that for a minute.

It’s my personal practice to take a retreat every January, and while I take many retreats in the course of a year, my New Year’s retreat is very specific. I am asking God for God’s perspective on my upcoming year: What is most important for my soul this year? What does God want to change in me? How does God want to use my gifts and calling this year? Where do I need to be investing more time and energy…or less? The time I spend listening to God’s answers, and then planning my year around that vision, allows me to enter into the year with confidence and expectation. (If you’d like to join me in this on January 10-12, click here.)

The basic drift of God’s direction for me last January had to do with tighter boundaries, a narrower focus. There were several new things I was wanting to lean into in 2020 that God was giving me a clear “no” around, as in “not yet,” and then COVID doubled down on that whole tightening theme, right? And where I got into trouble last summer, it came from not occupying the boundaries God was offering me.

When we step outside the kindness of God’s guardrails for our lives, grace is not available there. I don’t mean God’s love and help aren’t available, but I mean the “oil” that is meant to lubricate the machinery of our lives isn’t present in that place. That friction is part of God’s mercy to help us wake up to where we are and then reposition ourselves back into the flow of purpose. Paul’s experience of this truth in his personal journey helped him pen the same advice to us in Romans 2:4 where he says that it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. That helps us recognize the boundaries and step back within the flow of provision and blessing.

As I look toward 2021, that is my question for God once again: What are the boundaries that will lead me into the pleasant places you most want for me? What are the activities and opportunities that might lead me outside what is pleasant and into striving…because I’d just as soon avoid those!

 

ThriveTip

I hope the application is obvious. Wouldn’t you want to know where the boundaries of blessing reside for you this year? Can we trust God to set those boundaries out of good intent rather than stinginess? Can we experience our “delightful inheritance” even within the confines of COVID? May our hearts declare a resounding Yes to each of these questions!

So what’s your next step in that direction? Take a moment to plan it now.

 

Takeaway

Boundaries are a form of love.

Mandorla.

We have just witnessed the conclusion to a bitter political struggle in the 2020 presidential election, and the aftershocks keep rolling. In my conversations and observations this year, almost no one felt ambivalent on the outcome: Whichever party people folks supported, they felt super strong about it. One candidate was definitely right; the other was definitely wrong. And I feel that personally too—the emotional hooks are strong!

I explored our all-too-human tendency toward tribalism is my September 25 blog post, and this post is a continuation of that theme. Somehow as Christ-followers, we must find a way to hold our personal beliefs with conviction while simultaneously welcoming those with opposite convictions in a spirit of authentic love, without feeling threatened or alienated. It’s a tall order sometimes.

I recently became acquainted with an ancient Christian symbol, the mandorla, the Italian word for “almond.” It represents the shape formed in the intersection between two circles, often known as a Venn diagram. Each circle represents one perspective, one “truth,” one belief system, one tribe…that lies in opposition to the other circle. The circles themselves appear to be mutually exclusive in theory, but in practice they overlap. Let’s look at some examples…

The first is where we started today: our two dominant political parties. While they have obvious differences in platforms, both are anchored in the democratic process and the rule of law. Another example is theological: sovereignty and free will. Just as the political divide is represented by two parties and ideological systems, so this theological divide is represented by Calvinism and Armenianism. Yet both systems are anchored in the trinitarian God of the scriptures. Many more mandorlas exist sociologically: urban and rural, traditional and contemporary worship, white and black ethnicities, introversion and extraversion…the list is endless.

But there’s a reason that the mandorla came to be associated with Christian iconography, and the reason is revolutionary! Because the Kingdom of God shows up incarnationally in the intersection of these polarities. Jesus himself defined the intersection of humanity and divinity and represented the overlap between heaven and earth. As followers and representatives of Christ, we too live in the mandorla, occupying that same space between two worlds and seeking their full integration. We could say that the gospel, the good news, is graphically represented by the mandorla: where heaven penetrates earth… first through the presence of Jesus and subsequently in our presence.

So what does this mean for the community of faith? Everything!

Often Christians wind up being as polarized as the rest of the world—we’re often known more for what we’re against than what we’re for. When that happens (as our tribal instincts often determine), we lose our message and cease to carry the redemptive presence of Christ in this world. We move outside the almond of intersection and over-identify with one or another of these human systems. If we are to remain in the mandorla and champion the Kingdom of God, then the church must advocate for the overlap and welcome those who see the world in diametrically opposite ways from us.

I don’t know about you, but I find the concept compelling but the implementation difficult. Whether we’re talking about presidents or theologies or worship…or heck, even what kind of wine is better, I find that my tendency is to stake out my opinion on one side or the other. And sometimes even to demonize the other side, even if I hold those feelings inside. But I want more for myself, and I want more for the community of faith: My hope is that we can enter into the spirit of Christ and not only put up with our differences but maybe even begin to delight in the sheer spectrum of diversity represented among those who bear his Name in the world. Again, it’s a tall order, but how can we settle for less?

My practical intention is to try to articulate this vision more frequently and then try to create spaces where we can invite the conversation with curiosity and respect—asking questions to better understand, listening to the heart behind the words, and then being willing to offer our perspectives without being attached to other people’s agreement. Maybe we’ll learn to love better and more broadly—not just those who look and sound and act like us.

Here’s how Jesus put it…

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:46-48)

 Don’t get thrown by the word “perfect.” The Greek word teleios carries the sense of being complete or whole. The implication is that if we can only enjoy our own tribe of people, then we’re no different than the rest of the world. But the love of God’s kingdom is much more expansive and inclusive than that: It requires a fully-orbed, all-encompassing love that welcomes the “other” within the embrace of loving presence. It recognizes that we are ultimately all of a single tribe called humanity. God didn’t come to seek and save just one side of our tribal polarities; God came for us all! And if we want to represent God’s heart in the world, we have to learn to expand our hearts to match the divine intent. This is a stretch for all of us, so let’s reach for that together and encourage our small steps in that direction!

ThriveTip

Look for someone who carries an opposite view from you on something. Take some time to inquire and explore why it’s important to them…without criticizing or championing your view. Be led by your curiosity: Ask, listen, and maybe reflect back what you’re hearing for confirmation. “Practice the presence” of another person with no other agenda than to understand and love.

 

Takeaway

Live in the Overlap.

Undisturbed.

A few days ago I woke up around midnight with roiling emotions. It wasn’t a personal conflict, but I felt conflicted about a set of relationships in my life. Predictably, it was in the middle of the night that my subconscious decided to churn through it all…and when I woke, my barely-conscious mind obediently took up the task. Knowing that mental gymnastics would solve nothing, I got up to pray and journal through my troubled thoughts.

I walked up the stairs to our prayer room, but instead of turning on the light, my gaze was drawn through the window to the wooded hillside glimmering in the sheen of several neighborhood lanterns. The silhouetted trees stood stolidly in the deep calm with mystical awe. The contrast was gently jarring, my inner tumult juxtaposed by these peaceful sentinels keeping watch through the night.

The wonder and beauty held me in reverence and whispered to my spirit: “I am undisturbed.” It wasn’t a voice as much as a simple, profound knowing that entered my awareness. And I realized that the Voice that spoke this wooded, leafy audience into existence echoes through it still. I wonder if David gazed upon a similar starlit sky when he penned his effusive words…

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Ps. 19:1-4)

So if the Word-birthed creation still casts sacred words, what might they be saying? I’ll tell you what I heard that night; it went something like this:

Not a sparrow falls to the ground outside my care. I grieve its passing…yet I am undisturbed. My children are worth more than many sparrows, and they too fall to the ground within my care…yet I am undisturbed. Great tragedies assail my beloved earth—wars, pandemics, and unspeakable injustices. I weep, I mourn…yet the very nature of my kingdom is to be undisturbed.

There is something timeless and unshakable about my Presence in the world that cannot be rocked by human drama, and this is meant to be a great comfort to you, an anchor for your soul. You must carry my heart and then labor for peace and justice in the world, but your authority comes from the quiet place, the undisturbed place. When you forget—when you get swept up in the currents of grief and struggle—tune your ears again to the silent language of the trees, the mountains, and the sky. They sing the great, enduring refrain of birth and death and resurrection. They sing the mystery of the Undisturbed.

 And so it was from this newly-hopeful, freshly-grounded center, I found myself able to intercede for holy realignment within my community…without yielding to the clamorous currents of the drama itself. Albert Einstein famously said that “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it,” and I find this to be a pretty reliable maxim. I cannot speak meaningfully to the deepest needs of either my own small family or the expansive human family unless I am rooted like the trees in an eternal, transcendent reality at once richly empathetic, yet fundamentally anchored.

Saint Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century Spanish monastic, mystic, and author of the enduring classic The Interior Castle, lived out this profound rootedness as she engaged a deeply tumultuous era that included the Spanish Inquisition and Catholic Reformation. From that proving ground, she left us this prayer that described the crux of her relationship with God:

Let nothing upset you

Let nothing disturb you

Everything changes

God alone is unchanging

With God all things are possible

The one who has God lacks nothing

God alone is enough

The winds of crisis and dismay abate only momentarily in the brief sweep of our lives, and 2020 has only doubled down on the disturbances we are trying to weather together. Yet like those great wooded sentinels outside my window, we too can weather every storm if our roots run down deep into the heart of the earth, into God’s generous undisturbed self.

ThriveTip

Use Teresa’s prayer above as a journaling prompt this week. Take the first two lines…and write your heart’s response, the next two lines…and again your heart’s response, the final three lines…and your heart’s response. Describe the circumstances in your life right now that challenge those truths, along with your intent to surrender to those same truths. Receive God’s comforting and securing embrace. From this posture, now pray for the needs of those you love.

 

Takeaway

Healing Presence flows from the Undisturbed Place.

Political.

Political…what am I thinking? Political posts are the kiss of death! I have lost Facebook friends over posts I didn’t even know were political but were perceived as such. Seriously, it feels to me like there is nothing more polarizing in our modern culture than the political scene. And as far as I can tell, Christians are little different at this point…yet I think we should be. Profoundly different.

I’m not pretending that I don’t have strong political views (although I will not be talking about them ). And sometimes it’s hard for me to appreciate folks—Christians especially—who take the other side. But I’m reaching for a way to talk about how we engage the political conversation as representatives of Christ…especially now that the election is in full swing and will increasingly dominate the news cycles for the rest of the year.

Some months ago my pastor mentioned an ESPN program on college football rivalries: how the most bitter rivalries are those where schools are geographically close and the demographics almost identical. In other words, among those who are most similar and have every reason to think alike, the strongest alienations arise. Fans apply war paint and prepare to do battle against their foes. I suspect that you, like me, have seen this escalate from friendly competition to something approaching rage.

Such tribal violence troubles me, whether athletic or political. Why must politics go nuclear? How has political party become “he who must not be named”? And how is it that we can shrug off the biblical command to “love one another,” and even to “love our enemies,” and instead war against our brothers and sisters—at least internally—if we find them on the other side of the political aisle? To borrow from the apostle James, “My brothers and sisters, this should not be.”

There must be another way! But honestly, what would it take to get there?

I don’t fully know…but I’d like to offer some thoughts that I’ve been chewing on for the last year. Not unlike the conversation on race, I think it would serve us well as the Body of Christ if we could take baby steps to listen with new openness of heart…and speak with new gentleness of spirit. See what you think of these ideas:

Reject over-identification with a political party. The psalmist says, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth” (Ps. 121). Our help doesn’t come from the political left or the political right; our hope for national reconciliation and redemption does not rest in Washington! Which is a relief, right?

Jesus modeled this priority by avoiding the political trap about paying taxes to Caesar—redirecting people’s attention to divine authority rather than human authority (Luke 20)—and steadfastly avoiding the political agenda of the Zealots who worked to overthrow Roman rule. Instead, Jesus identified his mission only with doing the will of the Father (John 6:38)—a heavenly agenda, not an earthly one. To be fair, Jesus challenged political leaders, threatened their power structure, and ultimately died a political death. But he never confused God’s kingdom with human kingdoms.

I don’t think this means we should boycott the political process, but maybe it means we should be wary of the kind of tribalism that aligns identity and loyalty around political power. No political party can ever represent the Kingdom of God; we can’t expect that, and when we do, we inevitably wind up justifying bad behavior. Movements, both political and religious, generally grow from the seed of a beautiful ideal…yet tend to succumb to the pressures of institutionalism over time. Once that happens, they may still champion an ideal but are predictably subject to unwieldy power differentials. No institution, not even the church, is worthy of unqualified trust—only God.

Be wise to the pitfalls of power. Speaking of which, I’m often reminded of the well-known perspective from Lord Acton, a British historian: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Acton observed that a person's sense of morality lessens as his or her power increases. If this is true, and history would argue in its favor, it’s wise to carry a healthy skepticism when it comes to the rhetoric and agendas of those wielding power in our country and in the world, recognizing the corrosive tendencies that power often exerts over those who hold it.

But this is tricky, because it’s also easy to become jaded and cynical. So we’re torn by forces on both sides: on one end, the political system tried to seduce us into becoming true “believers” in their story, and on the other end, we’re tempted to bitterness and disillusionment once we get disappointed. This reminds me of Jesus’ advice, “Be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16). What does this mean for the election? I think it means that we care and we vote. We champion the issues that matter to us. But we also don’t buy in too far or expect too much.

Give thanks for what we have been given. One truly reorienting force in this dilemma is the power of authentic gratitude that invites us to be consciously and even verbally thankful for the freedoms we have experienced in our country. They are far from perfect—and never will be. But we don’t have to look far afield to find other countries reeling in the trauma of totalitarianism or anarchy. We can keep working for justice within a flawed system…while honoring the grace we have received. Criticism without thanksgiving falls short of the Kingdom we represent.

Let go of the litmus test. Not long ago, I was told that a national Christian leader urged believers to identify the one issue that matters most to them—the one non-negotiable, whatever that is—and use that clarity to lock in on a candidate. In my (hopefully humble) opinion, this is bad advice. No single issue can define the full spectrum of governance and justice. I believe it’s more important to look at the big picture and actually ponder the intricacies of our electoral candidates. The one-issue litmus test is a dumbed-down political strategy. It’s attractive because it keeps us from having to do the harder work of discerning character, which is my next point.

Value character over platform. This point might wind up being the most controversial, but I believe it aligns with the ethic of Jesus who told us that a “tree is recognized by its own fruit” (Lk 6:44). We all know that words and actions can speak quite differently: It’s all too easy to use personal charisma to sway a crowd with compelling ideals; it’s quite another to live out actual integrity over decades.

You can’t separate policy from character, dismissing egregious behavior in one’s personal life as irrelevant to the responsibility of executive decision-making. Life doesn’t compartmentalize like that; we are all of a whole. Bad fruit in one’s personal life will show up as bad fruit in one’s public life. Policy issues are one point of reference for character, yet they are far from the whole thing. As challenging as it is to perceive the integrity of a stranger, we must do all we can to discern exactly that. 

Discern with humility. And discernment really is the issue—spiritual discernment that cuts through inflated rhetoric, strength of personality, and party affiliation. We can’t relegate that discernment to another person or group; we must do our own work on this. With humility.

Most of the issues that form the deepest divides in our country are split roughly down the middle. Think about this for a moment: About 165 million Americans take the opposite view to your strongest convictions on economic, social, and international concerns. What do you do with that reality? Do you assume they are all idiots, or worse, fiends trying to destroy all that’s good and dear in the world? Or do you wonder what virtues and values lead them to take that posture…and if perhaps you have missed some of the nuances of the conversation?

Humility is perhaps the greatest need of our day when it comes to politics. It’s not a matter of being wishy-washy or soft on justice. It’s a matter of seeking to understand the person who represents another perspective—to listen, to challenge, and ultimately to respect your “enemy.”

The truth probably lies somewhere between CNN and Fox. And the “villain” in your political narrative probably isn’t the other party as much as it is the commoditization of information that feeds off controversy and ideological violence. The media, again in my opinion, is perhaps most culpable of all for the animosity surrounding political discourse for one simple reason: their agenda isn’t ideological; their agenda is capitalistic. They exist to make money, and money is driven—in their case—by fear and division. But I digress.

Discuss with kindness and respect. If we can muster the inner authority to resist tribal warfare on the political front and embrace humility in the national debate, then we have a chance of actually living out the prime directive of our faith: love. And love is always where God is to be found. From a place of genuine love of our fellow humans—all trying to figure this stuff out best we can—we can then venture into the conversation with kindness and respect. Without sweeping caricatures and ideological gauntlets but with a commitment to relationship above party.

Truth matters…and the plea for relationship is not a request for going soft on truth. But the truth is that we only know the truth in part. And the thing about being human is that we don’t always know which part of the truth we don’t know. 

Perhaps the most fitting ending for this post comes in the words of Paul: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:12-13). My brothers and sisters, let us learn the fine art of loving as we engage political discourse together.

ThriveTip

Some spiritual leaders I respect are recommending that we place a four-month moratorium on our consumption of the news. I know there are legitimate reasons to stay abreast of current events, but the intake is unavoidably toxic. It riles the spirit and cripples our capacity for peace. I encourage you to limit yourself to the bare minimum so that we can carry the aroma of Christ exemplified in this portion of the Prayer of St. Francis...

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

 

Takeaway

Love is the greatest Truth.

Blessing.

I have never had reconstructive surgery…but returning from a month’s sabbatical, I feel like I know what that must feel like: surgery for the soul. Reconstructive surgery happens when an injury “deconstructs” something vital in your body. Something has been damaged, torn apart, usually with violence and trauma, causing enormous pain and loss of capacity. In this case, a crippling of soul. The injury is such that it can’t simply heal; it must be mended.

Do you relate to that at all? Have you hit a place in your life that felt that disabling? It’s vulnerable, dangerous, isolating. You might call it a loss of heart…without much hope of finding it again. It might show up as great loss and sorrow…or perhaps great frustration and anger. Regardless of how it presents emotionally, the common root seems to be a terrible disappointment, maybe even a disorienting sense of betrayal.

I think the damage for me had begun some time ago without being fully conscious of it, but this summer it turned ugly, and I became intensely aware of it both internally and externally. While my coaching business had eased off due to COVID, our other business—vacation rental properties—had exploded with activity. Everyone on the planet, it seemed, wanted to get out of the city and up to the clean mountain air. Understandable. And Kellie and I wanted to give them a most wonderful experience in one of our mountain cabins. Yet while we were grateful for the business, we simply couldn’t keep up with all the work involved, and we were running morning to night poking our fingers in the leaky dike. It was awful.

By the time sabbatical eased around end of August, I was utterly and completely exhausted…and that was just externally. On the inside, the situation was much worse. Much. Worse. 

I was staying alone at a cabin in Tennessee for sabbatical, and one day I picked up one of the early books I had written, back in 2005 actually, called When God Waits. I flipped it open absent-mindedly and started reading a page. In it, I was talking about our transition from Colorado back to North Carolina and the things God was teaching us about the waiting effect that dogs us between one season and the next. But it was the tone of the writing that caught me by surprise: the optimism, the hopefulness, the anticipation, the light-heartedness. Honestly, I didn’t recognize that guy. Somehow I had lost those qualities along the way…and in their place found numbness and cynicism. I felt disenchanted. Despairing even. And very, very angry.

I resented that life had been so hard for so long. Struggling year after year to make ends meet. Each year feeling that, if I just work a little harder or a little smarter, maybe this will be the breakthrough that allows us to ease off a bit and actually enjoy the life we’ve been given. And each year, no matter how well things had gone, it didn’t seem like enough. I didn’t feel like I was enough. Shame metastasized into bitterness…although I was clever enough to hide it from others. I even hid it largely from myself.

The real damage, though, lay even deeper. The greatest violence was perpetrated against my view of the Father’s heart. The blame was largely subconscious; it was actually easier to blame myself than God. But the result was the same: I had lost all sense of living under God’s blessing. Under God’s loving care and sufficient provision. Instead, I felt ignored, disregarded, at times even meanly teased. And I resented the hell out of it. Why, God? Why would you ask the impossible of me? Why would you make it so hard? Don’t you care about me any more?

I know I’m not the only one who has found himself in such a dark place. Life can be viciously hard at times, even without the depth of suffering that many encounter, like the loss of a child or a crippling disease. The blows of life can lead the most hardy among us to lose heart. It doesn’t take much sorrow to stab our hearts with a splinter of doubt: Is God unfair? Is God hidden? Is God silent? Philip Yancey tackles these difficult questions in his achingly honest book, Disappointment with God…which I happened to read on sabbatical.

Graciously, though, God began his gentle surgery on my soul before I even got to the book. It began with the recognition that God wasn’t the one making life so desperately hard on me, I was! Part of my response to the summer’s profound loss of heart was an addiction to stress. Keeping myself over-busy and over-stressed was actually a coping mechanism for the deeper heartache I couldn’t face. So if I couldn’t find enough pressure, I generated it myself in a self-destructive spiral of effort and exhaustion. If this cycle had not been arrested by the sabbatical, I’m not sure how badly this would have gone.

Something about reading pages I had written fifteen years ago shocked me into a sobriety of humility and repentance that began the mending process in my soul. The shadows of abandonment began to fall away, and for the first time in a long time, I began to feel the Father’s embrace again…and know, beyond all doubt, that I am truly loved. And at the end of the day, this is all that really matters. That what I have taught and written about for decades is actually true! We are beloved beyond all knowing. Alternating waves of relief, grief, and contentment rocked me, and I began to surrender to this Truth above all truths. The one thing our souls need more than oxygen: Love.

But it’s a particular kind of love that is anchored in a rock-solid security and affection: I live within the blessing of God. He is for me! He delights in me comprehensively—not the me that’s free from frailty and limitation and failure, but the me that includes all that human messiness. His lovingkindness surrounds me and holds me and saturates me. It’s prodigal-son kind of stuff! I honestly didn’t know just how much of my spiritual vitality, my divine life force if you will, had been lost…until it was re-found.

ThriveTip

The thing I most want to convey to you now is, not the concept of your belovedness, but the experience of it. I don’t know if music moves you as deeply as it does me, but I find that it often has the power to bypass my mental defenses and sneak in around the edges where I’m still tender, where the longing still hides. My son sent me this song just as I returned from sabbatical, and it conveys as powerful an impartation of this truth as I’ve ever encountered. I hope it moves you. I hope you can own its truth for yourself. Can it be true that God is for us? My heart says yes, a thousand times yes! If you’ve lost hold of it, know that it has not lost hold of you. It is the Truth of all truths, and you belong to it. It is your heart’s true home.

 

Takeaway

God is for us!

Ruach.

In the summer of 2015 Kellie and I started a two-year training in spiritual direction through The Transforming Center, and in one of the early retreats we were invited to consider which biblical character story most reflected our own. It’s kind of a tough question, and I immediately began to consider a few of the faith heroes with whom I felt most affinity—men like King David…or perhaps John the Beloved…but none of it quite seemed to fit.

Eventually a name popped into my head—Jacob—followed immediately by a second thought, Seriously? Jacob is your guy? Does it have to be him? I mean, come on, Jacob’s story isn’t exactly stellar; even his name means “deceiver” (which I will actually rebut). Nevertheless, over time it felt true…and even insightful. I won’t share all the story behind that, but I would like to focus on the key turning point in Jacob’s life as a paradigm for key transitions in our own lives, what the contemplative tradition calls the paschal mystery.

The paschal mystery is a way of looking at the death and resurrection of Christ as, not only the crux of salvation history, but also as the template for all of our own conversions and transformations, our own mini-deaths and mini-resurrections. The template for Jesus went like this: 1) loss of an old life – Good Friday, 2) reception of a new life – Easter Sunday, 3) adjustment to the new, grieving the old – the forty days, 4) letting go of the old and letting it bless you – the ascension, and 5) reception of a new spirit for the new life – Pentecost.

Jacob also had his paschal transition, which we see in Genesis 32 when he wrestled with a mystery man and received a new name: Israel in place of Jacob, “because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” The name Jacob literally means to grasp the heel, a crafty wrestling move that can be seen negatively as deceptive…or positively as skillful or strategic. He started his journey as a deceiver but ended his journey as a strategist.

Jacob came out of the womb just after his older twin brother, literally holding onto Esau’s foot…so the naming was legit. And so began a life of wrestling, starting with the deception of his father in order to win the family blessing, followed by continued wrestling with his equally-crafty uncle Laban. But as Jacob leaves Laban after twenty years to strategically confront his brother Esau, God unexpectedly picks a fight with him.

Jacob wrestles all night with a “man” who seems to represent God…and everything changes for Jacob. He loses his old life (wrestling with men), receives a new life (wrestling with God, in a good way), adjusts and grieves (symbolized by his limp), lets go of the old (literally responds to his adversary’s demand to release him in return for a blessing), and receives a new spirit for a new life. This last point, for me, represents a release of the small story of building his own fortune and stepping into the bigger story of building a nation: picking up his authentic role in the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 35:9-12).

So let’s bring this full circle into our own lives. Almost every moment of our lives involves a transition of some sort—letting go of one thing, letting something old die, and opening our hearts to something new. And then there are the biggies: the defining pivot points of our lives that, when we look back, have changed everything.

I’ve been writing and talking recently about addictions. Certain moments of our lives have the potential to be pascal pivots, and sometimes this means coming to the end of ourselves, admitting we are powerless over some destructive pattern—that it needs to die, and that we are ready to surrender ourselves in a deeper way in order that something brand new can come to life in us: a new spirit for a new life.

Ruach is the Hebrew word for Spirit, and on my trip to Colorado with my son Thorpe, this word became the touchpoint of yearning for us both, a profound desire and determination to let something old and broken die and to embrace something new with humility and hope. For me it was my addiction to stress: the way I endlessly criticize myself, then heap obligations upon myself, and ultimately flounder in anger and despair. I can’t change it…but Ruach can.

In the first few verses of the Bible we see Ruach as the creative force hovering over God’s vision for the world. Ruach then becomes the very breath breathed into Adam in the crescendo of creation. Most of the great men and women of scripture were described as filled with Ruach…and the Greek equivalent, Pneuma. Jesus himself was marked by Pneuma in the form of a dove at his baptism, then quoted from Isaiah that Ruach had anointed him to proclaim good news…and finally breathed Pneuma upon his disciples after his resurrection. Pentecost, of course, is when there is an explosion of Pneuma that ignites the infant church.

We cannot break addictions. We cannot change or transform ourselves. But we can invite Ruach to do what only She can do in us. (Yes, Ruach is a feminine noun and represents the feminine side of God.) Ruach is the power to break bondages and to live in the fullness of God’s kingdom, so I want to follow in the footsteps of faith, including my brother Jacob, and receive a new spirit for a new season of life. I want my every breath to be filled with the Spirit to break old dysfunctional patterns and release me into new life-giving ones. Ruach is ready, and I am freshly ready. Are you ready?

ThriveTip

If you could have a fresh infusion of the Holy Spirit in your life—and She is 100% available!—and if Ruach’s presence could transform something from false to true, what would it be? What most needs the Spirit’s gentle transformation? Take a few minutes in your next quiet time to journal about that…and actually invite Ruach into that pascal pivot.

 

Takeaway

Our fiercest wrestling often precedes a blessing!

Tribal.

I am a recovering Judger.

Judging others is a professional hazard for being human. We come by it honestly. Sometimes it’s hardwired into our personalities. (Any high-J people on the Myers-Briggs out there, like me?) Sometimes criticizing people or the government was woven into our family of origin. Sometimes we absorb a critical spirit from the religious environment we encounter in life. Yikes! Sad, but often true.

At a more fundamental level, we grow up as kids learning to understand who we are by learning from our parents and contemporaries who we are not. “We are Protestants; we are not Catholics. Our descendants come from Ireland, not Italy…or Africa. We buy domestic cars, not imports. We are Republicans, not Democrats. We go to private school, not public school.” The lists are as varied as we are, but one thing is for certain: There was a list! Spoken or unspoken, our identities as young people were largely forged on the anvil of distinction and separation.

Dualism is what many spiritual writers these days call it: the need to be for something and against the opposite. The need to know our tribe, to over-identify with it, and then to put the shields up against all competing tribes. It’s normal, it’s human, and it’s the antithesis of the way Jesus engaged the world.

Jesus was a rabbi, but then hung out with the other tribe—the “tax collectors and sinners.” He let the adulteress—those people!—off scot free. He was criticized by the Pharisees for not obeying the rules of the religious tribe (fasting, ceremonial hand-washing, etc.) and being corrupted instead by “gluttons and drunkards.” When it came to identity, Jesus just seemed to have a hard time figuring out who his people were…and then keeping his distance from the rest. He regularly crossed the well-worn divides of ethnicity, socioeconomics, religion, and political power. We could even say that Jesus’ lack of tribal sensitivity is what got him killed.

Two thousand years later, I find myself having a heck of a time shaking off those dualistic instincts in my desire to be like Jesus. Just how easy is it for me to cross those hard lines and engage curiously, genuinely, and lovingly with LGBTQ folks? How easy is it for me to embrace the homeless or the fundamentalist or the pierced-and-tatted? That’s more of a stretch for me, but I’m working on it.

To be fair, Jesus knew how to draw a line in the sand, but it was rarely about purity codes and mostly about hard-heartedness. His criticisms seemed reserved for those in religious and political positions whose power depended on the very tribalism that threatened the kingdom community he proclaimed.

Many of us as Christians have been trained to be afraid of those different from us. Afraid of moral ambiguity. Afraid of slippery theological slopes. Honestly, Jesus didn’t seem to be afraid of any of that, wading into the very center of cultural turbulence. He wasn’t afraid…because he knew who he was, and he knew that only love could cross all tribal divisions and bring the healing we so desperately need: reconciliation with ourselves, with one another, and with God.

All that is actually preamble to my real topic: politics. (Deep breath.) And here’s my question, As followers of Christ, how can we stop over-identifying with one political tribe and start engaging in humble, curious, gentle conversation with those who see it differently than we do? Isn’t that the world we really yearn to live in—a less-angry, less-divided, more-compassionate community?

Think about this for just a moment… Most of the issues that form the deepest divides in our country are split roughly down the middle. Which means that about 165 million Americans take the opposite view to your strongest convictions on economic, social, and international concerns. What do we do with that reality? Do we assume they are all idiots, or worse, fiends trying to destroy all that’s good and dear in the world? Or might we wonder what virtues and values lead them to take that posture…and if perhaps we might have missed some of the nuances of the conversation?

Please hear me on this: I am not advocating for relativism or championing lack of conviction. Again, Jesus wasn’t threatened by difference because he knew who he was…and so must we. But who, then, are you? Who am I? Am I the aggregate of all my opinions…or am I the incarnation of love? And maybe the bigger question is, How do I love those that I believe are dead wrong? Honestly, I suck at it…but more than anything, I want to learn. And I believe that Jesus can show us the way. He who is Truth can show us how to embody truth as we extend ourselves in love.

 

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every… tribe… standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb…. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:9,17).

ThriveTip

So here’s a practice round. For the next few months leading up to the election and inauguration, let’s practice listening, asking, and offering our perspectives with grace and humility, knowing that at the end of the day, our salvation will not come from Washington and that there is ultimately only one tribe called humanity. The Kingdom of God comes to heal and unite us, not tear us apart from one another. Maybe you can help me, and maybe I can help you. This is who we’re meant to be.

 

Takeaway

Christ loves all tribes…not just ours!

Privilege.

Have you ever felt set up by God? You read something… You hear something… You have a conversation about something. They all seem to be isolated thoughts, and on their own they can be internally metabolized. But then they converge—and the convergence is suddenly overwhelming. You find yourself reeling, disoriented, maybe angry, maybe afraid. Part of you simply wants to reclaim the emotional security of the status quo—something safe, something familiar. But another part of you wants to wake up to a new truth and a new reality, despite the threat to your delicate emotional stability. That moment came for me three days ago.

When my wife first told me the news of George Floyd’s killing, I felt the weight of grief: Here we go again. Another unarmed black man killed by a white man…and by an “officer of the peace,” no less. When will it stop? Why does it continue? Yet despite my genuine sorrow, I managed to keep the event at a safe internal distance. That is my practiced habit of dealing with bad news of any stripe. 

A Habit of Self Protection

In fact, I’ve made it a priority for most of my adult life to protect my emotional equilibrium from the turbulence of bad news. Twenty-five years ago I stopped getting a daily newspaper. I never watch the news on TV except by accident. I don’t read the news on the internet except for isolated topics. Important, must-know news events filter their way down to me via others, and I keep a safe distance from the trauma. By and large it works…but there is also a cost to buffering myself from the tragedies and injustices of the world. 

The day after I heard about Floyd, I stumbled across a video clip of the actual killing. It was probably only ten seconds, but actually watching it happen—instead of just hearing about it—horrified me, just as it has horrified millions of viewers now. I suppose that those who watch the news regularly must numb themselves; how can the human soul possibly hold the sheer weight of such endless misery? I tell myself that I don’t care too little; I care too much. That my spiritual calling must be protected from such emotional violence. But now I’m not so sure. 

I had responded appropriately, I thought. I signed the online petition calling for the officers to be, not just fired, but charged for murder. I spoke to a few friends, opining that perhaps this could be a turning point. But internally, I was still protecting myself from being swept away in a flash flood of anger. Ah, and there it is. I think I’m terrified of the visceral power of that kind of anger. The only level of anger that comes close to being commensurate to the injustice is a level of anger that feels nuclear. The combination of storming internal rage in the face of perceived practical impotency feels lethal…so I’ve gotten good at dodging it. And then came God’s ambush. Three days ago now.

The Ambush

On the heels of our recent monsoons, Sunday morning broke gloriously sunny. After a long bike ride with Kellie, I took a fiction book out on the deck…but the first paragraph took my breath away. Here’s how it read.

For her entire life, unwittingly, she had complied with her parents' first shared principle: Make no noise in this world.... Don't stand out; you have no right. No one owes you a thing. Keep small, vote mainstream, and nod like it all makes sense. Yet here she is, asking for trouble. Acting like what she does might matter.

I laid the book down, stunned, and wondered, Am I that person? Have I lived small, played it safe, tried not to rock the boat? No, I protested silently, I take a stand for the things I believe in. Don’t I? And I do…but only when the perceived risk is low. I avoid all the incendiary topics, the ones that might bring personal backlash. I found myself wondering what it might be like to live more dangerously, to actually make a little noise. Setup #1. 

Later that afternoon I had a Zoom call with two colleagues from a two-year training Kellie and I had taken on spiritual formation. Over a series of nine retreats in Chicago, we had been in a small group…and three of us have continued a spiritual friendship. In the course of conversation Marilyn said something that startled me, “With the exception of the sixties, this pandemic is the most turbulent time I have ever lived through.” Wow, I thought, Is that true? Is this season of social upheaval and uncertainty the most turbulent time of my life so far? I really had not acknowledged to myself the possibility that there would be no return to “normal.” It was a strange and vulnerable feeling. Maybe a vulnerability that the black community lives with constantly. Setup #2.

After that conversation Kellie asked me to watch a video that a friend had sent her—a video conversation between two black pastors about the dynamics of racial tension and the apathy of the white church. “I don’t know,” I hedged. It’s a beautiful, peaceful day, I thought. Why would I want to stir up all that sort of discomfort and dissonance? But I did watch the video…and the wheels came off my bus. The disparate parts came together, and I was undone. Setup #3. 

Willing to Listen

Strangely, I found that facing those three setups—the call to courage, the inevitability of a new normal, and the culpability of white evangelicalism—made me feel inexplicably alive. The collision left me reeling, yes…but it also felt deeply right. Disorienting, but somehow reorienting. Hearing two black pastors talk about the view from the other side of the tracks, speaking from a place that was spiritual grounded, calling the white church to repentance but without malice—it began to give me hope that I might actually be able to hold the great tension of racial injustice without fleeing into my safe, protected, privileged world.

I would ask you too to be willing to listen—not just to this specific and brilliant discourse, but to the larger perspective of the black voice. Even the angry parts. To listen without rushing to defend your position. Without rushing to pat political dodges. Without needing to play it safe or live small. And above all, without thinking you know the answers. Because if there is one thing clear above all else right now, it just might be that the white community does not have the answers to the plight of the black community. And it just might be that the white church has been part of the problem instead of part of the conversation. If we can’t accept this possibility, then we have lost our allegiance to a Messiah whose life, whose identity, and whose message was embedded in the community of the oppressed.

The gospel, once hijacked from the context of the poor and transplanted into the context of privilege, inevitably becomes a skewed gospel. How can it not? Somehow, we who are white (poor or affluent) must humble ourselves to listen and learn, recognizing that our greatest risk may come from our white friends who will be threatened by this truth, who will feel that anything beyond empty rhetoric is tantamount to breaking ranks with our own.

But there’s a further risk that scares me more. It’s the risk that a few weeks or months from now, the news cycle will move on, and my conviction will wane…lulled to sleep by safer passions and my personal distance from the heat of the battle. These pastors challenged me with a hard truth: The opposite of being racist is not being non-racist; the opposite of being racist is being anti-racist. Is there room in the limited bandwidth of my life to bear this cause?

To Be and To Do

Listen with me to a few words from these two black voices of faith: “There’s an emotional disconnect [with the white community]. Their ignorance about our plight may draw tears, but it doesn’t draw action. It doesn’t draw up solidarity, and it’s not drawing up change” (Rev. Jerome Gay). To which Dr. Bryan Loritts extends a plea: “Instead of rushing to action, sit with us! Sit in the ashes and listen. Listening counters the messiah complex with its implicit patriarchy. Stay in relationship with us and walk in community with us. Be willing to sit under the power of people of color…and then engage advocacy, but not before.”

One of the things I learned in my studies in Chicago is that the spiritual life has classically been understood, particularly in the monastic tradition, as the intersection between two vital forces: contemplation and action. I have always identified as a contemplative more than an activist, but the Christian path requires both. Trustworthy action must be rooted in contemplation or it becomes self-righteous and violent. Yet contemplation that doesn’t generate compassionate action becomes self-indulgent and myopic.

So what might a path forward look like, one that honors both contemplation and action, one that responds to Loritt’s plea for presence…and Gay’s cry for solidarity? A path that transcends being a social media warrior and truly captures the heart so as to be fundamentally changed?

I think that George Floyd’s death is going to cost me something very personal: my emotional distance. And I have no idea where that journey is going to take me, but I think I know where it must begin. I have lived half a century so far, and most of that in communities that were half black, yet I have never had a black friend. I’ve had plenty of black acquaintances with whom I was friendly, but never an actual friend. So while friendship cannot be forced, I find myself on a quest to form an enduring friendship with a person of color, an American black man, so I can glean perspective beyond my privilege. So I can find solidarity with the oppressed and contribute toward justice. And so I can be enriched by a new dimension of friendship. Will you join me on this journey?

ThriveTip

Where is your heart in all this? Each of us is on our own journey in relationship with this topic and in our actual relationships with people of color…so I can’t tell you what your next step is. Except that there is a step. One simple step would be to watch the video I referenced above. Whatever your step, take courage—God is changing the world right now, and we get to be part of it!

 

Takeaway

Discomfort is good when it brings us into solidarity with God and the oppressed.