Meditation on John 5:39-40

“You search the scriptures, because you think in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me: yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

The Daily Office, Proper 15, Tuesday

From the ages of 12 to about 15, I was involved in a charismatic group who took the scripture literally as a word for word guide to being “saved”. At that time in my development it was a good thing. Yes, it promoted a relationship with God, and therefor the world, as being fear based, but for a precocious child such as me, fear was a good thing, keeping me out of big trouble, and maybe even keeping me alive. Eventually though as my mind continued to mature, I could not reconcile the contradictions in the Bible, and if I was to be honest to myself I had to acknowledge the truth of this. Life is not a stationary stagnant thing, so why in heaven or on earth would the spiritual life be any different? Of course it is not.

In many ways, the Gospel of John brought me through this troubling transition of the sanctity of absolutism and into the holiness of possibilities in the mysteries of life and of God. I think God is in part mystery. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 18 that God, “made darkness his covering around him, his canopy thick clouds dark with water.” The whole notion of God in human form is in itself mysterious and this most mysterious gospel allowed me to begin to become a little comfortable with the notion of mystery resting in the heart of faith while living in a life and world of uncertainties.

It’s funny, ask a person who’s read the gospels, even more than once, “When in his ministry does Jesus go to confront the Temple authorities?” Most will answer that Jesus went to the Temple at the end of his ministry, creating the confrontations which ultimately led to Jesus’ arrest and execution, as described in the first three gospels. Yet in John, the Temple confrontation occurs at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. For the first time I saw the conflict of a purely literal frame of mind in my reading of the scriptures: even the gospels cannot reach a literal agreement. I thought that the literal compliance to these words written on paper would lead me to the Promised Land, would give God good reason to sweep me up in the literal rapture. I thought the scripture was a “how to” book; follow the rules and never be troubled again in this life and after it, be spared the prospects of hell. Easy.

But I can’t follow the rules perfectly. No one can. The rules can’t provide eternal life. No book can provide eternal life, not even the Bible. I know this now, but there was a time when I thought I had to believe the Bible literally, word for word, without question, or be punished. In this frame of mind, the Bible was then a weapon, one to punish myself with, and one to punish others with. The Bible was intended to be an inspirational tool, a plow to till the soil of the heart and mind to make them ready for God’s love, but literalism and absolutism beat God’s plow into swords and spears to be wielded for spiritual and emotional violence, even to physical violence. In the voices of literalism and absolutism, God’s scriptural call for loving community is distorted into the dismal tortured cry of hypocrisy and division.

I know in my heart that truly God’s spirit moves through the Bible, giving signs, “bearing witness” in Jesus’s words written in John. They are Jesus’ words, words of love. They are words of compassion. They are words which promise justice, realized in the lives of “the righteous” whose righteousness is found in their care for the poor, the sick, the friendless and the outcasts, in living the life Jesus calls us to. The healing salvation, the life we come to when we come to Jesus, is not the life promised by a book, but a life born of the promise of God’s loving spirit, reborn in the hearts of humans who accept the way of Jesus as the way of loving God, loving ourselves, loving our neighbors and even our enemies.

Verse 42 reads, “But I know you do not have the love of God in you.” In this verse Jesus explains the folly of the literalist absolutist of his time, of our time and in my life at times. The Bible means absolutely nothing if the love of God is not in me. If the love of God is not in me, then no matter how perfectly, literally and absolutely I believe the Bible, it will do neither me, nor anyone else, any good at all towards the healing salvation found in loving God and all God’s works.

There is a requirement to realizing God’s love in my life, humility. The humility to more absolutely trust God’s love offered to us in Jesus. The humility to trust in the love of Jesus, trusting in God’s love more than in my trust of scripture or a particular interpretation of it, which means too that I have to trust the mystery of God, the mystery of loving. I have to humbly trust the mystery of God’s love made real in my love of humanity, the humanity I like and the humanity I may despise. I have to humbly have faith in God's love in you. I have to have humility of faith to trust God's love when you fail me and I fail you. I have to have the humility and faith in the Spirit of love living in me to realize Jesus’ loving life, in the uncertain now, now living faithfully toward living the eternal life, now in love.

Sacramental Way

I have a friend who left her life of vows after 30 years because she was “tired of living the lie.” I wish I knew which lie she had tired of, there are so many to choose from. It’s funny, where ones’ wrestling takes them. My friend wrestled with her faith for decades to leave religion… I wrestled with mine for decades to return to religion.

God, Irony is thy name!

I do know we give “the lie” many names and attributions, but no matter where we go, if untreated, it remains, whether in religion or outside it.

The truth is we all have lies we live. We all have secrets and the pain which rests in the heart of them. Whatever her lie is, I pray she will come to accept it and find healing. Perhaps this move will lead her to her truth, perhaps the absence of the convent’s shelter will allow her to see it and treat it face on; healing is never an easy thing to do. May she be granted the courage and grace to be healed.

Healing is God’s salvation. With our willing healing participation, in the shaping of the inescapable pain and sorrows of life we discover the source of love in the shared vulnerability of Jesus, in him we find and know mercy; his compassion now made alive in us. Here is a sacred act, the living act of our pain, even the pain of our transgression, now transformed into compassion.

More and more I realize, in my life at least, the calling is to be healed and in turn be healers. The more I’m healed, the more I’m able to heal: all by the grace of God, realized in the compassion of God for us in Jesus of Nazareth. This is love. This is real change.

This is restoration to our proper place and transformation of the holy space within us, our hearts, from a place of secret pain walled up with stone, into an open place where sits God on the mercy seat within, choosing to heal us rather than punish, choosing to cast out our demons rather than crush us. Here is our liberation from fear to be more fully engaged in our humanness, in our light and our shadows, in our sorrows and our joys. We all know suffering and we can all know love in it's receiving and more so in its giving.

Through all of it, Jesus shows us this way, calling us to witness to his way, the sacramental way of giving our love away. It doesn’t matter who we are, what we do, where we’re from or what we’ve done. Love is calling us. Life is calling us. God’s love is calling us to share in God’s way, to take our love, to be grateful for the blessing of it, and give it away in all its healing power, and likewise be healed.

This is life in the sacramental way.

This is more than just a promise from God; this is the reality we know, this in the fullness of God's compassion in the very human Jesus. We also know this truth in every tangible human act of justice, kindness and mercy, for ourselves and each other, all reflecting God's glory, grace and love. We know this truth because when we really take love’s risk, we are rewarded love’s joy.

We can feel it. We can see it and can know God’s joy in it.

Open Me

In every face

and in every place

in every heart

and in every space

Christ open

my eyes to see you

open my ears to hear you

Christ open

my mind to know you

open my mouth to praise you

Christ open

my hands to offer you

Christ open

my life to live in you

Christ open

my heart to welcome you

Meditation on Psalm 145:9

“The Lord is loving to everyone * and his compassion is over all his works.” Psalm 145:9

Thursday, Proper 13, Morning Prayer, The Daily Office.

This is my favorite verse from the Old Testament. I’m not sure if there is an Old Testament verse which better anticipates the nature of God’s presence in the world as being fully realized in the Lord Jesus Christ. This verse makes clear in my understanding that indeed Jesus came not to “abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill.” It also makes pretty clear to me that indeed if I believe myself to be a disciple, and therefore a servant to the Lord of compassion, then I am obliged in this relationship to model my intentions and ways to loving everyone and to have compassion cover all my works.

Another aspect of this verse which is interesting to me, and causes me to pause, is that there is none of the typical language about the “righteous” and “wicked”, which is typical in describing the Psalmist’s struggles with the notions of rewards for the “righteous” and punishment for the “wicked”. The verse also describes God’s love in the present tense, “is loving”, which is very different form the usual scriptural past-tense of God in history or in the future tense of love as a reward, as in, “the Lord will love the righteous and destroy the wicked”. No, this verse says of the Lord that he is loving to everyone, the righteous and the wicked.

This verse is also a very good definition of God’s quality of grace as being the loving which is always present to everyone. This is a good description too of the “Am-ness” of God’s being as the “is-ness” of God loving everyone, and loving the “everyone” in each of us, the “righteous and wicked”. With this realization, it is easy to see why the Psalms following 145 are hymns of praise and joy. God is loving me, and covering me with the Lord’s compassion, liberating me from my wicked petty self-centered self, so I may be more loving. I need to recognize that the Psalmist just couldn’t help himself and had to mention, one more time in verse 20, God crushing “the wicked”. To which I must say, Jesus didn’t crush or punish “the wicked”, in loving compassion he forgave them, the Lord cast their demons out, and again made them whole.

If we too trust that God is loving us, covering us in compassion made manifest in Jesus, we too can be healed and transformed from our fears and suffering into more loving beings, more loving people. We know this in our love relationships with God and each other. We just sometimes have wake up and to remember it.

We’re not childish; we know that the requirements of healing involve some pain: even pulling the bandage off hurts a little. Sometimes the pain may indeed seem like the agony of an exorcism, or the pain of moving past an addiction, or for a few, it might feel like the pain of being “the wicked” crushed as the Psalmists liked to describe. But if we trust in God’s love, and we trust the love God makes available to us in our communities, we can be “a people healed, restored and renewed”, as a way to build communities for ourselves, our churches, and beyond.

The fourth edition of the Oxford Bible interprets The Book of Common Prayer’s version of verse nine, “…his compassion is over all his works” as “…over all he has made.” I like both as together they point to God’s loving as being active past, present and future with the word “works”, and also indicates God’s constant presence in the whole of creation in the phrase “all he has made.” For me this is a verse of great hope for those who fear the wrath of God rather than trusting in the Good News we know in Jesus: that God is loving us, and compassionately covering us with love, now and always. This verse also creates hope as the predicate for a day when all Christians will consider how we are loving to everyone, in the decisions we make about our lives and our communities, and in whether too, compassion is overseeing our work on earth in the communities of Christianity and the world.

Feast of Mary Magdalene

Going by my liturgical calendar, I wish you all a happy Feast of Mary Magdalene, my Lady patroness, companion and inspiration; companion to Jesus who never fled, first witness to the resurrection and Apostle to the Apostles.

There are many myths attributed to my Lady Magdalene and many speculations about who she was, yet the constant about her is her record of consistency following her becoming a disciple of Jesus and the one person recorded by all the gospels as being witness to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. She never faltered. Some take her last name to mean she was from Magdala, which may be true, but in Aramaic, it is true the magdalene means "the tower", which fits her, as when all the male disciples abandoned Jesus in his hours of tribulation, she remained the tower of faithful love for Jesus through the crucifixion and resurrection.

"St Mary Magdalene, you came with springing tears to the spring of mercy, Christ; from him your burning thirst was abundantly refreshed through him your sins were forgiven; by him your bitter sorrow was consoled. My dearest lady, well you know by your own life how a sinful soul can be reconciled with its creator, what counsel a soul in misery needs, what medicine will restore the sick to health. It is enough for us to understand, dear friend of God, to whom were many sins forgiven, because she loved much." --- From a prayer for Mary Magdalene by St. Anselm

The photo is of a beautiful icon of Mary Magdalene written by my friend Sr. Ellen Francis of the Order of Saint Helena. Mary's face is exquisite, full of beauty, sorrow and compassionate love.

Blessings on my Lady's feast!

Peace, Br. John Magdalene

Of Feasts and Clouds

Driving East on 109, I saw a roadside buzzards' feast interrupted,

leaving a broken buzzard to take its place in the banquet of the dead,

while up ahead, clouds of orange dust gave witness that the woman on her riding mower was mowing more dirt than grass, to which my dog never gave notice, as he was looking out the window, pondering the strange dogs behind the fences mooing their odd barks.

A Prayer for the Anglican Rosary

This is a prayer for the rosary developed from a series of prayers which came out of meditations I experienced while doing the daily job in my former employment as a Meals on Wheels driver. Atlanta traffic will drive people to rage or prayer and in my case at least, sometimes both: as a result I found myself in more and more frequent prayer and open eyed meditation while driving. There came out these times of driving meditations, seven prayers which coincide with the seven prayer beads separating the cruciform beads. These prayers came to signify to me God’s presence within the daily work in the world, my job, and to remind me of the intention of my life through-out the day, especially in the face of the day to day challenges of remaining centered in Spirit, while performing the day to day tasks of living in the world.

On the Anglican rosary, the cruciform beads, the four large beads, honor the Trinity, which calls on the presence of God as: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The seven smaller beads represent prayers offered in communion with God’s presence. The invocation of the Trinity may represent specific needs for the prayer. For example, I enter into the cycle of prayer intent on healing, so with the first large bead then I usually say, “Heal me, Living God: Loving Father Creator: Loving Brother Healer: Loving Mother Spirit Sustainer.” I repeat this with each large bead, through the cycle of large beads and seven small beads, until I reach the first bead again, which then serves as the last bead (where have you heard that before? And, the last bead will be the first bead when the cycle begins again), and I ask, “Bless me, Living God: Loving Father Creator, Loving Brother Healer, Loving Mother Spirit Sustainer. Amen.” In between the Trinity beads, with the seven smaller beads, I pray these seven prayers:

1. God is love: God is with me now and always.

2. Jesus is the loving compassion at the center of my being: Jesus is with me now and always.

3. She the Spirit is the clarity of my mind, my wisdom, and the joy of my soul: She sustains me now and always.

4. God is the courage and calm of my open heart: God is with me now and always.

5. Jesus is the bearer of my pain and my healing: Jesus is with me now and always.

6. God is my liberation, my restoration, and my transformation: God is with me now and always.

7. God is my energy and my strength: God is with me now and always.

While there are traditional prayers for the Anglican rosary, these prayers represent for me first, a timely and practical instrument to respond to the cycle of activity and emotions which run through the course of the business day. They also remind me of what I need to be sustained, through the confrontations of the day and to keep them in perspective regarding my intention to remain centered in the love of God. This prayer also serves to remind me, that ultimately, I have no control, as I intentionally surrender to the compassion of God as the means to the end of my day… Blessings in Jesus Compassionate

Response

Eventually we will all "have to choose a side". Despite all the human flaws incumbent with the history of humanity, even the cynic must realize that one force is at least "less evil" than the other, and that the course of history is writ as one small imperfect victory, for justice and liberty, after another. We have to choose between the forces which perpetuate greed and injustice, or the forces of the also flawed, who in spite of their flaws still say, "Yes, I am my brother's keeper and all humans are entitled to justice in the face of the perpetration of greed and poverty for the sake of servicing the greed."

I remain convinced that this is an act of faith which leads me, as a terribly flawed Christian, to the cross of decision, and the act of faith which leads me to also take up the cross of social conscience and action. This is the very least of compassionate awareness and faithfulness which compels me to act, if nothing more than simply being the appropriate Christian response to the sacred compassion of Jesus giving himself to the cross for me.

Matthew 19: 13-22

Today's Office gospel reading is from Matthew where the rich young man asks Jesus what is required for him to "attain eternal life". Jesus replies follow the commandments and "love your neighbor", to which the young man replies, "I have." Jesus says to him to then sell all he has and give the money to the poor and the man goes away very sad for he was very wealthy.

As I read this at Morning Prayer it struck me that the attainment of "eternal life" is the life then experienced as a life of respecting the life around me, as the commandments describe it and loving my neighbor. These are acts of giving, giving respect and giving love to my neighbor. Yet there is more. Jesus calls me to surrender all my wealth for the sake of his love, the love of eternal life. Jesus calls me to surrender what ever it is I value, whatever those things are which I would upon place a greater value than the love of my neighbor, the love of God. They could be monetary, they could be material possessions, they could be my time, talents or my sense of ego, all these things could be things which impede my capacity to more fully love and care for all of God's gifts in creation. I believe for me, today's gospel reading reminds me that the attainment of the eternal life is in the eternal giving away of those things I stubbornly persist in believing to be "mine" and to remember I truly own nothing, as All belong to God and to God alone. To share in the eternal life then could be to share in the practice of The Eternal One, to lovingly continue to strive to give all away, as love requires of me, especially those things I would persist in hoarding.

Gospels and Creeds

I finally figured it out.

I love the liturgy, the rituals and the wondrous logic of my Anglican tradition. But, I've always had at least some difficulty with the creedal aspects of church, any and all churches. Though sometimes, I admit, "some difficulty" does include a stretch of time where I would not, could not, say the Apostolic or Nicene Creeds, for some 25 plus years.

Why? Well there was difficulty with the idea of "believing" so many things of which I had no clue about, or of which my God given rational "wise as serpents" brain had difficulty accepting. Besides, there is very little Gospel actually being related through the Creeds. Eventually, I set aside the sanctity of my brain aside and began saying the Creeds as an act of devotional humility, and as a concession that indeed I don't know everything and I could be wrong, maybe, possibly. OK, but there was still something and elementally missing in the Creeds which made them difficult for me. Then someone said something which pegged the problem for me.

I can't remember the man's name but he said, "The problem with the Creeds is they reduce the life of Jesus to a period, a punctuation mark between, '...born of the Virgin Mary,' PERIOD, and 'He suffered under Pontius Pilate."

That's it. For me that's the problem. Jesus' whole life: his works, his teachings, and his directions are reduced to a punctuation mark, which means also The Gospel is reduced to a punctuation mark. The Creeds are about beliefs. The Gospels are about activities. Correct me if I'm wrong, which I'm sure I can rely on, but aside from saying we should believe Jesus, Jesus didn't talk about belief as a series of cognitive assertions. He didn't say much either about what we shouldn't believe for that matter.

I guess this is what makes me so much less a creedal guy and so much more a Gospel guy. Jesus seems to focus on what we should be doing: loving God and all of creation and all humanity, along with praying, forgiving, healing, feeding, and providing those things which people need. Yet Jesus also doesn't say we do these good works to gain God's love and favor, we do these good works because we know God and know God's loving favor, to which we respond in returning God's blessings to all. I think God's gifts to us only become real blessings when we offer thanksgiving for them, then take them, break them, and give them away into the communion of humanity and creation.

This seems to me like an awful lot to squeeze into one punctuation mark.

Welcoming The Society of Jesus Compassionate

On last Saturday, June 9, 2012, my voice joined three others in what we believe to be a resounding, "Yes!" to the Holy Spirit's calling.

For several months beforehand a prayer had come forth from my meditations, "Loving Holy Spirit, grant me courage to hear your voice and the humility and heart to follow you." At first the prayer came occasionally, then daily until over the last few weeks it seemed the prayer was in my heart and mind through out the day.

"Loving Holy Spirit, grant me courage to hear your voice, and the humility and heart to follow you."

It's a funny little prayer as it requests nothing too specific but which has an intention which is crystal clear and undeniable.

"Loving Holy Spirit, grant me courage to hear your voice, and the humility and heart to follow you."

I believe, last Saturday in the smallest conference room in a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, four Episcopalians, after much discernment, prayer and conversation, heard the voice of Spirit calling us to follow her. With I believe, much humility and with full hearts, we said yes to her, and set ourselves to follow her, in giving ourselves to the formation of The Society of Jesus Compassionate.

I even felt a little "fear and trembling".

Between Morning Prayer and Eucharist, we four men, a priest and three laypersons, agreed to a very simple rule and vows, and in exchanging these vows agreed to being Vowed Companions to Our Lord Jesus Compassionate, companions to each other, and to all we meet on, as Brother Chad put it, "the road to Emmaus." We are given to a life of compassionate prayer and compassionate living, all following the example of our Master Jesus, "for" as Matthew recalls, "he had compassion."

We are foundlings in a nascent community. We will make mistakes. Eventually, in spite of our best intentions, as we are what we are, all living "under the sun" of Ecclesiastes, we will hurt each other. We will forgive each other too, and still will have hope in each other's companionship through the love and fellowship of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We will love each other as we pray together, work together and find rest together.

On behalf of my Brothers: Chad, Charlie, Father Robert James, and myself, we ask for your prayers as we set out on the road to Emmaus.

"Loving Holy Spirit, grant me courage to hear your voice, and the humility and heart to follow you."

May this prayer never leave my heart and never be far from my lips. Amen.

I have a sense, a notion, that full integration of spirit and body, of prayer and work, contemplative and active, is what being a mystic is truly about, rather than the idea of being one who simply resides in the ethers. I am convinced that this is important in fully realizing the incarnation in ourselves.

It is seemingly a great struggle, and it is in the western mindset. Yet, as immensely powerful as that mindset is, that's all it is, a mindset; one to be transformed and restored to it's proper perspective of wisdom in the Spirit. Or as Paul puts it, we have a mindset to repent of, to be turned around back to the mindset of Jesus, of She the Spirit Incarnate.

"Capitolism" Does Have a Nice Ring To It Though

"Conservatives" are never good for national economies, good times or bad, as they only want to conserve their stranglehold on wealth. These professional "conservative" politicians and preachers function as agents for the wealthy elites, who have no desire to remove any more wealth than what they deem "necessary" from their clutches. If economies grow, then wealth is being removed from their clutches and then is distributed among the general populations, which is in truth, the sole purpose of capitalism: to generate flow of wealth through a society. Yet the wealthy elites, powers and principalities, would strangle economies for their purposes and strangle the individuals who make up economies. Think about this. This is not capitalism.

Poverty is collateral damage. Poverty is warfare. Poverty is violence. Poverty has never been God's will, as some think, or chance, or survival of "the fittest". Poverty has always been violence manufactured and sustained by human hands. Even by mine.

God help me, I have been so freaking thick. Mea Culpa.

Rising Tides

She the Spirit is rising and lifting us all with her. Powers and principalities are terrified, their minions' stocks are declining and with their declining influence, we are retaking stock of ourselves and each other. We go online (my blog is receiving as many hits from Russia as from the US), pick up our phones, and see each other, in real time, and see simultaneously, we are the same. We start to see that if we are the same, then perhaps we are one divided against ourselves, to someone else's profit. Eventually we say enough, we are one. We can therefore move as one. We can peacefully, as one worldwide community, communion, say to powers and principalities, with their machines of poverty and war, and say to them: Enough, we will participate in your illusion no more!

She the Spirit is moving. Can the church keep up? We must follow Spirit beyond the walls of stone and wood and beyond the walls of doctrine. If we must, we must leave preachers, priests and bishops behind. If we must, we must leave all the fearful behind with our sacrificial fears. We can simply follow God's call for loving justice. Pray and let Spirit remind you. Pray and be moved to remind me.

The Next Church

I think this is where the Spirit is leading us to ultimately.

People, from all around the world and different traditions will move past the ancient barriers of ideology, personified in brick, mortar and doctrine. Because we communicate now, literally "through the ethers" of electronic media, the barriers are dissolved. Because the barriers are dissolved we, the Church of Christ's communion of compassion, can make direct contact, right now, to accumulate help in addressing the needs of those who suffer around us. We who hear Christ's call to first value love, and loving God through loving each other, will ultimately move on beyond those who would despise, judge and ignore the pleas of the suffering.

It's only a matter of time before the regional "minorities" of disciples will look beyond their denominations, their regions to find each other and connect with each other. We will then realize, "Wow, the Church has been here the whole time, we've just been separated from each other." We, from our compassionate minorities, will join each other in a "super-majority": the loving, compassionate, justice bearing community Jesus promised us, if we but believe and do.

The Evolution

God's call, and the prophetic echo, has always been liberation. Though it takes on different voices through history, the Spirit has always moved humanity towards liberty. We continue to move forward, as more people experience liberty, more people desire it. The more people desire it, the more they move towards it. Liberty, freedom, is the natural state of the garden, therefore, in a certain sense we humans are the last to evolve to it. But we will, it is inevitable, unless we completely destroy the garden before we can get there.

So Grant Us Courage

The way of the prophets is hard to endure, yet graces the hearts of God's people with courage and love for all creation. The prophetic voice shatters hearts of glass.

Why Show Up?

When I returned to the church, I wrestled with the liturgy's language and the Creed, I couldn't say the parts I didn't agree with, but eventually I did, and do, say them as a practice of humility: I just might be, could possibly be, wrong about some things. It is possible that I don't have all the answers. There are days when I don't want to go. I may be depressed or tired. But sometime we just have to show-up. You never know wonderful little thing may occur, a smile from someone who never does, or a hug from someone who never does but just happened to need one more than me and was willing to give it a try. You just gotta show-up sometimes, you never know what may happen.

We Can Overcome

Who are you, or am I, to judge? We can overcome bad theology without resorting to the same belittling tactics and scapegoating used by extremists. In fact, we will only overcome the bad theology by first overcoming the bad rhetoric. There is no time for hyperventilated rhetoric. The time is now for options and solutions in our discourse. Even more, the time for discourse is fast passing, as we are now in a time for action in the care of those among us who are suffering in spirit, mind, body and economically: the actions that are God's justice and compassion. Jesus Compassionate calls us to act, not to judge.

This is a bittersweet time, yet full with emerging grace.

Doubts

Oh dear Thomas, the promise was always the promise of suffering, don't doubt it.

Unsure?

Put your fingers and hands into the risen one: the wounds remain. In a few days, the risen one will be the ascended one, and the wounds will remain.

What changed is the person around the wounds, the same person who, if we will, can by those same wounds, transform me around the wounds of mine.

Such is the mystery and power of love.