In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.
Teilhard de Chardin
After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.
Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.
A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?
A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.
The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."
There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.
Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.
Frederick Buechner
Wishful Thinking
The very fire that blackens my horizon warms my soul. The darkness that oppresses my mind sharpens my vision. The flood that overwhelms my heart quenches my thirst. The thorns that penetrate my flesh strengthen my Spirit. The grave that buries my desire deepens my devotion. Man’s failure to comprehend this intention of God is one of life’s true calamities.
James Means
A Tearful Celebration
Every real saint eventually left the system of possessions, privilege, and power, so that he or she could hear and speak the truth. In doing so, they were joining Jonah in the whale, Jeremiah in the cistern, Job on the dunghill, and Jesus on the cross. It seems to be the way.
Richard Rohr
Job and the Mystery of Suffering
Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners.
Miroslav Volf
I am where I need to be. Everything around me includes and hides the sacred.
Mary Mrozowski
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,
situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,
approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation,
condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and
God’s action within.
Amen
Mary Mrozowski
creator and spiritual mother of the welcoming prayer practice
Somehow in your sleep
you’ve grown up
grown deep
Each morning layers
of your life
stack, shift, grow
and have become
eleven years of life
You lie asleep in
a blue van thirty years
older than you
that you once dreamed and
that dream came true
The slow sunrise
across the sand dunes
happens every day
with or without notice
and shifts over time
becoming something new
You wake and stretch
your have grown up
grown deep
and I love the
little girl you’ve
become today
Jared Ray Mackey
15, July, 2020
The American project has reached a crossroads and it feels there is very little United in our current moment. We hold different convictions on our origin as a country and divergent hopes on our future. A country once considered by many as a shining exemplar is now a tumultuous teen serving as a cautionary tale. It may be the necessary journey of every nation, in the same way it is the required journey of every human, that there is an ascent and a there is a descent. In the descent character is formed and found, or, the shallow roots are revealed and there is a land slide of loss. What the descent of our American days uncovers is still to be determined. It seems if we are united on anything, it is the agreement that we are living in the hinge of American history.
In this in-between moment of America those of us who claim to follow the way of Jesus have a distinct opportunity to learn from centuries of Christians who lived and led at similar unsettling times in history. The precipice we are walking along is unique to our time, but not to our Christian tradition. The words and wisdom of Jesus, and the vast majority of the New Testament, was against a backdrop of cultural, ethnic, and political turmoil. We need to revisit our sacred texts to look and listen for the invitation to align our loyalty to the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom that is united. United across all the difference we hold of culture and convictions.
What if in the great wisdom and expanse of God our different convictions and divergent hopes for our country are all necessary: protestor and investor, loyalist and liberator, progressive and conservative. Can we hold with humility there is no singular solution to the complexity of our time? What conversation could emerge if we considered the American project has been both the place of liberty and slavery, opportunity and oppression? The truth is we live in the Various States of America.
The year that is 2020 will not pass quietly into the history of our country. We have the unique opportunity to learn and lead in this historic time. May we do so knowing “the weight of our responsibility and the levity of Your grace”.
Jared Ray Mackey
July 30, 2020
Let July be July.
Let August be August.
And let yourself
just be
even in
the uncertainty.
You don’t have to fix
everything.
You don’t have to solve
everything.
And you can still
find peace
and grow
in the wild
of changing things.
Morgan Harper Nichols
It’s becoming increasing difficult in today’s world to trust anything or anybody, for good reason. There’s little that’s stable, safe to lean on, trustworthy. We live in a world where everything is in flux, is flux, where everywhere we see distrust, abandoned values, debunked creeds, people moving on from where they used to be, contradictory information, and dishonesty and lying as socially and morally acceptable.
There is little left of trust in our world. What does this call us to? We’re called to many things, but perhaps nothing more important than fidelity, to be honest and persevering in who we are and what we stand for.
One person’s fidelity makes everyone’s fidelity easier, just as one person’s infidelity makes everyone’s fidelity more difficult. So, inside a world that’s so highly individualistic and bewilderingly transient, when it can feel as if everyone is forever moving away from you, perhaps the greatest gift we can give each other is the gift of our own fidelity, to stay for a long time.