The Enchantment of the World

Delight, Joy, Love 0

Love is the enchantment of the world. When we love the world, every grain of it, it shines like transfiguration. Love, as Tolkien said, helps us recover the world, turns everything into a fairy tale. Every leaf, every ray of light. Animals and plants. Mead and good music. The kiss of rain on your skin. The face of a friend and loved one. It all becomes magical. Even the eels.

— Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels, p. 233

Photo: Tide coming in, Bay of Mont Saint-Michel, June 17, 2026

Curiosity

Beauty, Faith, God, Growth 0

Curiosity is suspect in many Christian circles where people are convinced our faith rests only on following rules. It’s a slippery slope, some of us have been told. When it came to my spirituality, I was taught to seek answers over and above the sacred discipline of asking questions, and this proved detrimental when I became afraid to wonder and dream about God for fear of “straying from the faith.” I’m still not sure what that means. Curiosity has since become a great companion, a trusted friend who meanders along with me in kinship – in both the familiar and the unknown. We both know, Curiosity and I, that so much of God’s beauty is waiting to be explored. These are the paths of discovery that take root in us and eventually become passions, callings, and vocations. In this way, curiosity sometimes even saves us, enlivening us with purpose.

“Questioning is just as vital to awareness as using all our senses,” notes Haines. Questions are a direct reflection of our curiosity, inviting us to keep paying attention and to live as active characters in our own story. Too many have stopped noticing the Spirit because they believe they already have the answers they need. But a holistic and robust faith is a faith that is engaged – a faith that remains curious.

— Kat Armas, Sacred Belonging, p. 84-85

Photo: Field at Giverny, France, June 16, 2026

Unrelenting and Restorative

God, Grace, Love, Redemption, Universalism 0

Unlike the doctrine of hell, which is never clearly spelled out in the Bible, the unrelenting, restorative love of God – which does not count our sins against us but instead works all things together for good in order not only to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, and nation but also to liberate all of creation – is spelled out in the Bible time and time again. It is arguably the unifying theme of the whole book. Over and over, the people of the Bible are drawn into the unrelenting love of God on the other side of their failures.

— Brian Recker, Hell Bent, p. 106

Photo: Mont Saint-Michel, seen from across the bay, June 20, 2026

For Everybody

God, Love, Universalism 0

Something must break us out of the reward-punishment frame. It is too small and too self-serving. It makes the God of the ever-evolving and expanding universe seem equally small and petty, and it has already shown itself to create far too many small, petty, largely competitive, and happily vengeful humans. Yet, in spite of it all, the universe remains one giant self-revelation of the fabulous nature of God, not a small stage where one slice of the human species can show itself to be a winner or a loser.

Somehow, the loving people I have met all across the world seem to know that if it is love at all, it has to be love for everybody. As soon as you even begin to parcel it out, you are not in the great field of love.

— Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things, p.159

Photo: Étretat, France, June 23, 2026

Not About Being Right

Community, God, Grace, Growth 0

And lest you think I count myself finished, know this: When I was a Bible-thumping, church-going, know-it-all Republican, God used bleeding-heart, politically correct, question-everything liberals to teach me to be human, to challenge my notions of who the enemy is. But now that I’m a bleeding-heart, politically correct, question-everything liberal, God insists on using Bible-thumping, church-going, know-it-all Republicans to teach me to be human, to challenge my notions of who the enemy is.

God, it seems, is rather stubbornly committed to extracting me from the notion that this is all about being right.

— Rachel Held Evans, Braving the Truth, p. 62

Photo: Front walk to Château de Chantilly, France, June 25, 2026

Don’t Surrender Your Hope.

God, Hope, Love 0

Don’t surrender your hope just yet. Don’t let them take it from you. Bring it with you even as you travel. Tend it even as you leave behind the toxic beliefs and habits and spaces that do not bring flourishing to you or to the world. Your hope – your hope in the goodness and welcome and love of God, you wonderful, stubborn thing – will not disappoint you. You can take a risk on hope again. A longing fulfilled is a tree of life, and Revelation tells us about that tree of life, that its leaves are for the healing of the nations and the renewal of all things. We’re still walking toward Emmaus. Our hope is with us. And soon our eyes will be opened to who was walking us home all along.

— Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness, p. 72

Photo: The Bay of Mont Saint-Michel, June 20, 2026

The Kin-dom of God

Community, Core Value, God 0

The Spirit of God does not ask us to contort ourselves into something we are not. There is no demand for assimilation, no hierarchy of languages or cultures. No single race, class, or status holds dominance in the kin-dom of God. Instead, the Spirit invites us to be the fullest expression of who we are, in all our particularity, in all our strangeness and beauty.

— Kat Armas, Liturgies for Resisting Empire, p. 147

Photo: Parc Botanique de Haut Bretagne, June 19, 2026

A Joyous Yes

Acceptance, Joy 0

Saying No to the self does not necessarily please God or please anybody. There is too much resentment and self-pity involved. When God, by love and freedom, can create a joyous Yes inside of you — so much so that you can absorb the usual noes — then it is God’s full work. The first might be resentful dieting; the second is a spiritual banquet.

— Richard Rohr, Yes . . . And: Daily Meditations, p. 309

Photo: Sailboat off the coast of Étretat, France, June 23, 2026

The Heart of It All

Community, Faith, Love 0

The way you treat other people is the only meaningful expression of your belief system anyway; it is the space where your values are on full display. Theologians and seminary students call this orthopraxy (your actions) as opposed to orthodoxy (your beliefs). Jesus called it the “fruit” of a life: the tangible, visible, feel-able part of human beings that reflects whatever has taken root in their hearts. Most people call it being a person of your word. When it comes to the heart of it all, your religion isn’t what you believe, your religion is how you treat people. The only real theology that’s of worth is relational theology. It exists in no other way that is meaningful to another human being. Whatever you have floating around inside your head or might preach about regarding a God of love is ultimately inconsequential. Your beliefs take the infinite, stratospheric, wonder-filled things of the cosmos and shrink them down into something you can hold in your hand. As we live alongside people, the theoretical and the abstract become tangible, personal realities. Our theological stance is revealed in the small places where our lives rub shoulders with someone else’s. It’s really easy to parrot back that you “love your neighbor” but a far greater challenge to love your actual neighbor when your neighbor is an abject jackass.

— John Pavlovitz, Worth Fighting For, p. 62-63

Photo: Abbaye de Royaumont, France, June 24, 2026