Our Needs Matter

Because our brains are shaped around what we notice, self-attunement helps us become better and more effective at listening to the heartbeat of our own humanity. And here’s what I truly love about the way we are designed: As we do our own internal work, we quite literally develop the capacity to listen to and love others more fully than before. Now it’s worth saying that we don’t do our work only so we will love others better — although it’s a beautiful benefit. Nope, we are invited to connect to and respond to our internal world because we are deeply valuable and loved by God; and because that is true, we can rest in the fact that our needs matter.

— Aundi Kolber, Try Softer, p. 133

Photo: Chateau de Chillon, Lake Geneva, Switzerland, November 2000

Visible Compassion

Christians are meant to be the visible compassion of God on earth more than “those who are going to heaven.” They are the leaven who agree to share the fate of God for the life of the world now, and thus keep the whole batch of dough from falling back on itself. A Christian is invited, not required to accept and live the cruciform shape of all reality. It is not a duty or even a requirement as much as a free vocation. Some people feel called and agree to not hide from the dark side of things or the rejected group, but in fact draw close to the pain of the world and allow it to radically change their perspective. They agree to embrace the imperfection and even the injustices of our world, allowing these situations to change themselves from the inside out, which is the only way things are changed anyway.

— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 148

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 7, 2020

The Father

The overall testimony of scripture is that God is the Father of all humanity. God’s love for everyone is expressed in the sending of Christ who told us that God is like the prodigal son’s father who never stopped loving his child, even when he lived a life of rebellion and tried to run as far away from him as possible.

God never disowns us. God never stops being our Father. We never stop being children of God. Even on our worst day, God’s love for us is based on who God is, not on who we are, or what we do.

Yes, we can reflect our sonship or daughterhood more clearly whenever we love others, serve others or forgive others. But, even if we fail to do this, it doesn’t change the fact that God is our Father, and that we are loved and forgiven. Based on our behavior, it may appear that our father is the devil, at times. But this is not the reality. It is a perversion of the reality. God is our Father, and we are all His children. If we reflect the character of Christ, then we are starting to look like our Father more and more. This is the way it’s supposed to work.

— Keith Giles, Jesus Undefeated, p. 111

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 8, 2020

Restorative Justice

It is not God who is violent. We are.
It is not that God demands suffering of humans. We do.
God does not need or want suffering — neither in Jesus nor in us.

Most of us are still programmed to read the Scriptures according to the common laws of jurisprudence, which are hardly ever based on restorative justice. (Even the term was not common till recently.) Restorative justice was the amazing discovery of the Jewish prophets, in which Yahweh punished Israel by loving them even more! (Ezekiel 16:53ff.). Jurisprudence has its important place in human society, but it cannot be transferred to the divine mind. It cannot guide us inside the realm of infinite love or infinite anything. A worldview of weighing and counting is utterly insufficient once you fall into the ocean of mercy.

— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 146-147

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, October 30, 2018