Hear the Forest Sing

Beauty, Nature 0

Every early teacher who had me in her class – and most of them were very kind and patient – wrote the same comment on my twice-yearly reports: “Margaret is a well-meaning girl, but her head is always out the window.”

“Oh, but it makes so much more sense out there!” I would answer in retrospect now, if I could, “Trees don’t confuse, birds don’t baffle. Give me simple, clear things to learn like the roll of the hills, the turning of the seasons, and I will be as learned as the rest of them. Give me a field, a patch of woodland to read and I will unlock the wisdom of the ages, break the shackles of ignorance! Of course my head is out the window! You have to be in the woods to hear the forest sing!”

— Margaret Dulaney, To Hear the Forest Sing, p. xviii

Photo: by Falls Creek Falls trail, Washington

Expansive Love

Acceptance, Compassion, God, Grace, Love, Redemption 0

I am found by a divine love that is expansive. Every time I have reached the edge of how far I believed love could go, I have found myself instead standing in the middle of where love has already been. Love is not up for in-groups and out-groups, for tents that can only stretch so far or tables that can only seat so many. Love keeps going. Love casts a wider net each time and drops itself down from the heavens burdened with uncleanliness to cry out, What I have called clean you must not call unclean. Love has no tolerance for intolerance. When the people of God told stories of exclusion, the men casting out their foreign wives and children, love wrote the story of Ruth, the foreigner as or more loyal than any woman of Israel.

— Emmy Kegler, One Coin Found, p. 176

Photo: International Rose Test Garden, Portland, Oregon, June 18, 2025

Breaking Through

God, Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

That’s what we mean when we say Jesus had to die for us. It’s not that he had to literally pay God some price, which makes God appear rather petty and powerless. Is God that unfree to love and forgive? Does God not organically and naturally love what God created? It can’t be true. John Duns Scotus taught that good theology will always keep God free for humanity and humanity free for God. Love can only happen in the realm of freedom, and ever-expanding freedom at that. We pulled God into our way of loving and forgiving, which is always mercenary and tit-for-tat. It was the best any of us could do until we sat stunned before the cross.

Quite simply, until someone dies, we don’t ask bigger questions. We don’t understand in a new way. We don’t break through. The only price that Jesus was paying was to the human soul, so that we could break through to a new kind of God. Most of religious history believed that humanity had to spill blood (human sacrifice or animal sacrifice) to get to God, but, after Jesus, some were able to comprehend that, actually, God was spilling blood to get to us. That reversed the engines of history forever, but the human mind still resists that reversal. It is too good to be true.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 79

Photo: Columbia River, June 16, 2025

Reflecting the Image of God

Core Value, Creativity 0

Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Reformer, taught that filling the earth referred to “the filling of the Garden with the products and processes of cultural activity. . . . In that sense, not only the family, but also art, science, technology, politics (as the collective patterns of decision making), recreation, and the like were all programmed into the original creation order to display different patterns of cultural flourishing.” Filling the earth is a big, beautiful, huge invitation to imitate God and bring flourishing to the world. Whatever you do to fill the earth and bring flourishing to the world reflects the image of God.

— Elizabeth Garn, Freedom to Flourish, p. 58

Photo: Falls Creek Falls, Washington, June 16, 2025

More Loved Than We Found Them

Acceptance, Compassion, Jesus, Love 0

Honestly, I don’t know if organized Christianity, on balance, is helpful anymore. What I do know is that the compassionate heart of Jesus I find in the stories told about him is helpful – and urgently needed. The world can use more tender-hearted humans, doing what they can to live selflessly, gently, and focused on others – and that’s probably the highest spiritual aspiration we can have: leaving people more loved than we found them. I want to stand with the empathetic souls, no matter where they come from and what they call themselves and who they declare God to be, because that is the most pressing need I see in the world. I want to be with the disparate multitude who believe caring for others is the better path, even if that means never stepping foot in a church building again or doing the hard work of renovating the one that I’m connected to. People who are assailed by the storms of this life don’t need any more heartless, loveless, joyless self-identified saints claiming they’re Christian while beating the hell out of them. They need people who simply give a damn in a way that emulates Jesus, people who see how hard it is to be human and feel burdened to make it a little softer.

–John Pavlovitz, Worth Fighting For, p. 12

Photo: Irises, South Riding, Virginia, May 3, 2025

The Image of God

Beauty, Core Value, God 0

For this reason, I disagree with those who say we bear the image of God only, or even primarily, by living out our faith in our labor. The thought is reductive, and it evidences that we are content to exclude those who will never work, who may never speak, who no longer make or do. Their image-bearing is not dispensable; it is essential.

Our dignity may involve our doing, but it is foremost in our very being – our tears and emotions, our bodies lying in the grass, our scabs healing. I try to remember that Eve and Adam bore the image of God before they did anything at all. This is very mysterious to me, and it must be protected.

— Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, p. 12

Photo: Purple Iris, South Riding, Virginia, May 17, 2025

Seeing Differently

Core Value, Love 0

It’s about seeing differently. We then undertake the search for innocence in the other. We cease to find the guilty party. We no longer divide into camps: Heroes and Villains. We end up only seeing heroes. We look for the unchangeable goodness that’s always there in the other. Love as the Geiger counter watching for any sign of light and strength. This goodness is a heat-seeking force. Love always sees how far we’ve come. You see Lefty and presume “he’s up to all good.” This real self, truly the Christ self, is experienced as expansive and huge.

It will always be less exhausting to love than to find fault. When we see fault, we immediately believe that something has to be done about it. But love knows that nothing is ever needed. Ever. As the homie Stevie says daily: “Love, love, and more love.” Only love sees.

— Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language, p. 40-41.

Photo: Purple irises by a lake, South Riding, Virginia, May 6, 2025

We All Have a Place

Acceptance, Community, God, Jesus, Universalism 0

Over and over again, Jesus shows us the humanity of those we would put into different compartments from ourselves. He reminds us that our fellow brothers, sisters, and siblings are not so easily categorized and separated. To one another, we should not be enemies to be defeated, resources to be exploited, or infidels to be converted. We all belong to one another as one family, and we all belong to God as a heavenly Parent. So it only follows that we would all have a place through God’s gate and at God’s table, no matter how long it takes for us to get there.

–Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 91

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 18, 2025

Inside the Miracle of the Loaves and Fish

Blessing, God, Grace 0

I live my entire life inside the miracle of the loaves and fish. Nearly every sermon I preach feels incomplete and inadequate, but I preach it anyway, praying Jesus will fill in the gaps. My leadership is often imperfect and insufficient, but I lead to the best of my ability anyway and wait for Jesus to step in. The money I give away, particularly in response to acute human suffering, is never enough to meet the need, but I give anyway, hoping that, along with others, I might ease another’s pain. The image of a few loaves and some fish feeding a multitude is meant to encourage us all to give what we have when we know it is not enough. For reasons beyond our understanding, God consistently chooses to work through our imperfect, inadequate offerings.

–Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn To Be Brave, p. 117

Photo: Blackwater Falls, West Virginia, April 23, 2025

More Elastic Than You Think

Growth, Life 0

When you think you know the shape and size of your life, when you think you know what is possible, something will happen to prove you wrong. Be open to this — you want to be wrong! Trust that your life is more elastic than you think: it can grow, be more, hold more.

KEEP MOVING.

— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 161

Photo: Blackwater Falls, West Virginia, April 24, 2025