Rejecting the Demand for Perfection

Growth, Jesus 0

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens, yet nothing in us wants to believe it.

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A so-called perfect person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.

It becomes sort of obvious once we say it out loud. In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good, Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept; goodness is a beautiful human concept that includes us all. People whom we call “good” are always people who have learned how to include contradictions and others, even at the risk of their own proper self-image or their social standing. This is quite obvious in Jesus.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…: Daily Meditations, p. 317

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, August 25, 2026

Love What God Loves

God, Life, Love 0

What we get most wrong about God is that God can be pleased or displeased. I was directing a group retreat on Zoom during the pandemic, and one of the retreatants asked, “Well, isn’t God pleased with some things and displeased with other things?”

I said: “We smile and frown, ‘cuz we’re human beings. God doesn’t smile at us … God adores us. And God doesn’t frown, either, ‘cuz God’s too busy adoring us.” God’s whole being says, “There is nothing you can do to make me stop loving you.” We want to be rooted in this loving presence. Find the pony. Feel God’s adoration. Julian of Norwich called it “Oneing.” Gregory of Nyssa described it as “intimacy with God,” where we are granted a taste of our oneness with God, and when we don’t feel it, the taste only serves to galvanize our longing for more. Kabir said, ” When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.” We are invited to love what God loves, which is quite different from doing things that please God. The prayer of our life is to lean toward the God of love and say, “Give me your eyes. Then all we’ll see is glorious.”

— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 24

Photo: Mont Saint-Michel, June 17, 2026

God is Bigger than Gender.

God 0

And also? In the Bible itself God does not exclusively refer to Godself in masculine imagery or pronouns. Sometimes God refers to Himself as “She,” and sometimes She refers to Herself as “They,” and sometimes They do not use any kind of gendered, human-bound imagery at all to describe Themself. This is not some newfangled idea, either. Our spiritual ancestors – from Clement of Alexandria, to Augustine of Hippo, to John Chrysostom, to Anselm of Canterbury, and many others – have often articulated an understanding of God as containing many gendered aspects. It is actually quite an old-fashioned thing to think that God is bigger than gender.

— Lizzie McManus-Dail, God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us, p. 2

Photo: Water lilies in Monet’s Garden, Giverny, France, June 22, 2026

On the Side of Liberation

Compassion, Jesus 0

Jesus is on the side of liberation for the poor, the suffering, and the downtrodden. If we are on that side, he is there with us. If we are not, he beckons us to join him there. If we are reading the Bible in ways that lead to oppression rather than liberation, we are sabotaging the work of God and subverting the message of Christ.

— Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible, p. 152

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

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