Love Is Stronger.

Compassion, God, Love, Trials 0

[A prayer for when “the pain is too much”]

I am busy telling you
I will never survive this
and you tell me the truth.
You never poison me with the lie that
“God gives you what you can handle.”
You say, instead,
that you promise,
you swear,
an oath made in your blood,
that this suffering will never outlast
this love.

Tell me again, God,
about how love goes on forever.

No, truly, tell me again
about love stronger than even this.

— Kate Bowler, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, p. 67

Photo: Snow on branches, South Riding, Virginia, February 12, 2025

Just Show Up

God, Love 0

It may now be safe to say that our God does not need to be calmed down, nor is ever irate nor filled with wrath. All the mystics have come to see this. Julian of Norwich knows that she’s been told constantly of this angry Divine One but just can’t “find this God” in her experience. We still can’t shake the narrative of the God who seeks our measuring up and demands some high level of performance. We don’t measure up to this God; we just show up. We allow this Tender One to fill us extravagantly, then we go into the world and speak the whole language of it, unrestricted, openhearted, and loyally dedicated to its entirety. Tender glance meets tender glance. Behold the One beholding you and smiling.

For the Tender One, it’s simply never about worthiness. But, I’m afraid for us, it’s ONLY about worthiness. The centurion wants Jesus to cure his servant and humbly tells him: “Say but the word . . .” “I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof . . .” The centurion feels unworthy. But Jesus just wants to notice and connect to him. He pays attention to him. We stare at the cure and the faith of the guy, but Jesus wants us to look at how false our sense of unworthiness is. In the face of this tender glance, we find a God quite speechless — too in love with us to chitchat.

— Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language, p. 11

Photo: Sunrise over lake, South Riding, Virginia, January 18, 2024

Restorative Justice

Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

Jesus’s ministry is not to gather the so-called good into a private country club and punish the outsiders, but to reach out to those on the edge and on the bottom, those who are last, to tell them they might just be first! That is almost the very job description of the Holy Spirit and, therefore, of Jesus. Some call it God’s unique kind of justice or “restorative justice.” God justifies things by restoring them to their true and full identity in himself, as opposed to retributive justice, which seeks only reward and punishment. To receive unearned love is their only punishment.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 220

Photo: Frozen lake, South Riding, Virginia, February 1, 2025

Never Abandoned

God, Jesus, Love, Universalism 0

icy lake with the words God will never leave us to face the darkness alone, no matter how deep it may be. -- Derek Ryan Kubilus

Now I don’t mean to start some kind of prooftexting war, as if arguing over theology were just a matter of slapping more verses down on the table than the other guy. I admit that one can seem to find an eternity of pain and abandonment all over the Bible – if that’s what one is looking for. And I suppose there are some evangelicals who would happily squint their eyes and apply some kind of strained interpretation to the verses I quote above to make the case that “all” never actually means “all” when talking about salvation. I used to do the same thing myself. But after years studying the Bible and the traditions of Christianity, I’ve finally given up. At some point, Christians have to stop defending the indefensible and accept the very thing that Christ came to earth to teach us: that God will always come down to us. God will never leave us abandoned. God will never leave us to face the darkness alone, no matter how deep it may be. At some point, we have to admit that, like it or not, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

— Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 68

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 18, 2025

Unshakable

Core Value, God, Love 0

People settle for saying that every human being is “worthy” or “valuable.” But these ideas are still stuck in the “measurable.” “He is a valuable member of our team.” “He is unworthy to be president.” But goodness is unshakable. Solid. The truth. There is not a thing one can do to make this not so. God does not hope that we become something other than what we are. The Pharisees kept trying to be somebody, but they didn’t know they already were. You teach children that they are valuable by valuing them. Not by insisting that they prove their value to you. There are lots of things and toxins and blindness that keep us from acknowledging this and seeing it as true, but nonetheless, it is immutably certain. Before we can love goodness, we need to find it, and see it. It’s there. It’s there.

— Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language, p. 37

Photo: Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, March 29, 2024

A Good Parent

God, Love 2

God does not lead the soul by shaming it, just as a good parent would not shame his or her child. It doesn’t work anyway. We all have done it at times and, if we were raised in a punitive way ourselves, we still tend to think that is the way to motivate people — by shaming them or making them feel guilty. I’ve done it enough and I’ve received it enough to know that it eventually backfires. It never works. We close down and stop trusting after that, and we use all kinds of defense mechanisms to avoid further vulnerability. God’s way actually works — to love us at even-deeper levels than we can know or love ourselves. It is really quite wonderful, and one wonders why anyone would want to miss out on this.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 101

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 10, 2023

Nothing Can Move the Dial

God, Love 0

We ask ourselves, what can move the dial on God’s love for us? Nothing. It is always at its highest setting. After all, God’s love for me is zero dependent on my love for God. But our notion of God can atrophy and get stuck in our own arrested development. And it can be hard to shake the transactional god who puts us in debt. The I-love-you, now-love-me-back god. Yet our God is utterly reliable in this unconditional love that does not waver. It has pleased God not to be God without us. God never has second thoughts about loving us. Never.

— Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language, p. 4-5

Photo: Oregon Coast, May 17, 2023