Power With

Compassion, God, Jesus, Love 0

But Jesus gave up power and privilege to stand in solidarity with humanity. In this way, the Spirit of God sets aside power-over in favor of power-with for the sake of justice. Where power-over is marked by dominance, coercion, and control, power-with is marked by collaboration and cocreation. It is a power rooted in collective action and relationship. A God who invites us to “argue it out” is a God of power-with, power shared. This God is dynamic: one who feels, who responds to our pleas, and who can be accessed by humans. This is a God many of us were not introduced to but had to discover on our own.

— Kat Armas, Sacred Belonging, p. 62

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 3, 2026

Everybody Is Invited.

Compassion, Jesus, Universalism 0

Salvation is not about choosing the right theological beliefs to avoid hell. It’s about recognizing the goodness and divinity in the despised “other” and joining in on the party God is throwing, where everybody is invited. Jesus never tells people they need to change their doctrine or convert to another religion in order to be saved from hell. Jesus doesn’t defend theology, he defends humanity of the vulnerable and the marginal. Jesus doesn’t explain the one correct statement of faith to his disciples; he meets real human needs, while calling out religious leaders for the hypocrisy of caring more about dogma than justice and mercy.

Hell is not a good Christian doctrine because it makes it impossible to show up in relationships with others like Jesus did. The spirituality of hell excludes and others people; Jesus includes the “other” and shows us that we are all more similar than we thought. We are connected, whether we are aware of it or not. Refusing to see this – that is hell. The true hell is exclusion and denying our shared belovedness. It is living in the delusion of superiority and separation. It is refusing to join the banquet where everyone is invited.

— Brian Recker, Hell Bent, p. 58-59

Photo: Tulips, Burnside Farms, Nokesville, Virginia, April 7, 2026

Step Back

Compassion, Connection, Friends, Letting Go 0

As I age, I am more drawn to those who speak honestly to me. Nomatter how bitter the pill, no matter how long it takes to work, I do ant this medicine. Give me your truth and allow me to determine whether it is the right remedy for me. Time will reveal its efficacy.

I would rather hear a truth from a friend, and adjust my behavior accordingly, than meet the reactions of cold consequence which could be much more harsh.

Maybe it’s time to turn that old line from the prayer book around to read, “Speak now and try never to hold your peace.” Speak if you must, absolutely. Speak and then step back. Give room. They are God’s to teach, God’s to hold, God’s to heal.

— Margaret Dulaney, To Hear the Forest Sing, p. 103-104

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 3, 2026

The Sin

Compassion, Truth 0

The sin warned against at the very beginning of the Bible is “to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). It does not sound like that should be a sin at all, does it? But the moment I sit on my throne, where I know with certitude who the good guys and the bad guys are, then I’m capable of great evil — while not thinking of it as evil! I have eaten of a dangerous tree, according to the Bible. Don’t judge, don’t label, don’t rush to judgment. You don’t usually know other people’s real motives or intentions. You hardly know your own.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 222

Photo: Canada Geese on lake, South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2026

Worth Embracing

Acceptance, Compassion, Love 0

I’m not asking you to embrace a violent white supremacist or to place yourself in the path of physical harm or to do anything that causes you emotional injury. But generally speaking, if our faith is going to overcome the ugliness around us, we’re all going to have to figure out how to do the difficult work of loving people we dislike. We’re going to have to stop creating false stories about people from a safe distance and get truer ones. We’re going to have to find a way to offer an open hand instead of a clenched fist. We’re going to need to slow down enough and get close enough to our supposed enemies that we can look in the whites of their eyes and find the goodness residing behind them. It may be buried in jagged layers of fear and grief and hopelessness – but it is almost always there. I don’t like to think about the humanity of people when they are acting inhumanely and find ironically that I have the greatest difficulty manufacturing compassion for people who seem to lack compassion, mostly because I don’t want them to get away with something. I don’t want to risk giving tacit consent to the terrible things they do, to the wounds they inflict, to the violence they manufacture – and the simplest way to do this seems to be to despise them. Hating people is always going to be the easier and more expedient path than loving them, because loving them means seeing them fully, hearing their story, stepping into their skin and shoes as best we can, and finding something worth embracing.

— John Pavlovitz, Worth Fighting For, p. 44-45.

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 17, 2026

May God’s Stitches Hold

Compassion, Core Value, God 0

People say we are unworthy of salvation. I disagree. Perhaps we are very much worth saving. It seems to me that God is making miracles to free us from the shame that haunts us. Maybe the same hand that made garments for a trembling Adam and Eve is doing everything he can that we might come a little closer. I pray his stitches hold.

— Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, p. 15

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 17, 2026.

The Incarnation

Compassion, God, Jesus, Love 0

A God who not only understands but experiences hunger, thirst, weariness, joy, sadness, physical pain, growth, interpersonal relationships, intimacy, betrayal, offense, occasions for celebration, grief, and the full gamut of the human experience is a great deal different from a God who is content to sit on high while looking down low.

In the incarnation, we are confronted with a bizarre proposition. The God that existed before the beginning of time chose to walk among the people as one of their own. What was once thought of as imperceptible became a tangible reality that people could see with their own eyes. Converse with. Even touch. The incarnation suggests that God is indeed living. And, for some of us, all of this is a little difficult to square with a God who exists outside the boundaries of time and space.

— Trey Ferguson, Theologizin’ Bigger, p. 158

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2024

Unshakably Good

Compassion, Connection, Core Value, Love 0

I told the crowd that two unwavering principles held at Homeboy Industries were the following: 1) Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and 2) We belong to each other (no exceptions). Then I posited: “Now, do I think all our vexing and complex social dilemmas would disappear if we embraced these two notions?” I paused, then continued, “Yes, I do.” And the entire audience exploded in laughter. I was startled. When the laughter subsided, I repeated quietly: “Yes, I do.”

These two ideas allow us to roll up our sleeves so that we can actually make progress. So that we can love without measure and without regret. So that we can cultivate a new way of seeing. We finally understand that the answer to every question is, indeed, compassion.

— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 2.

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 27, 2025.

God Did Not Make Us to Hate Us.

Acceptance, Beauty, Compassion, God, Joy, Love 0

God did not make us to hate us.

God did not dream up the color yellow and craft the scientific art of making butter from milk and whimsically birth cumulus clouds just to . . . disdain a little girl who misunderstood the cosmic structure.

God did not count the hairs on our heads or the stars that would hang in the sky over billions of years just to resentfully accept desperate people begging to be spared from brutal torment.

I know this because maybe heaven isn’t a pit stop between Raleigh and LA, but heaven is all around us. Breaking in and barreling down walls and peeping up like dandelions in the asphalt. God would not be so creative and wily and beautiful all at the same time if God’s desire was punishment.

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

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 14, 2025

Opposite of Disgust

Acceptance, Compassion, Jesus, Love 0

We aren’t so much afraid of one another as disgusted – a much harder truth to face. We don’t resist the foreigner, orphan, and widow out of fear for our lives and well-being so much as out of a fear that they will contaminate us – change us into something we do not want to become. It’s a very human and very normal reaction but not one that Jesus seemed to follow. The Way of Jesus runs in the opposite direction of the exclusion that disgust instigates: it welcomes instead of rejecting, integrates instead of segregating, and loves instead of fearing.

–Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. xiii

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 22, 2025