Toxic Positivity

Healing, Truth 0

We will not heal divorced from our emotions. A spirituality that depends on positivity will lead not only to emotional fallacies but also eventually to delusions of all kinds. Hundreds of thousands of people can march for miles declaring Black Lives Matter, and you will find it so disruptive to your delusion of positivity that you will not become curious or sensitive. Instead, you will find yourself defensive of the fallacy. You can listen to the story of someone’s depression, and your instinct will be to find silver linings so that you yourself feel some kind of resolve. People whose faiths are predicated on happiness make for dangerous friends and woefully disconnected fellow humans.

— Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, p. 102

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, October 23, 2026

Name the Pain.

Growth, Healing, Trials 0

Weighed against “real” suffering, like systemic racism, or abuse, or war, our everyday losses might seem too silly to mention or even feel. Our minds know suffering is not a contest, but our actions prove otherwise. So we hobble around, trying to ignore the swelling – the soft anguish of growing children who need us less, old regrets that cannot be undone, the ache of fading friendships, the too-quiet nest, the faltering faith, the strain of aging, the looming sense that our society is catastrophically unwell.

Grief is grief. Its intensity and duration might differ, but the DNA is the same. We can’t counterweight what we avoid or minimize. Our only way through is to feel its full weight without judgment. Naming the pain is our prescription for healing. Embodying it is even better.

— Shannan Martin, Counterweights, p. 33

Power to Love

Forgiveness, Healing, Jesus, Love 0

Just as Middle-earth could not be saved, only enslaved, by the Ring of Power, so Christianity cannot save the world by political power; it can only be corrupted by it. Jesus Christ crucified is the everlasting indictment on those who forsake the way of the cross to reach for the ring of political power. The power we are promised by our Lord is the power of the Holy Spirit – the power to love, forgive, and heal. If we try to wield the Ring of Power (or Caesar’s sword), it will only corrupt us.

— Brian Zahnd, The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 97

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 16, 2026

On the Wandering Path

Grace, Growth, Healing 0

“Not all who wander are lost,” writes J.R.R. Tolkien. You’re not lost, you’re right where you belong on this wandering path. It might be disorienting, there may be danger, but you’re not lost. You’re on the right journey. It’s just a different path than you were expecting when you were handed a brand of faith and told to cultivate and protect it at all costs. You’re becoming someone who is more loving, someone who is healing, who is more acquainted with the fragility and belovedness of us all. The deliverance that’s waiting on the other side of the wilderness isn’t a tidier, nicer version of you with new and better answers: your deliverance was always going to be more Love.

— Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness, p. 43

Photo: Bluebell Trail, Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 3, 2026

Repentance as Self-Care

Growth, Healing 0

The work of repentance is, in many ways, the work of looking outside ourselves, looking with an empathetic eye at what we have done, letting it matter to us, and trying earnestly to figure out how we can both meaningfully address it and ensure that it never happens again. This is, in some ways, an act of tenderness, of extending ourselves to care for others, of giving ourselves the time and attention we deserve to grow, of investing in our own learning and capacity to heal.

Because repentance is, I believe, in part, a kind of self-care. When we do the work, we give attention to our own broken places, our own reactionary impulses, our own careless ignorance. And it’s a way of saying, “Hey, self, you need some attention. Let’s give you some help becoming the kind of person you want to be.”

— Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair, p. 59

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 10, 2026

Mercy to All

Forgiveness, God, Grace, Healing 0

From that point on, poor Jonah is simultaneously angry, lamenting, and praising Yahweh for four full chapters. His problem is that he cannot move beyond a dualistic reward-punishment worldview. Jonah thinks only Israel deserves mercy, whereas God extends total mercy to Jonah, to the pagan Ninevites who persecuted Jonah’s people, and to those “who cannot tell their right hand from their left.” To make the story complete, this mercy is even given to “all the animals” (Jonah 4:11)! The world of predictable good guys and always-bad guys collapses into God’s unfathomable grace.

— Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things, p. 86

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026

Shame Removed

God, Grace, Healing 0

Eve is being suffocated by her shame, but God calls her out. And he doesn’t call her out to rub her face in it. He calls her out of the bushes, out of her shame, to offer his grace and remind her of his love. But it doesn’t stop there. To me, the most amazing thing about this whole story is what comes next. Not only does God call Adam and Eve out of their shame, he also removes it altogether.

— Elizabeth Garn, Freedom to Flourish, p. 136

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 19, 2026