It’s Okay to Have Needs.

The feeder is empty again
and no one is claiming
that the birds are greedy
for taking what they pleased.

Look at how the fat, pink flowers
are weighing the end of each branch,
sucking nutrients into each velvet petal.
How selfish.

Nature hungers, takes, and needs.
God, why can’t I?

Blessed are we, learning to take
what we need.
Sleeping past our alarms.
Reaching for another helping.
Staying a little longer
when the evening is unwinding.

— Kate Bowler, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! Daily Meditations for the Ups, Downs, and In-Betweens, p. 19

Photo: Tree Swallow, South Riding, Virginia, May 21, 2024

Experiencing the Word of God

The word is made known in the person. It cannot be contained to the pages of Scripture alone. It is embodied and incarnated. If the word is constricted to the pages, the gospel is neutered. As a Christian, I believe that God is made known in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Jewish teacher who took the actual words of scripture and said, “You have heard it said, but I say to you…” suggests that there is more to God than simply knowing the scriptures. The fullness of God is discerned in the reality of existence. The word of God is experienced.

— Trey Ferguson, Theologizin’ Bigger, p. 12

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 23, 2024

Reminder to Rest

Remember, not everything has to be done. And not everything has to be done by you. May you find a small place for rest that is life-giving and fits what is available to you today.

— Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough, p. 58

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 5, 2024

Savior

It was not just the rich young man who asked Jesus how to be saved. All sorts of people in the gospels got saved before Jesus died on the cross. When Jesus healed, they experienced salvus, God’s salvation. They followed him. Lives were changed, transformed. Disciples did give up riches and goods that they might inherit eternal life. Tax collectors abandoned their jobs and surrendered their social standing to eat with him. Children, slaves, soldiers, peasants, fishermen, farmers, prisoners, the sick, the blind, the lame — when they encountered Jesus, they found salvation, the wholeness, the healing, the oneness with God that had only been the stuff of longing. Every miracle, every act of hospitality, all the bread broken and wine served, everything that Jesus did saved people long before Rome arrested and murdered him.

It was all this loving and healing and saving that got him in trouble with authorities. He was not killed so his death would save people; he was killed because he was already saving them. He threatened a world based in fear, one held in the grip of Roman imperialism, by proving that a community could gather in love, set a table of plenty, and live in peace with a compassionate God. Jesus did at-one-ment long before being nailed to a cross. At-one-ment was the reason the authorities did away with him. No empire can stand if the people it oppresses figure out that reconciliation, love, liberation, and oneness hold more power than the sword. So Rome lynched Jesus: tortured him and hung him on a tree. That is the raw truth under all those sophisticated atonement theories.

Jesus was born a savior, and he saved during his lifetime. “Fear not!” “Peace on earth!” He did not wait around for thirty-three years and suddenly become a savior in an act of ruthless, bloody execution. Indeed, the death was senseless, stupid, shameful, evil. It meant little other than silence without the next act — resurrection — God’s final word that even the most brutal of empires cannot destroy salvus. This is no quid pro quo. Rather, Easter proclaims that God overcoes all oppression and injustice, even the murder of an innocent one. At-one-ment means just that. Through Jesus, all will be renewed, made whole, brought back into oneness, reunited with God. Salvation is not a transaction to get to heaven after death; rather it is an experience of love and beauty and of paradise here and now. No single metaphor, not even one of Paul’s, can truly describe this. We need a prism of stories to begin to understand the cross and a lifetime to experience it.

— Diana Butler Bass, Freeing Jesus, p. 96-98.

Photo: Dunluce Castle, Ireland, July 2001

Do It with Love.

Whatever you do, do it with love. If you can’t feel love in your heart, then go for kindness, respect, patience — or stay silent. As difficult as it is to comprehend — and I grant you, it is difficult if not impossible to believe — absolutely everything in our lives is a stage set up for love.

— Caroline Myss, Intimate Conversations with the Divine, p. 262

Plant Seeds

It is impossible to know, in the moment, how a small act of goodness will reverberate through time. The notion is empowering and it is frightening — because it means that we’re all capable of changing the world, and responsible for finding those opportunities to protect, feed, grow, and guide love. We can all plant seeds, though only some of us may be so lucky as to sit in their shade. Since we can’t start twenty years ago, the best time to start is today.

— Bishop Michael Curry, Love Is the Way, p. 139

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, April 2, 2021

Gifts of Each Season

Each season has its gifts. What did my life’s hardest season give to me? Most of all, belief in my own ability not only to come back after a long winter but to grow stronger, more alive. Belief that change makes everything possible. Belief in my own spring. In the meantime, thanks to the bare trees, I can see more sky. It’s a beauty emergency — all that blue through the branches.

— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 55

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 27, 2021