In Yoke

He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.   –  I John These words sound so ethereal that most of us cannot connect them with daily life.  What, we ask, do personal relationships have to do with the divine? I would reply that it is by discovering the unity between ourselves and others – all others – that we find our unity with God.  Jesus taught unity, not a cosmos of dualism. We don’t first get to know God and then, by some miracle of grace, come to love our fellow human beings.  Loving others comes first. In this sense, learning to love is practicing religion. Those who can put the welfare of others before their own small personal interests are religious, even if they would deny it.  This posture is possible only through what the scriptures refer to as "faith". This is the only route to life in the Kingdom, Jesus' code word for walking with him in the Spirit, being "born again" or "born from above". It requires a gaze on Christ...

I have heard stories of men and women who were imprisoned in solitary confinement, without anything but their own hearts and their own memories to examine. These same folks tell of how whole passages of scripture, complete stories of Jesus and of the Apostles, of prophets, of Psalms, have come clear to them, untrammeled, descriptive, like medicine to their lonely, tortured soul. These “balms of Gilead” are also available to us-like myself, who have been instructed in the ways of the Lord throughout our lives…even when being spared imprisonment. I know His word has come to me many times in my lowest moments, and in my humdrum day to day existence, to enlighten, to encourage, to clarify, to inspire, to energize. Paul the apostle states- Christ dwells in our hearts through faith(Ephesians 3:17), and all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden and can be found in Christ. It stands to reason then, that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God can be found—in the hear...

Random notes on this thing known as 'faith'. "To 'faith' is to hand over the direction of one's life journey to another, to yield up the' illusion of control' to someone who is essentially beyond one's control, over whom we have no power." Faith is a verb, a process, and not a static reality. In our faith journey, there are several similar or common elements: (1) conversion: also known as metanoia --change of mind or life/direction; (2) a struggle to internalize and act on that conversion experience; (3) a call to integrity; (4) a call to reality; (5) a call to radicality . These elements emerge regardless of era, culture, theology, life-style, or ministry. Faith is primarily a relationship. Any love relationship challenges us to greater honesty and transparency, to awareness of those areas of our lives where we hold back or refuse to face ourselves, or to let others see us as we truly are. To really love others means to become progressively ...

"You are what you believe." -Anton Chekhov You are what the deep faith of your heart is. If you believe that money is going to make you happy, then you will go after money. If you believe that pleasure will make you happy, you will go after pleasure. Because, "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," not as he thinketh  in his head.  There is a vast distance from the head to the heart.  In the Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions, they say that whatever  spiritual knowledge you have in your head must be brought down into your heart.  This takes many, many years. ~ Easwaran Do you know this? For such a long time, from the age of say 14 to the age of 48, I placed my true faith in money to give me joy...to cause me to be happy. I am just now spiritually knowing this fact. When I decided on a career, at age 17, I set a goal to become a banker. My heart was focused on that goal. Nothing else took precedence. I was a Christian, sure, because that is what my surround...

Imagine walking into a dark room. We will put our hands in front of us, afraid that we will bump into the furniture, or slip on the rug. We walk very slowly and deliberately, knowing that we don't know what lies directly ahead of us. ...making our way into the darkness of the future...This is very much what God calls us to do on this journey of faith we call our lives.  [excerpted from "The Great Themes of Scripture"-Fr. Richard Rohr] This is not easy, because everything we are taught in this world says that we can have our pathway illuminated in front of us. This is a very present foundational teaching underscoring our Western civilized world. Since I was old enough to make my way in this American influenced, capitalistic, free enterprise world,( for me it was in 1972 when I was 18, and moved to Waco to go to work the summer before I went to college at Baylor) I became attached to working on doing everything to assure that my way ahead would be "well lit".  I ...

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely-calculated less or more. -William Wordsworth From my teacher: This morning, when I was reading an important New York paper, I noticed an article on the dynamics of gift-giving. This article quoted a distinguished professor of sociology as saying that in every gift there is a reciprocal relationship, even if it is not conscious. In other words, when you are making a gift, you are expecting a gift in return. Not only that, there are very subtle social gradations: gifts to longtime friends, to recent friends, to acquaintances, to possible benefactors. All these factors come into play when choosing the gift. No wonder shopping for gifts is so terribly time-consuming. No wonder people feel confused and inadequate about what to give. But the spiritual approach is very simple. Whatever you give - it may be a check to a worthy cause, it may be clothes to a person who is cold, it may be food to the hungry, it may be medical help to the...