Tag Archives: perseverance

Wake Up, Get Up, Rise Up … Again, and Again

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Today’s Center for Action and Contemplation meditation includes a reflection from theologian Matthew Fox on how we might reinvent and resurrect ourselves daily for our benefit and the benefit of others.

“Who does not seek a full and fuller life (and) how am I life for others?  

To be Resurrection for another I need to be Resurrection for myself. That means I cannot dwell in darkness and death and anger and oppression and submission and resentment and pain forever. I need to wake up, get up, rise up, put on life even when days are dark and my soul is down and shadows surround me everywhere  

Do not settle for death. Break out. Stand up. Give birth. Get out of easy pessimism and lazy cynicism. Put your heart and mind and hands to creating hope and light and resurrection. Be born again. And again. And again….”   

Easter People in a Good Friday World

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Once again, the Center for Action and Contemplation, helps us reconcile our aspirations with reality. Yes, we can persevere even though we are confronted with “with the forces of death, hopelessness, fear, discouragement, or lack of will.” Yes, we can continue to believe even though we are surrounded by non-believers.

Big inhale, slow exhale. Yes, we can.

Check out the provocative message below and go to CAC’s website for continued encouragement here: cac.org/daily-meditations/easter-people-in-a-good-friday-world/

Ugly Middles & Perseverance

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Writing, like life, is not a cake walk and sometimes it’s just plain ugly.

I’m enjoying the 100 Day Book Writing Program offered by The Write Practice. Below is one of the helpful reminders from the program creator, Joe Bunting.

See thewritepractice.com for more information.

“Middles are always the hardest. In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller said every story is like paddling a rowboat to an island. When you first start, you feel like you’re making a lot of progress. The shore recedes quickly and the island feels so close you could touch it.

But once you get out into open water, it’s easy to think you’re not even moving. The shore you left seems far away and the island you’re going to isn’t getting closer. You’re not making any progress, and you wonder if you should just quit.

This is where most people, including myself, get stuck in their writing.

We have no problem starting stories. We don’t even have a hard time finishing them. But the middle is a story graveyard, littered with corpses of books, blog posts, and articles.

If you keep going though, almost miraculously, the opposite shore appears. You’re almost there. You can tell you’re just a few paddle strokes from land.

Don’t give up in the Ugly Middle. The breakthrough will always come just after the hardest part.

Even when it’s messy, keep writing. Even when you’re stuck, keep writing. Even when you feel like you’ve made no progress and the end is as far away as ever, keep writing.

And when you can see the shore, when you realize you finally, at last, know what your book is about, remember the feeling. You’ll need that memory for the next time you find yourself in the Ugly Middle.” Joe Bunting

Apr 10 – After Easter – Now What?

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Below is a repost of a provocative reminder from Sr. Joan Chittister.

https://joanchittister.org/

What Easter is Really About

“The true division of humanity,” Victor Hugo wrote in Les Miserables, “is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness.” Victor Hugo, it seems, understood Easter.

We love to think of Easter as the feast of dazzling light. We get up on Easter Sunday morning knowing that the sorrow of Good Friday is finally ended, that the pain of the cross has been compensated for by a burst of brilliant victory from the gates of the grave, that Jesus is vindicated, that the faith of the disciples is confirmed for all to see, and that everyone lived happily ever after. We love fairy tales. Unfortunately, Easter is not one of them.

On the contrary, Easter is raw reality. Easter stands in stark witness, not to the meaning of death, but to the meaning of what it is to go on despite death, in the face of death—because of death. To celebrate Easter means to stand in the light of the empty tomb and decide what to do next. Until we come to realize that, we stand to misread the meaning not simply of the Easter gospel but of our own lives. We miss the point. We make Easter an historical event rather than a life-changing commitment. We fail to realize that Easter demands as much of us now as it did of the apostles then.

Most of all we miss the very meaning of the Easters that we are dealing with in our own lives, in our own time. 

Easter is the feast that gives meaning to life. It is the feast that never ends. After Easter, the tomb stands open for all of us to enter. If Jesus is risen, then you and I have no choice but to go into the tomb, put on the leftover garments ourselves, and follow Jesus back to Galilee where the poor cry for food and the sick beg to be taken to the pool and the blind wait for the spittle on their eyes to dry. All the fidelity in the world will not substitute for leaving the tomb and beginning the journey all over again. Today. Every day. Always.

That’s what Easter is really about. It is the “division of humanity” to which Hugo refers in his dramatic rendering of the struggle between light and dark. Yes, Easter is about dazzling light—but only if it shines through us.

              —In the Light of the Messengers: Lenten reflections by Joan Chittister, OSB 

Richard Rohr’s – The Resurrected Christ

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As Richard Rohr explains below, “Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God.”

May we all enjoy the healing presence of this Easter.

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

The image on the left shows a glimpse of a whale with its mouth open. A human figure is either jumping into or being spit out of the mouth. The image in the center shows multicolored watercolors dripping from top to bottom. The image on the right shows a glimpse of black, blue and red watercolors.

Week Fifteen: The Resurrected Christ

Christ Is Risen

Alleluia! Christ is risen!  

As we celebrate Easter, the Daily Meditations explore Father Richard’s teachings on the Universal Christ, which reconnect Christ to his cosmic origin. 

Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God. Knowing and experiencing this Christ can bring about a major shift in consciousness. Like Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9), we won’t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ. 

Many people don’t realize that the apostle Paul never met the historical Jesus and hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul’s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16–17). 

Jesus’ historical transformation (“resurrected flesh”) and our understanding of the Spirit he gives us (see John 16:7–15; Acts 1:8) allow us to more easily experience the Presence that has always been available since the beginning of time, a Presence unlimited by space or time, the promise and guarantee of our own transformation (see 1 Corinthians 15; 2 Corinthians 1:21–22; Ephesians 1:13–14). 

In the historical Jesus, this eternal omnipresence had a precise, concrete, and personal referent. God’s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. The formless took on form in someone we could “hear, see, and touch” (1 John 1:1), making God easier to love.  

But it seems we so fell in love with this personal interface in Jesus that we forgot about the Eternal Christ, the Body of God, which is all of creation, which is really the First Incarnation. Jesus and Christ are not exactly the same. In the early Christian era, a few Eastern Fathers (such as Origen of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor) noticed that the Christ was clearly older, larger, and different than Jesus himself. They mystically saw that Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time; and Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time.  

Jesus willingly died—and Christ arose—yes, still Jesus, but now including and revealing everything else in its full purpose and glory. (Read Colossians 1:15–20, so you know this is not just my idea.)  

When we believe in Jesus Christ, we’re believing in something much bigger than the historical incarnation that we call Jesus. Jesus is the visible map. The entire sweep of the meaning of the Anointed One, the Christ, includes us and all of creation since the beginning of time (see Romans 1:20). 

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Cosmic Christ (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2009). Available as CD and MP3 download.  

Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014), 222, 210. 

Apr 7 – No Compassion Without Passion

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A repost of today’s message from Fr. Richard Rohr on the paradox of Good Friday

Friday, April 7, 2023

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation https://cac.org/

The image on the left shows a glimpse of frozen ice and snow. The image in the center shows a whale with its mouth open. A human figure is either jumping into or being spit out of the mouth. The image on the right shows a glimpse of green and blue watercolors.

Week Fourteen: The Sign of Jonah 

The Divine Paradox

Presbyterian pastor Rachel Srubas writes of the paradox at the heart of Good Friday and the three-day “triduum” of Holy Week:  

Jesus anticipated his arrest, passion, and entombment, calling this triduum “three days and three nights … in the heart of the earth,” and likening it to the prophet Jonah’s journey “in the belly of the sea monster” (Matthew 12:40). Thomas Merton, the brilliant contemplative writer of the twentieth century … also wrote of Jonah (or as Merton and others have called him, Jonas). In The Sign of Jonas, … Merton said, “It was when Jonas was traveling as fast as he could away from Nineveh, toward Tharsis, that he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale who took him where God wanted him to go…. Even our mistakes are eloquent, more than we know.” [1] 

A sense of sacred irony, of eloquent mistakes, has for centuries enabled Christians to call the Friday of Jesus’ tortuous execution “good.” This is not a matter of putting a happy spin on a grisly, unjust tragedy. Good Friday, and all Christian life, is about embracing paradox. Jesus’ teachings and his death reveal sacred contradictions. The truth that you and I may try to avoid, the pain we’re loath to face, point the way toward our freedom from captivating lies that perpetuate our suffering. When you and I embrace Jesus’ essential paradox—that to lose is to gain and to die is to live—we come to God, who gathers up the broken pieces of the world and makes them more complete and beautiful than they were before they broke. God integrates all fractious dualities into the wholeness of life that Christians call eternal salvation. It’s a life we get to live here and now, by grace and faith. It’s the life toward which Lent has always pointed.  

Like Father Richard, Srubas considers the cross a “collision of opposites” that leads us deeper into reality and the presence of God:  

Following his jubilant entry into Jerusalem (which Christians celebrate on Palm Sunday), Jesus told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:23b–24). Pay attention to that pivotal unless and understand: without the fatal fall, no glorious resurrected life can be lived.  

From this divine paradox, it follows that there can be no compassion without passion, no responsive loving-kindness unless there first comes suffering. Until God ultimately mends all of creation’s broken pieces, there will come suffering.…  

“You will know the truth,” Jesus said to those who trusted him, “and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). By his clear-eyed honesty, Jesus revealed holy, ironic wholeness. Denying pain would intensify it but facing hard facts of life and death would lead people deep into reality, the only place where God eternal can be found.  

[1] Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1953, 1981), 10–11. 

Rachel M. Srubas, The Desert of Compassion: Devotions for the Lenten Journey (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023), 167–168, 169. 

Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Jenna Keiper, North Cascades Sunrise. Jenna Keiper, Photo of a beloved artpiece belonging to Richard Rohr (Artist Unknown.) McEl Chevrier, Untitled. Used with permission.

Feb 6 – Doomsday Clock Update – Just Another Monday

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“We are living in a time of unprecedented danger, and the Doomsday clock time reflects that reality. 90 seconds to midnight is the closest the clock has ever been set to midnight, and it’s a decision our experts do not take lightly,” Rachel Bronson, the president and CEO of BAS, said at a news conference on Tuesday (Jan. 24).”

Today’s senryu: Just Another Monday

spy balloon shot down …

do you feel safer today?

proceed with caution

Jan 18 – Repost: Anger Does Its Work

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Below is today’s Daily Meditation from Richard Rohr‘s Center for Action and Contemplation. It highlights a teaching from Brian McLaren on the positive gift and use of anger. See https://cac.org/daily-meditations/ for more information on this valuable resource.

Anger Does Its Work

Prophets are often known for their anger against injustice. CAC teacher Brian McLaren makes a connection between anger and love:  

I think about things I love … birds, trees, wetlands, forested mountains, coral reefs, my grandchildren … and I see the bulldozers and smokestacks and tanks on the horizon.  

And so, because I love, I am angry. Really angry.  

And if you’re not angry, I think you should check your pulse, because if your heart beats in love for something, someone, anything … you’ll be angry when it’s harmed or threatened.  

To paraphrase René Descartes (1596–1650): I love; therefore, I’m angry. […]

Anger makes most sense to me through an analogy of pain. What pain is to my body, anger is to my soul, psyche, or inner self. When I put my hand on a hot stove, physical pain reflexes make me react quickly, to address with all due urgency whatever is damaging my fragile tissues. Physical pain must be strong enough to prompt me to action, immediate action, or I will be harmed, even killed.  

Similarly, when I or someone I love is in the company of insult, injustice, injury, degradation, or threat, anger awakens. It tells me to change my posture or position; it demands I address the threat.

McClaren shares scriptural passages that urge us not to react in anger, and describes how contemplative practice can direct our anger into loving action:  

Don’t be overcome with evil. Overcome evil with good. (See Romans 12:21).  

When someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek. (See Luke 6:29).  

Do not return evil for evil to anyone. (See Romans 12:17).  

Bless those who persecute you. Bless, and do not curse. (See Romans 12:14).  

In each case, we’re given alternatives to our natural reactions, alternatives that break us out of fight/flight/freeze, mirroring, and judging. In the split second when we take that long, deep breath, we might breathe out a prayer: “Guide me, Spirit of God!” We might pause to hear if the Spirit inspires us with some non-reactive, non-reflexive response. […]

Anger does its work. It prompts us to action, for better or worse. With time and practice, we can let the reflexive reactions of fight/flight/freeze, mirroring, and judging pass by like unwanted items on a conveyor belt. Also, with practice, we can make space for creative actions to be prompted by our anger … actions that are in tune with the Spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22) … actions that overcome evil with good and bring healing instead of hate.  

So, yes, you bet I’m angry. It’s a source of my creativity. It’s a vaccination against apathy and complacency. It’s a gift that can be abused—or wisely used. Yes, it’s a temptation, but it’s also a resource and an opportunity, as unavoidable and necessary as pain. It’s part of the gift of being human and being alive.