When Church Mirrors the Kingdom of Heaven

I must admit I only read the headline, because, like you possibly, I’m a bit tired of how often the church gets it wrong, or at least how often outrageous reports lace our feeds.

The headline read, “Church apologises after asking a boy with autism to leave its service because he was making too much noise.”

Good they apologised. Not so good they needed to!

It’s true, noisy children, off key singing, people talking during the service, and other things, are not the best things to contend with on Sundays when you’re focused on worshipping God. Yes, they are annoying. It is inconvenient, and these things can tend to spoil the experience.

I don’t know about you, though, but I find the Holy Spirit saying to me, “Get over it!” Whenever my attitude stinks, I find God doesn’t hesitate in the rebuke—“It’s not about you, Steve!” It’s not about any of us. It’s about the person we serve. It’s about the person who’s in our midst. The other person.

It is the inherent approval we give
to another human being for being human;
for being the person made in the image of God.

How good would church be if people with noisy disabilities were allowed to make their noises? What about children being children, and parents not feeling second or third rate, or worse, losers, when they can’t keep the children ‘under control’. And of course, there’s that time that has happened for all of us; we left our phone on and it rang during the service—it’s only happened once to me, but it was a funeral! Heaven forbid! Come on… how spoilt have we become. No, it is us, those of us who want to control our church environments, who have the opportunity to grow beyond having our own way all the time.

We need church to be messier. It’s got to be freer, realer, tastier, better for those who already don’t feel good enough. Surely it’s in the inconvenience and uncomfortableness and lack of control where we actually bear witness to the Christ inside us!

There have been times when we have all felt unworthy of God because of what happened, or what we did, or said, in a worship context. The Interesting thing is none of us can be ever unworthy of God, for our worthiness is in Christ. Nothing we can do can add to it, and nothing we do can take away from it. Grace is what it is, and yet we still put on conditions for who belongs and how they belong in the throng of corporate service.

Surely there is a vision for the ‘least of these’ to find a home in our church sanctuaries. I think of the prisoner who is lowly and must be dignified. They’ve made their mistakes and they’re endeavouring to live differently. I think of the person with cancer or Parkinson’s or dementia; the person who is but a shadow of their former selves. Don’t they deserve far more than we could ever give them? There are a thousand varieties of situations people are quickly plunged into, that are not their fault, where a tiny bit of grace would make a great deal of difference. Even those who have themselves to blame for their consequences they bear deserve to be dignified.

When you think about church do you think about the kingdom of heaven? Both concepts—church and kingdom of heaven—should be mirrored. One ought to be synonymous with the other.

What is it like in heaven? I truly wonder if it’s an upsidedown kind of place. It reminds me of the theme of the conversation I regularly have with an autistic man, least once a month. We both agree Jesus has a special place to special people in his kingdom, and, if that’s the case, the church needs to mirror that.

What are the opportunities your church has to make space, and even to elevate to royal status, those in the least-of-these brigade?

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A vision for the Church truly betrothed to God

Times are a changing, as they say. As I watch on with interest regarding the American evangelical church, and how it too is being drawn into why it has responded so poorly, like the Catholic Church, to many and variegated claims of abuse, I wonder if God is finally judging his church.

Like many, I find that judgement can’t come quickly enough. Of course, we don’t want people to be falsely tried by lynch mobs, but there is far more likelihood that there are an incredible number of hideous cases of abuse that haven’t yet seen the light of day.

My vision of a church betrothed to God is of a place, a sanctuary, humanity’s true home, where those who love God do what God requires, who are open to and welcoming of external scrutiny, who see that they are to be of service to God and are not to be served—as has become the case in so many situations to the shame of God’s true believers. My vision of a church betrothed to God is one of a place that doesn’t ‘manage risk’ to protect itself, but one that foresees risks proactively like a guardian would, and one that responds to risks that become incidents and to be open to thorough, third-party, expert and transparent investigation, to the pleasure of all stakeholders. My vision is that the church would view abuse through the lens of survivors and survivors’ families and friends.

This church would be happy to be wrong, just as the risen Lord Christ had accepted the betrayal of humanity, in being ‘wrong’ when he was never more right, just days earlier on the cross.

See the point? Our church needs to be willing to suffer for righteousness’s and justice’s sake. We need to be seen by the world as an organisation that can be wronged and, at the same time, respond appropriately. How else is the church to be trustworthy? The church must be an organisation that bears suffering well. Its leaders need to be prepared to be wrong, and regularly so. This demands humility, which is only possible through a fervent relationship with Christ himself.

But today’s church heralds itself in power. It lauds the Christian personalities that are famous, and these people are put on pedestals of integrity they cannot maintain. Do you see that we are part of the problem? Can you see how we have magnified our favourite pastor and our popular church and our ‘best’ denomination instead of Christ, himself? Can you see how we have made idols of our churches and ministers and denominations?

How is the church being reformed in this day? We are on the cusp of reformation; can you not see that? Can you not see the change that is sweeping the world? And this change is bringing the church into the 21st century.

Darkness ought never to have refuge to hide, in all organisations and communities, especially not in the church. The light of Christ ought to shine in every situation of abuse, present and past, and every abused party ought to have their justice. Every single one! This will happen in any event, but how much better for it to happen in our living days?

Shouldn’t every Christian and church be sick and tired of all the abuse accounts we hear? Shouldn’t it sicken us to the core that this would occur in any community attached to the name of God?

Yet, it’s not until we have suffered abuse, or a loved one has been mired in such a way, that we care as we should. Is not until abuse knocks on our door that we readily recognise how inherently it disrupts our spirit. It is the scourge of the evil one.

No church should be in the practice of defending abuse. Indeed, every church should stand as committed, that if even one person were to be abused, that it, contrite and true, would do everything in its power to repent, even to the point of being prepared to be ended. This surely is the language of the kingdom, whereby Christ always heralded ‘the least of these’! It is this kingdom that completely reverses the numbers game. One becomes important, just as God is one.

Even one person harmed in the name of God is a tremendous atrocity. One person made in his image, created as special as anyone ever created, has as much importance as anyone else. This is how important the church must feel about its humanity. Without its humanity it is nothing!

I crave the day when the church may be transformed to such a place that it is the holy vestibule, safe and surely sanctified, a cogent place to rest, and a place where God would truly reign, and the interests of its common humanity, represented in each individual person, dignified and respected.

Of course, these are just words! And words have been part of the problem all along. The reforming church will learn its place, it will learn when to be quiet and it will become a learner, interested in the interests of those with a claim against it. How dare any of us stubbornly refute the case of the aggressor and silence them! The true church befriends the aggressor by proving it is no threat; that there is nothing to hide.

Indeed, this new church will be fearless and humble, and it will embody a sacrificial character, reversing a nature that has too often in the past sacrificed individuals for the so-called betterment of the organisation. No, the way the church is the church is it heralds the sanctity of the individual. Then it has the Spirit’s power.

This is the church that I look forward to. This is the church that God is building. This is the church that all people will call the church. This is the church that won’t convert religious people into atheists. This is a church that Christ will call his own.

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How can I tell if my healing is on track?

June is PTSD awareness month, and I write this with the goal in mind to contribute in some small way, a reflective tool for the person in their recovery.

So, what are the signs of recovery? What are the affirmations of progress? I know one thing for sure; progress is not perfection, never was and never will be.

As we recover from whatever we’re recovering from we acknowledge in all humility that our times are a journey, a pilgrimage, a trek; from one place to another, whereby the whole point is the journey, the pilgrimage, the trek. There is no thought for destination, even if our soul yearns for it, as it inevitably will.

Here are some pointers of growth toward healing on the road to recovery:

1.   Your capacity to feel is improving. Little by little, you’re noticing anger, feeling depressed, anxiousness, fear, dread, and myriad other form of emotions, may not be felt less, but your reaction to them is a little more acceptable. You endure a little better the emotions that feel ugly on the palate of your countenance. And you count it as a gain in maturity. More and more, you can sit in the unpleasantness of grating emotions and accept them for what they are. Of a sense, this is because you have come to an acceptance of your reality. This is nothing to be scoffed at. It is a real possession of spiritual mastery.

2.   You can bear your analytical mind a little easier.  This is the key marker in our quest for a vision of our spirituality that has ascended on high with God. The key differentiation is the mind still analyses, but it hurts less, or the hurt may have disappeared altogether. Either way, it is a decisive victory. It is one of those things that God promised from long ago, but that you in fact doubted would ever happen. You are perfectly reasonable in your doubting. But somehow God has come through and has delivered you from significant cognitive pain. You may only be a little way there, but I want to encourage you; God will finish this work that has been started in you, and it will be complete in your lifetime.

3.   The gap between what happened and now marks a new season.  There comes a time, post trauma, where there is sufficient distance in time and space that delivers a certain perspective, and that perspective gives us what we need in terms of trying again. Whatever it was that traumatised us, we are now willing to try it again, but obviously with the benefit of having wisdom and a safer context. At this point we see that God has gone before us. He has in fact prepared the way. And the longer that time goes on, the more blessed is the perspective we gather and gain.

4.   We have learned to be gentler on ourselves.  This is a true wisdom; anyone who can draw upon compassion for themselves, especially when it comes to behavioural outcomes, like the things we do, has learned not just how to care for themselves, which is crucial life skill, but they are now also trustworthy to care for others. See how we don’t have the traits of being able to care for others if we cannot care for ourselves? This is an important correlation. And when we witness that we are gentler on ourselves without feeling guilty, and we know it to be right, suddenly me know it is right, and God encourages our heart with tenacity for life. This is especially pertinent when old scripting re-emerges. There is no scathing attack, no shrinking in shame, and no outburst toward others. Which brings me to my final point…

5.   Your relationship with perfection has matured. Note that I say that your relationship with perfection isn’t mature, just that it has matured, somewhat to a very great deal—along a sliding scale. You may even glory in the fact that you are imperfect, and the more you do, the less fear you feel, the more vulnerable you can be, the realer you are, the humbler the confidence you embody. You cannot threaten others and they’re no threat to you. What we’re getting close to is the absolute pinnacle of human experience. There is no need of false pretence, nor is there any need to covet the future or regret the past. All that matters is the present.

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Love and the Limits of Shock Absorption

If wisdom is the practice of living life well, then it becomes a consequence that wisdom has a way; a method to be practiced. There just has to be a process for the practice of wisdom that works in life.

God has been sharing an image with me today; it is a metaphor. The image is that of a car shock absorber. These wonderful car components are attached to the springs in the car, and where the springs give the car sufficient bounce and flexibility, the shock absorbers smoothen the ride. They take the shock out of the bumps. They cushion the journey. Yet they deal with the bumpiness of the road that cannot be hidden.

Shock absorbers deal in the truth,
yet their role is grace.

I think our role as loving human beings, hardly with the need to mention beings who love Christ, is to be shock absorbers within the contexts we’re planted. Our role, within the patience we display, as in the fruit of the Spirit, is to absorb hurt as much as we can, and indeed many of us have become past masters of this very trade. Many of us know what it is like to be abused. But when it comes to absorbing shock, there is a very godly trait in bearing with endurance many a common slur.

How else are we set apart? How else will people know that we love Christ if we cannot absorb a hurt? Again, I’m talking about hurts we may easily overlook; those that are not repetitive and not from the same person repetitively but hurts all the same.

It says in Proverbs 19:11, that it is to a person’s glory when they overlook an offence. Nothing will get us more positive attention from positive people than when we overlook an offence. The right people notice. The people we really want to be relating with will see the grace we exhibit in absorbing hurt, the bedrock of which is humility, and they will find us attractive, because they find us to be safe, and because we’re safe, we are trustworthy and worthy of investing friendship in. See how absorbing hurts wins friends; the right kinds of friend.

Of course, we don’t simply absorb the shock of hurt for one gain or another. We do it because it is the wise thing to do. We do it because it is the only modus operandi that works. It is both good for us and good for the other. It is a source of blessing and blessing is its food.

If anyone can feel at home, they can feel at home with a shock absorber. They know they can get it wrong and yet won’t be blamed. They know their failure won’t be held against them. They know there is grace because they have experienced grace. The shock absorber is someone who builds cohesive community. Wherever they go there is peace.

Here is a timely word of warning. There is a limit to the capacities of shock absorption. Wherever we run into toxic people and rub up against toxic relationships, our capacities for shock absorption will be taken for granted, and ultimately, we will become jaded. But that won’t be the end of it. With some we will be burned. It isn’t safe to be a shock absorber in a toxic relationship. Perhaps we may know this already, when we find we are in constant shock absorption mode.

But for the main, as a living priority, as a modus operandi for life, as a living deed, we can and should, for the glory of God, aim to be shock absorbers for those who come to rely on us, without allowing ourselves to be flattened by abusers.

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The gap between legalism and liberation is minuscule and mighty

If this isn’t a game changer for your understanding of the impartation of grace, I don’t know what will be. There is as subtle yet ever is so significant difference between the legalism that binds our spirituality and the liberation that frees it.

Let me cut to the chase. Suppose two types of people are doing their best to serve God in living their lives set apart for divine purposes alone; ‘holy’ in a word.

As we put them side by side, they look identical, and the production of their works is by method almost indivisible. Hardly anything separates them.

But there is a nuance of difference between them that leaves a stark contrast, and only the discerning can tell them apart.

They themselves will know the difference, if they are honest. People who do their good works because they want to do them, or they do their good works for a reason or reasons that are external to their motivation.

In popular psychology terms, one can be seen as intrinsically motivated and the other as extrinsically motivated.

One person cares about what they do so much that they don’t care about receiving a reward, whereas the other person, deep down perhaps, does their good works for some kind of reward.

That person who does their good works for choice, because they can, out of even some unknown delight and their own volition, does good because their heart has been transformed. None of this is their own doing—it was a grace given to them—but they did agree that they needed and wanted it and they did what they needed to do to receive it.

The other person, and this depicts most religious persons, can rather easily do good works. They know the moral code, they know right from wrong, and they may even know the subtleties of personality politics. They know what is required at a human level. They have a head for a good faith life. And they will generally do what is considered to be the right thing.

~

But there is a sharp and stark
difference between those two.

~

The first person cannot do anything else but live a transformed life. And they know it. The second person cannot do anything else but do what their moral compass says is right. But they also suspect that something is missing. They somehow know that the first kind of person has more of the grace of God than they have.

A test between the persons is this pertinent: if we cannot help but be instruments of God, and are rather chastened by the Lord’s will continually, to the point where we know our lives are no longer about us, and we keep doing things in faith that become in and of themselves their own reward, we are probably the first person. But if, when we are honest, we seem to be driven by needing things a certain way, and needing others to fall into line, and we don’t centrally desire to do the things of service for no reward that by their very nature offer no reward, we may well be the second person.

The transformed person has been liberated from, and lifted out of, themselves. Even though the self remains, and the witness of selfishness especially, they cannot help but be surrendered to the prevailing will of God that has its way over their life.

The troubled person, on the other hand, remains bonded in chains to both their sin and to the requirements they place on others. Their works are good, but their motives deep down are not to do the good for wholly good reasons. Indeed their reasons will be about pleasing others and staying out of trouble, which are both inherently self-motivated.

The difference between legalism and liberation is minuscule and mighty. The legalistic person and the one liberated may look almost identical, but their hearts are completely different. One knows they still don’t have it, whilst the other cannot help do what God wants.

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Wisdom Reconciles Idolatry (A.K.A. Addiction) Restoring Peace

Imagine if you had a formula for success.  A formula that worked every single time.  And part of that formula involved a thing called ‘wisdom’. It worked because it, like clockwork, works like mathematics. It just works. So work it! Imagine.

There is such a thing. It’s known in God. Indeed, it’s only known in God. And we can say that it’s only known in God, because technically speaking God’s put it into every part of creation. It’s a law.

Here’s how it works.

We all function in idolatry, which has its nexus in addiction, and its nemesis in wisdom. We all function somewhere along a continuum between the addiction of being under control to the peace of experiencing God’s freedom. And the Law of life, which was created by God, in as much as we’re created, suggests with certainty, that if we resist the sway of myriad idolatry, through the addition of wisdom, we reconcile the madness and bring ourselves to the place of peace.

This peace is what we were created for.

And wisdom is the vehicle to this peace.

Now, let’s accept for a minute that addiction is idolatry on anabolic steroids. Idolatry, which is something many ‘pious’ religious zealots claim they do not do, is the practice of us all, to lesser or greater extents. And the epitome of idolatry is the idol that has primacy of worth, i.e. addiction.

The opposite of addiction is peace, for one is bondage and the other is freedom. Wisdom gets us to peace by reconciling the idolatry—which requires the sacrifice of pain, which is to do without the idol or the addiction. It is possible, but it does involve pain.

Once our idolatry (or our addiction) is reconciled through the application of wisdom, peace is restored to that part of our lives.

Would it make sense to you that God wants to do this in every corner of our lives? And it can be done. We just need to want it. And we must accept that it’s God’s way of wisdom or else.

All roads to peace traverse the crossroad of wisdom, which reconciles the madness of idolatry through a sacrifice we know as pain.

See how pain is the pathway to peace? That would ought not to fear it, but learn to enter it and be healed.

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Okay, Exactly HOW is the Heart Changed?

Last night’s effort showed that the heart is the miracle behind behaviour change. Without the heart being convinced of its need to change, change—true and lasting change I mean—simply cannot occur.

My task is now to dig deeper, to plunge down to the icy depths of a human being’s regenerative transformation, and to attempt to come to grips with exactly how a heart is changed at the ocean floor.

First of all, the heart must know in a very personal way that change is required.

A person of their own opinion still,
will not have a change of will.

They cannot change, because they see no need of change, and there isn’t even any insight to bring awareness of the change required. Yet, there are many who know that change is required, but still struggle in the department of the will. They want to change, but they are not willing to pay the price of sacrifice.

Sadly, we have all been there!

But this is what this article is about: God actually changes our heart. That’s right, only through the impartation of God’s holy revelation—that stirs our soul awake—that leaves us breathless in contrition—that takes the old to death in order that the new can come to life—does change occur in our heart.

If we should crave it, and of course we should, because there is nothing in the world like the power of true heart change, we know we can go after it.

We only need to recognise change without lasting heart transformation is futile and then we get serious with God. We stop wasting our time.

We need to be sick and tired of being sick and tired, when the sickness and tiredness is borne of our self-dependence and other-than-God-dependence.

We genuinely need to recognise that the power to change comes only as a grace through God. At this point we are absolutely humble. We recognise that without God we’re not masters of our destiny.

We are, instead, a shambles. We trust, fear and love the wrong things.

But as soon as we begin to trust and fear and love the things of God, our Lord begins to bless us with right sight for the things of the heavenly Kingdom. What comes as a result—what is already apparent—is the fruit of repentance.

We’ve chosen to change our minds. We have decided to stop trusting our own judgement. We have decided that abiding by the truth is worth more than our pride. And a sense we have not chosen to change our minds; our minds have been changed for us. Of course, this is a mystery.

Everyone who seeks God but does not yet have God is open to the witness of the testimony of God in another person’s heart, as that person is witnessed as transformed. A transformed person is a walking miracle. And just about everybody who witnesses such a walking, living miracle gesticulates, as was said in When Harry Met Sally, “I want what they’ve got.”

The heart is changed by God, but it’s not out of the realms of possibility for humans to want such a heart. And with enough desperation on anyone’s part, especially given the circumstances of brokenness, just about anyone can be ‘met’ by God to this degree.

Heart change is necessary for regeneration. Nobody can be born again until they’ve been born from above, which is to be reborn from within by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The evidence of heart change is obvious; there is a constant and flourishing turning from the ways of this world back to God; there is behaviour change where one takes astute responsibility for one’s own actions and is cut to the heart whenever another person is hurt by their person’s actions.

There is no doubting the evidence of this heart change. And this is the heart change we ought to want to see in each of ourselves, more and more; never satisfied that we know enough when we aren’t repenting enough, never content that we live any kind of lie as opposed to seeing only the lies in others’ lives, never happy when we aren’t blessing others because in fact we can, and supremely happy when we know that God sees us.

The interesting thing at this concluding juncture is that, having read these words, and having edited these words—indeed having written these words, no less—it’s impressed upon me how little I bear this note of transformation within myself, even though I’ve been transformed much.

Indeed, this little article serves as a golden reminder that I haven’t arrived; that I am still so far from the destination, even if despite my sin, which is, in this case, a coveting of a salvation that bears little fruit, I am saved by the grace of God.

This leaves you and I
in the land of perennial opportunity.

How exactly are our hearts to be changed? We must desire them to be reborn every day. We must hunger that God would change us, that our hearts and minds would ever be open in ways that those who are yet to believe would find godly attraction in experiencing us.

We must stop arguing as we are tempted to argue. We discern astutely. We must stop judging, because ‘Christians’ judge too much, where those of Christ trust the Holy Spirit to do the convicting. We must also look out to our world from the eyes of the hypocrites we are. Only the transformed can see their hypocrisy.

It’s only when we are capable of seeing our hypocrisy that we are gentler and kinder on others, because we’re too busy getting the log out of our own eye to bother about the speck in theirs.

When our hearts bleed with compassion and pump with the resolve that insists on embodying truth through love, we have no more time to judge anyone else’s sin other than our own, as we rest confident in leaving the rest of the world to God. But we must also help hold each other—the espoused transformed—to gentle yet persuasive account. Such is the grace of a love that’s committed wholly to truth. And first of all, to self-account, to ourselves and before others!

In this land of opportunity, where growth abounds, where our hearts are ever stretched, we grow comfortable in our discomfort; we sport smiles of gladness even as we rally with the contempt with which we present to God.

How wonderful it is when we can see the full and bright measure of our sin and yet feel no sense of judgement at all, and only experience the fullest measure of grace for the evidence of change in our hearts.

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Peace within the frenetic demands of life and loss

We face a battle of survival every day. Certainly anyone who discerns that this life is full of good and evil knows this. We accept this and we can prosper. It makes no sense not to accept it. The nature of life in this fallen world does not and cannot change.

Let’s couple two enigmatic challenges together: the frenetic nature of life within the finality of numbing loss.

Loss, when we face its depth, changes us from the inside out. We do not get to take the old version of ourselves with us, as we’re transformed.

Through grief we not only learn to let go of what we no longer have, we learn to let go of that essence of ourselves that was attached to what we’ve lost.

Loss malforms us and grief eventually reforms us. We cannot stay the same. What is inevitable may produce its own grief as we flail for any semblance of control we can retain.

And even as we contemplate a life of loss we cannot control and cannot even navigate at times we live amid a life that is also so frenetic it feels we’re missing our essence even as we miss out on truly experiencing all of the experiences we have.

Then there is the dilemma of getting our lives wrong, the mistakes we make, the regrets we have, the decisions we’ve decided that have proven unwise, the missed opportunities. And this kind of list runs on. We find ourselves reflective.

What is remarkable about life, however, is its nature of evening. We can turn everything around for our good, if we can only accept what’s done and move on with a redemptive mindset. God is the Lord of the second chance.

As we accept the components and facets of our life that don’t work, haven’t and won’t, accepting there is a way to be found that does and will, God will pave a way for us to create the way of our desires, within the realm of possibility. We may well be blown away with what God is about to show us and do for us, even as we’re prepared to ‘do’ for ourselves—by taking responsibility for our lives.

And all this out of loss and the frenetic nature of life.

All this out of what threatens to destroy us.

All this for what we’re destined to become.

All this and more as a compensation for what we’ve been through.

Loss is not the end; it’s literally the beginning.

The end of our demand for control is death through loss, but then there is life through a grief that sets us on a journey where we ever discover ourselves in our discovering God!

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Don’t fall for life’s cruellest curse

One of the saddest things I’ve ever heard in the counselling setting is words to the effect, “Learning this is beyond them.”

The ‘this’ I speak of is an important life lesson that would keep a relationship alive, but the person on the other side of the transaction does not show they are capable of change.

It’s life’s cruellest curse. To think that we might find ourselves united to someone in friendship or marriage or work or some other way and find that change is beyond them. It’s a curse to the hopes of both, but it’s just plain wrong, when for the want of honesty, anyone of normal capacity can learn anything.

But… the narcissist. Sorry, there’s that caricature again.

The pattern narcissist refuses point blank to see it, because they cannot believe a reality that is not rigidly theirs. They can’t cope with not being able to manipulate the reality to suit themselves. And, for that, everyone loses!

Learning is life’s goal, but people who cannot accept this are destined to live a life forever limited by their own fantasy. But they mess with the hopes of any others who yoke themselves to their buggy.

Life, as I’ve often said, is the learning ground. It’s our destiny to be open, to see, to observe, to absorb, to learn, to grow, and to transcend our doggedness to remain as children.

Don’t fall for life’s cruellest curse, which is to put blinders on and go on merrily thinking you’re right when others are hurting as a consequence. Do better. Let go of the prevailing self-perception that runs counter to the prevailing truth. At least be open to the idea that a big part of any of us is the capacity to be wrong!

It’s our wrongness, however,
that forever propounds our potential to learn.

Instead of falling for a curse that will curse others, not to mention our ascendants, who will carry the curse with them if they’re jaded enough, we could throw open our doors to an enquiry that sets itself on the truth and the truth alone.

Anyone who desires to live
accordant to the truth will be blessed.

This is a truth of life
and of faith and of experience.

The greatest acquisition we can make in the spiritual life is to live committed to the truth whatever the cost may be, for such a commitment will always cost. Indeed, I would say that this is the spiritual life:

The spiritual life is an honest life,
a learning life, a life open
to the cut and thrust of love,
which ever gives of itself to and for others.

We only get one go at life. It’s up to us whether we’ll transcend this issue of our stuckness. Can we embrace a manner of living that demands rigorous honesty? If we can, then we can become fully adult. Any of us who can be honest can do it.

Do you know what is beautiful? Two human beings in connection. Two human beings, or a team of human beings, who can depend on one another to the extent of interdependence—a fully functional, efficient and effective nuanced sense of relationship that works because it works.

When connection becomes the flux gluing humanity, humanity can achieve anything. But humanity is ever frustrated without it, and so too are the purposes of God.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash