“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are [beautiful] in the broken places.”
Where Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms reads “strong” I’ve substituted the word “beautiful.” That’s because I’m going to talk about the resurrection. And the resurrection makes broken things beautiful
— Read on jakeowensby.com/2023/04/06/making-broken-things-beautiful/
The spiritual life starts at the place where you can hear God’s voice. Where somehow you can claim that long before your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your school, your church touched you, loved you, and wounded you—long before that, you were held safe in an eternal embrace. You were seen with eyes of perfect love long before you entered into the dark valley of life.
The spiritual life starts at the moment that you can go beyond all of the wounds and claim that there was a love that was perfect and unlimited, long before that perfect love became reflected in the imperfect and limited, conditional love of people.
The spiritual life starts where you dare to claim the first love. “Love one another because I have loved you first” (see John 4:19).
On Palm Sunday, my message/sermon focused on the new revolution that Jesus initiated when he rode into Jerusalem on a very humble donkey. Anyone who expected a warrior king like David to enter on a warhorse would have been disappointed. Yet as the crowds shouted out “Hosanna” (which in the Greek literally means “save us”), the message Jesus brought into Jerusalem was the same message he had been teaching for three years. He taught a message of love: Love God with all of your being and love your neighbor as yourself… and yes, that includes your enemies! As this Holy Week continues, I have been reflecting on the words from Thomas Merton in his book, Seasons of Celebration. The scripture reading that accompanies today’s reflection is 1 John 3:11-18. This particular verse spoke to me: For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (1 John 3:11)
Perhaps we need to put on new interior “garments.” Instead of judgment, try on forgiveness… instead of hate, try on love… instead of retribution, try on grace… instead of war, try on peace… instead of following the crowd, why don’t we follow Jesus. Today’s world is so polarized and broken and it breaks my heart. The older I have gotten, the more I have come to realize what is important in life. What is important in life is how you live… to live with an attitude of love… to follow the words of the prophet Micah: do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God… and, of course to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength while also loving our neighbor (all of them, even those who are difficult to love) as ourself.
We are an interconnected creation. What one person does effects another person… what one community does effects the greater community… what we do as caretakers (stewards) of God’s creation affects the entire world. I believe that we can change the world, one relationship at a time. After all, if we don’t begin process change won’t happen. The words below from Merton speak to this interconnected way of living and being.
No man lives for himself alone. To live for oneself alone is to die. We grow and flourish in our own lives insofar as we live for others and through others. What we ourselves lack, God has given them. They must complete us where we are deficient. Hence we must always remain open to one another so that we can always share with each other. –Thomas Merton: Lent and Easter Wisdom From Thomas Merton (p. 74)
“The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Verse of the day
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
– John 5:12
Voice of the day
Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all. … Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Prayer of the day
Today, we remember and celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. May your people embody a love that satisfies justice.
“Thresholds, liminal space, being on the edge, living in the borderlands when we have a spirituality that is committed to exploring these rich places, is the opposite of comfortable, safe, secure boundaries, rigid and unquestioned.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within
Can you allow yourself to surrender to something bigger and more meaningful, even as it calls you away from familiar patterns that are loved?
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Verse of the day
Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
– John 12:14-15
Voice of the day
There is a miracle in belonging to a God who rejects the image and status of a gloried hero. And instead comes to us on a donkey, centering the plight of those who suffer. Liberation begins with this: do not be afraid.
– Cole Arthur Riley
Prayer of the day
What a comfort it is to belong to a God who came to this Earth humbly. Thank you for sending your liberation not on a war horse, but a meek colt.
Far too often throughout Lent, the focus of so many people is on fear, divine judgment, and retribution. Their God is a God of wrath who zaps sinners with lightning bolts. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the people expected a warrior descendant of King David to lead the army that would slaughter the hated Romans and restore David’s Kingdom to its former glory. Jesus was not the revolutionary that most of the people wanted. I believe that Jesus called them and today calls us to a revolution of love where swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks in the spirit of the prophet Isaiah’s call in Isaiah 2:4. As I enter this Holy Week, my prayer is that the transformative power of love will be revealed and allowed to change lives.
In his book Seasons of Celebration, Thomas Merton points to that revelation and revolution. Sin cannot be pardoned and healed without love, because all sin is, at its root, a refusal of love. No matter how great our sin may be, it is forgiven when we consent to love… —Thomas Merton in Seasons of Celebration (p. 219)
May the healing power of God’s love play a central role in your Holy Week journey, dear reader. May that power transform our lives and the lives of those whom we come into contact each day.
“It is really a thought that built this portentous war establishment, and a thought shall also melt it away.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Wonder is where love begins, but the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence. Once people stop wondering about others, once they no longer see others as part of them, they disable their instinct for empathy. And once they lose empathy, they can do anything to them. Entire institutions built to preserve the interests of one group of people over another depend on this failure of imagination. Violence comes in the form of policies by the state and sometimes bloodshed in the streets. More often, it comes in forms that are hard to see, unless we find a way to make them visible through our stories.”—Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love
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