church is friends.

I’m not in this to fight for anyone’s business like a fast food restaurant, an airline, or a cell phone provider. I’m in this to free and inspire people and to point toward something refreshing for the exhausting game of life we’re all playing. If the language and culture we speak and work in, helps to do that, great. If not, well, I understand. 

That said, I get sad when people leave. Not because it’s somehow a bad reflection of our church or how we do things, but, quite simply, because I won’t see them anymore. And that stinks. As much as we hate to admit it, I stay connected with a large amount of people through church. And when they leave, I will miss them. So will others. 

So don’t mistake the sadness for business. We miss people. We miss relationships. And, again, that’s why we say, if we do run into you in the store, please don’t ignore me and act embarrassed. 

We’re still humans, right?

more church and dating.

When I had my first daughter I was petrified. I was scared of the horrible guys that would come and try to date her and want one thing from her and how bad it would be to have to fend them off with shotguns. 

I shared this at a church in my first year of pastoring. 

A lady came up to me after the sermon and said, Ryan, you’re all wrong. Why are you dreading your daughters dating so much? We have three daughters and the men they have brought into our family have been the best thing to ever happen to us. Why don’t you start thinking of it that way? 

I never forgot her words. (I later told her that they changed my life.)

In fact, I took them further. Why was it that I told my daughters that men were pigs and wanted nothing from them but to get down their pants? Wouldn’t that mean if my daughters started dating a guy who was a pig wanting nothing but to get down her pants that she would think… well that’s what dad always told me guys were? 

So, I started talking differently to my daughters(s) and changing my head in the process. I can’t wait for my daughters to start dating. Guys are amazing. Guys are awesome. I can’t wait to see who they fall head over heels for. I can’t wait to see the amazing human being that they bring home. 

And all of this is like church. 

Have you noticed all that articles, blog posts, and comments about how bad the church is lately? When people go to a church and it sucks, doesn’t everyone think, well… I guess this is what everyone said. Churches suck. If I want to go to any church, it’s going to suck so I might as well not go to any or go to one that sucks. 

Self-fulfilling prophecy, I believe, it’s called. 

What about if we started talking about how awesome church is? How fulfilling. How well it spends it’s money. How relevant and inspiring and graceful and loving it is? 

the church is beautiful

I understand very well that the church has absolutely destroyed some people out there. (Well people acting in the name of “the church” but let’s not get hung up on details...) 

I get it. I’m floored by some of the stories of people who still go to church after what the church has done to them. I tell them frequently: I can’t believe you’re here. I honestly can’t. 

But here’s the thing. Many of us have also been absolutely destroyed by a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, wife, husband, boss, co-worker, stranger, cashier, friend... you get the idea. By a human being. 

And we still believe there are some good humans and we seek them. (If we’re in a good place, we still believe the person that hurt us is a good person and there are reasons they hurt us that we hope we can better understand, they can better understand, and we can all heal.) 

I encourage you to keep looking. There are some beautiful, astounding, majestic, generous, inspiring, creative, thoughtful, human beings who make the churches they attend much the same. 

church and dating

I planted a church. The first Sunday was very similar to a first date. I had high hopes and expectations and so did the other people but none of us knew if it would work. It was a little awkward but also exciting. 

As the years went by, we started to realize we liked each other and things got comfortable and beautiful. And the relationship is working. 

About 9 months ago, we had our 5 year anniversary party that was a lot like a wedding reception with dancing, drinking, music and toasts. I think we’re all married now. 

This has all made me think of all the other commonalities between churches and dating, some of which might help you in either… or both. 

There are good churches and good people and sometimes the two aren’t a good fit. It doesn’t mean anything bad about them, or you. 

There are bad churches. Really bad ones. Abusive churches. Friends don’t let friends date them or stay committed to them. 

There are churches that really sell you on the first date and go all out. Then they end up not really caring too much after you have committed. 

Breaking up is hard. Even if the relationship was bad. You still carry some grief. If it was good, you carry even more. Acknowledge it when and if you move on. 

Relationships take time to build. You can’t replicate in 3 weeks what took 3 years to build, unless it’s magic. (But don't always expect magic.)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Don’t knock a church because her hair is too long or she wears too much make up. Someone might love her. Don’t love a church because she’s the cheerleader and everyone at school says she’s the hottest one of the bunch. 

Love a church because she’s beautiful. To you.

maslow.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory of psychology written in 1943, which focuses on the stages of growth in humans. 

The stages go something like this: 

physiological: air and water
safety: personal security, health and well-being
love/belonging: friendship, intimacy, and family
esteem: a sense of contribution or value
self-actualization: the realization of potential. 

They are great. Stealing from the great Joseph Campbell I learned something though. And gave it my own interpretation. 

Pursuing those things is not where life is found. Campbell talks about myths and the value of myths. Myths bring awe and wonder back into the world and provide a bigger and more mysterious story to live into. That is their power. 

Toward the end of his life Maslow even added another level: self-transcendence. “The self only finds it actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, in altruism or spirituality.” 

And someone who is not living into myth, well, they are not living life to the fullest. 

We all know that someone who must walk for 8 hours a day for basic water is surviving but not living. 

The same could be said for someone who must work 8 hours a day to realize their own potential. They are surviving but not living. 

That is why the myth, if you want to call it that, that a divine power that contains and is expanding the universe to ever greater and brighter and more beautiful arenas, and that lives within me and you and is pulling me somewhere I can not imagine, if I just let go of all the pursuits and realize I’m enough in this moment, right now, is where life actually might start to begin.

If we go one step further, every good myth contains some main parts - the hero’s journey as Campbell called it. 

The Summons, the Wilderness, the Gift, and the Return. 

So, this divine power containing and expanding and letting us know we are enough and bringing us to better life is not all magic fairies. 

It’s bravery to go new places with our thoughts, it’s the courage to be in the places of pain and suffering that brings us, it’s the gift of realizing we’re okay, even there, and it’s returning with something majestic and motivating for those who are still where we once were. 

I agree with Campbell - we need better myths and better explanation of the myths of the Bible and those we are living. 

our brains, and the bible, don't work like that.

Study of the human brain is one of the most amazing, frustrating, enchanting, and fear-inducing topics ever. 

But it’s downright enlightening when it comes to religion and the Holy Books. 

Let’s start here: 

We are figuring out all kinds of things about the brain including memory. Autobiographical episodic memory is one of the ways we store information and autobiographical episodic memory is pieced together from experiential moments that we retrieve. Those moments are affected by our knowledge, our mood, the social context, our physical perspective, and even language. So we encode these memories based on all of those things and retrieve them based on those things. 

Thus, every time we retrieve a memory, psychologists say it’s contaminated, and, of course, affected by the list above. 

So when we say we remember something. Yes, we do. But probably not what actually happened. 

Then throw in all of these ingredients: 

Confirmation bias. We all do it. We get a belief, lock it in place and then screen everything through that belief. We hear and see in a biased way in order to confirm the thing we already believe.  In other words, two people could read the same article and come away with the idea that the article is proving their own belief. 

This happens in many experiments. The same article will make one person feel more correct in their assumption of global warming being false and another person will feel more correct in their assumption that it is true. 

The same words, perceived differently. 

Optimism bias: This is another thing we all have, sometimes called better-than-average effect. This is the way we look at ourselves as better than everyone else. Or in a more positive light. 

This also works when we are talking about our own risks. We think very differently about the risk of someone walking “downtown at night” than we do about ourselves walking “downtown at night”. The risk is usually lower for ourselves than for the general population. 

Hindsight bias: We always make the past appear better than it was. In large part, because we now know, looking back, that all those fears we had about the past, didn’t pan out. So, looking back, it feels safer, less frightening and overall better than the time we are in... where we don’t know how those fears are going to pan out. 

A great example from the book The Science of Fear (which everyone should read) was an article by Thomas Friedman in 2003 about how great 1985 was. 

However, in 1985 the Cold War was raging, AIDS was ready to be an epidemic and there were a whole host of other fears... that all turned out alright. So we go back and remember 1985 as being much better than it was. 

One more: Whenever our brains move a “mystical” experience from the part of our brain that stores “experiences that we can’t put into words” into the section of our head that is language and words… we, of course, alter the actual experience. In fact, those two section of the brain don’t really work together. 

So when we try to explain the sunset, just by trying to explain it, we alter it in our own brain, before saying a word. 

Now if you stir all of that into a bowl, what do you end up? 

A group of people having mystical experiences and then trying to confirm their bias about being chosen by God in a certain context, knowledge, perspective and culture and then writing stories about those experiences while trying to retrieve those memories and looking back thinking things were much better than they actually were and thinking they were better than most people around them as well. 

People collect these stories, letters, and ideas and then read them with their own bias, perspective, mystical experiences, etc… 

And then have the audacity to say that they are infallible, inherent, and other fancy words that ignore just about everything about humanity, brains, and how we experience life. 

The Rabbis said there were 77 interpretations to every passage of Scripture and only 1 right interpretation that no one but God knows. 

Thank God for the Rabbis.

culture and science help us read the bible.

Talk about a line that will scare the soul out of some people. 

We’re all trying to figure this stuff out. We all always have been. 

And the Bible is a story of people trying to do that. And so is science. And so is culture. 

And so, as science discovers that the Earth is 13.8 billion years old, that evolution is a thing, that quantum mechanics is real, that dark matter and dark energy are also real, we get to discover new ways to read this book about humans trying to figure out how to discover God. In all of those things. 

And so, as society discovers that women are actually just as valuable as men, that human beings should never own other human beings, that the Earth is valuable, that there is room for all of us, we discover new ways to read this book about humans trying to figure out how to discover God. In all of those things. 

There’s no need to continue this fight with culture and science. Instead lets embrace it, learn from it, and be a part of its expansion.

my movie idea.

Imagine Red Dawn. Or any other action/war movie that you’ve seen.

The premise is that China has set-up military bases on U.S. soil and started to come down on religious rules and laws. You know the kind of stuff that really gets people in this country riled up. They have called us barbaric and ridiculed our faith and banned our guns. 

The entire movie is this group of rogue soldiers who are camping out in the mountains and fighting the Chinese, standing up for American freedom, and kicking some butt. 

The whole time they are also planning out something - something big. Something that will put the Chinese on their heels. We get tidbits of it but never what it is until the last scene. 

Downtown Beijing. 
Early morning. 
Skyscrapers everywhere. 
Two planes fly into them.

Roll credits. 

Good guys and bad guys gets real confusing, depending on perspective.

good villains bad heroes

The Bible is filled with apparent heroes. Heroes of the faith. I use the word very loosely, because, the more I’ve spent looking and hearing about these people, I’m not sure any of them measure up to Batman.  

We did a series on 1 Samuel and one of my big take-aways was this: Samuel was a jerk. He put Saul in one of the worst positions possible. He put an inordinate amount of pressure on Saul to be this amazing king and then threw him under the bus whenever he could. 

This guy was not a hero and we named the book after him? 

Then comes David. Oh great King David. If you play out his little war deception and murdering of villages so his deception wouldn’t get out to other countries... if you translate that story in modern times with US military and ISIS as the characters, well, we would hate David. He’s a selfish traitor. That’s before he kills a guy under his control so he can take his wife. 

Solomon was called out by God for doing the same thing that Egypt had done. Building a military superpower on the backs of slave labor and trusting in chariots. He was the wise King?

And even Joseph. The great Joseph - one of the greatest stories in all the Bible. Pretty amazing to think that the reason that Jews were enslaved in Israel was because of Joseph. 

He stocked up a bunch of Pharaoh’s crops during a famine and then charged the Israelites (his own people) for seven consecutive years, eventually demanding their enslavement as payment. 

And we could go on and on but what’s the point? 

There are no good guys and bad guys. Pharisees wanted to put labels on good guys and bad guys. They loved pointing out the bad guys thinking they were the good guys. 

Unfortunately, they ended up killing the good guy and becoming the bad guys themselves. 

We spend a lot of time calling out bad guys. Maybe the good guys recognize that the bad guys are just like them and maybe the bad guys still think there are good guys and bad guys.

if the bible is...

There are times when the Bible has not been awesome to me. At all. 

When the Bible is God’s authoritative word, or without error, or the handbook to life, or a science book, or anything else along those lines, I find it to be a terrible book. When people use it that way, I find myself really trying hard to be quiet. 

However. 

If the Bible is a book written by humans in a cultural context of language, understanding, and perspective… 

If the Bible is more like a menu… 

If the Bible is the world’s great myth...

If the Bible is a compost pile... providing material for new...

If the Bible is story, because story is what still speaks to us after thousands of years whether it actually occurred or not… 

If the Bible is supposed to inspire us to live our own stories of God and not to just memorize other peoples’ stories… 

Then I find it to be a rather inspiring, creative, eye-opening record of the evolution of humanity, of God, of myself, and of the world…

people love to be beat.

Yeah, that sounds really bad but I heard it from a retired Nazarene pastor who, obviously meant it figuratively, and I, very sadly,  agree with him. 

He said, “People like being beat and they don’t know what to do when they aren’t.”

It’s really hard for people to be told they don’t have to bring anything to the altar to offer to their god. 

How else are we supposed to know where we stand? 

Humans are much better off in a church/job/relationship/God that doesn’t beat them. People don’t need to feel terrible about themselves, to wallow in misery, in order to feel good about themselves. And yet, I’m always surprised with how many people still live in that place. 

It speaks volumes of what religion has done to the divine human spirit. It’s tragic on universal proportions. 

I’ve got to feel worse... to feel better. That is the lie that must die. 

Today.

independence.

Jesus should feel like the cage being blown to pieces. 

Jesus frees us from purity codes, from ritual, from religion, from doctrine, from theories, from head-games, from guilt, from blindness, to help us see a beautiful, inspiring, bold, revolutionary, optimistic, abundant, generous new world. 

To see love. 

Pharisees still hate Jesus. They prefer captivity and fear and control and power.
As long as they are on top.

Get free.

freedom can bring fear.

I watched a video of some lab monkeys being freed. They had been stuck in cages for years, experimented on by people in white coats. 

They were living an absolutely terrible life. 

They released the monkeys. They opened up the cages and allowed them to feel sunlight, to run into trees, to race across a field of grass. 

Some of them bolted. They were so pumped and stoked that they could hardly believe it. They were laughing in the top branches of the nearby trees. 

Others sat in the sun like we sit in the sun in March after not seeing it for 3 months. You just can’t believe something that fills up so much of our space, that costs nothing, feels that good. These monkeys were in heaven. 

But some… well they just sat by the door. What is this? Sunlight? Grass? Trees? I think I prefer the beautiful four white walls and the man who gives me my food every day and pokes me with needles. 

I assume you see where this is going but in case you don’t. 

Religion has been an experiment on a lot of people. It has poked and prodded and kept people very very under control in a nice tight box. People grew to love that box. And when someone comes along and starts talking about life, and God and love, well some people literally start crying while sitting in that sunlight. They can’t believe it. 

But others, say no thank you and head back to the cage. Maybe it’s too much space. Too many things could go wrong. Too many risks. Too many what if’s. The cage hurts but at least it’s safe. 

God led people out of the cages of slavery and production in Egypt and the first thing they wanted to do was go back. God always leads people out of cages and will perform plagues just to prove how serious God is about getting out of cages. 

Safety, unfortunately, often wins. There is a fear in freedom and love and not being forced to make bricks for a Pharaoh that beats you up. 

The problem is that God is not safe. Life is not safe. Love is not safe. Love demands freedom. It struggles to be noticed in that cage. 

I used to get really angry at people who go back in the cage but I have learned that God is in the cage too. God is in there, trying with everything God can do, to lead people out into the field, or wilderness, or life beyond where they can be big and God can be big while still finding room for both of them to breathe. 

At least, I hope, because I’m sure I still have cages and blind spots I don’t quite see and I trust there is more freedom. 

I just keep trying to point out there... to move out there... toward the sunlight where love embraces all and there is not the fear we think there is.

hate your father and mother?

That statement from Jesus has always been really frustrating to me. Even the explanations which always involved original languages, and lots of “well…” never did it. 

One day I was with a girl who was raised in a very conservative family. She was starting to question much of what she had been raised with. She was finding some freedom, getting the sense that she could unload quite a bit of religious baggage and start running in the fields. 

But her parents. Man, they kept warning her and telling her she was bordering on heresy and bringing all of their own fears into their life. 

And as the conversation went on, they were holding this poor girl back. They were keeping her in the cage. 

And I said, you know there is that verse… which was the first time I’d ever used that verse in a way that didn’t annoy me. 

Hate in the Hebrew world implied separation. 
Love implied clinging or moving toward. 

Hate fear. Always. Sometimes, parents are the greatest fear-mongers on the planet. If they are. When they are. Move away from that part of them and move toward God.

too much fear.

It’s everywhere, soaking everything and everyone in its ugly, toxic, noxious gas. It’s probably the most prevalent thing I see in my own life and in the life of most everyone else. If we are those fish in that cave in Mexico, the poisonous plant is definitely fear. 

People are afraid of church, afraid of God, afraid of Hell, afraid of standing out, afraid of not standing out, afraid of old ideas and new ideas, afraid of bad theology, or any theology, afraid of large groups of people they have never met, afraid of people they have met who are not like themselves, afraid of failure and thus risk, afraid of not being enough, of not doing enough, of not measuring up, afraid of not knowing enough, or knowing the right things, afraid of new paths, new direction, new thoughts, new people, new wineskins, and afraid of not being afraid. We are afraid of freedom, mystery, and of wide open expanses of awe and wonder. 

It all reminds me of my favorite Pixar short “Day and Night” which quotes Wayne Dyer and is maybe, during this time in our country, should be read daily.

Fear of the unknown. 
They are afraid of new ideas. 

They are loaded with prejudices, not based upon anything in reality, but based on… if something is new, I reject it immediately because it’s frightening to me. What they do instead is just stay with the familiar. 

You know, to me, the most beautiful things in all the universe, are the most mysterious. 

We’re actually afraid of change, which to go back those fish, is the only way we can survive. 

Is there anything more evil than that? 

There is a great little parable, from Anthony DeMello, we had on our church wall for a while. It should be on everyone’s wall. 

What is love?

The absence of fear.

What is it that people fear?

Love.

We’re even afraid of not being afraid. How messed up is that? Maybe even more evil than being afraid to change to survive and not be afraid... 

Sometimes I think this whole spiritual life is only about one thing: stop being afraid. Jesus repeated this pretty often. As did angels. As did God. 

Elizabeth Gilbert, among many, talk about putting fear in its place. Not being afraid doesn’t mean we never have fear, it just means we know what to do with it and we don’t let it drag us around the world by its leash. 

And we do that by not being afraid of real, unconditional, love. And knowing we’re enough and worthy and loved. 

alleys.

No matter how great a city looks, you can always find an alley. The dark, lonely, dirty places that people are afraid of and where all the trash gets sent. The places where we are told not to walk and yet, where most of the work gets done. I always try to look down them. 

People are like cities. 
Businesses are like cities. 
Churches are like cities. 
Countries are like cities. 
Systems are like cities. 

Some call these “sacrifice zones” but no matter the term you want to use, there is a place where the hard parts of life must reside. 

In the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Hitler, and the rest of Germany, sought to hide their alleys. They wanted to put on a good presentation. 

Jesus talked to religious leaders and told them they looked great on the outside but on the inside they were dead, much like 1936 Berlin. 

I’m still afraid of alleys. I’m trying not to be. It seems like the only way we can change anything is to, first, acknowledge them and to, second, enter them. 

lent in june.

Lent is the 40 days before Easter when human beings are supposed to spend some time in darkness. In doubt, frustrations, and raised fists. And uncertainty. It’s a time when we don’t have to know everything. That alone can be the most liberating feeling on the planet. 

I’ve always been a person who leans into the dark side of life… a little. Depeche Mode was my band growing up. That foreboding, grungy feel just sat right with me and not because I was depressed but, looking back, because it felt more honest. 

Lent is a chance to be honest. 

One of the more powerful things I’ve ever been involved in at our church was a Lent service in which there were four black boards put in the middle of the room and all the chairs were removed. 

We invited people to write their gripes, their complaints, their pain, their doubt, their anger on those walls in silver paint. We promised no answers, no solutions and no comfort… just the exhale of pain. 

Reading those walls was stunning. To everyone. 

Churches come off so clean and sparkly sometimes and this was nothing but dirty and messy honest reflections of sexual assault, addiction, anger at God (if God exists) and overall beautiful honesty of the hard things in life. 

It’s in the darkness where we learn that there is still good. It’s in the darkness where we learn that life only comes from death. 

It’s in the darkness that we are honest and free to admit what life is actually like and to be okay with not knowing all the answers. 

As I type this, yesterday we, again did something similar at our church. The microphone was added to those who wanted to express pain and uncertainty amidst the pain. 

I found myself crying at the end of the service in front of the entire church - not something I usually do - but because it was so moving and powerful to be a part of. 

I don’t think it’s the darkness we are afraid of. The fear of a cave is very different than the fear of the night sky. It might not be the dark but the lack of freedom we often perceive there to be within it. 

I think we miss a lot by trying to disinfect our lives from anything close to darkness, but when we do that we miss the chance to sit under the dark night sky and be overwhelmed by its majesty, mystery, and endless expansion and freedom. 

I suppose giving up chocolate can be good, but spending time reflecting on and being honest about the pain, death, and suffering that surround us all the time, is even better.

Even in June. 

a certain beauty finds itself in the darkness.

Brené Brown wrote this and her words were a theme for our season of Lent one year. 

Every minute 300 million cells will die in our body. Every 7 years we will have a new body. 

In order for there to be something new, there must be space, In order for there to be space, something must die. It’s happening constantly.

From Cynthia Borgeault. For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.

I have met a person who was told by her father that the world would be better off without her. Repeatedly. Over and over. 

And she is one of the strongest people I know. 

I have met a person who is dealing with cancer, again, and just watched two of her siblings die including a brother while choking on a piece of food after a successful surgery. She told me she is “broken”. 

And yet, she is not. 

I have met a person who lost her mom within 3 months and is now getting ready to get married without her. 

We cried together after having met. She inspired me. 

I have met a person who is one of only 80 people in the world with a certain genetic disorder. 

She is one of the most brilliant, beautiful, and amazing humans on the planet. Changing lives.

I have a met a person who asked me if I did funerals because she believes her 21 year-old son will not be around much longer… he’s had two overdoses this summer.

She said she won’t stop loving her son. 

I have met a person whose father has ALS. 

He doesn’t like to talk about, because there are lots of people with lots of problems. 

I have met a person who was repeatedly sexually abused by her step-father until the age of 12, lost her sister to suicide, and was addicted to pain-killers.  

She shared her story at our church and her strength was breath-taking and more moving than any sermon.

I have met a person whose parents told her to not bother coming home for Thanksgiving, because she was gay. 

She has returned home. 

I have met a person who recently lost her husband to MS, after taking care of him for years. She still says “at some point I’m just going to start crying and not be able to stop”. 

She is one of the most beautiful and strong people you will ever come across. At her daughter’s wedding, recently, all the of the men in her daughter’s life, brothers, brother-in-laws, father-in-law, friends, and, finally her daughter’s new husband, danced with her on her first dance. 

I have met a person who was sexually and physically abused as a child. 

He has a wife and child of his own now. He smiles and laughs and feeds his son a bottle. 

I have met a person who was sexually and physically abused as a child by her parents who were on the elder board. 

She is finding a new god, who doesn’t live in the land of fear. 

I have met a person whose wife took a nap one morning and never woke up.

He wailed over her casket and said that she was an angel and he was a devil. I think he will learn that is not the case. 

I have met someone who has tried to hang himself, shoot himself, and take an overdose, and said, I couldn’t even kill myself the right way. 

I told him it was an honor to meet him. I was moved in my soul to just shake his hand. 

We are very afraid of the darkness, the pain, the suffering, and we do everything we can to avoid it… and yet, try as we may, we cannot deny it is built into the fabric of growth in our universe and there is something beautiful inside of it.

Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the= source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture… – Thomas Merton

Eat, drink, and be merry.

the pain is real.

I have met a person who was told by her father that the world would be better off without her. Repeatedly. Over and over. 

I have met a person who is dealing with cancer, again, and just watched two of her siblings die including a brother while choking on a piece of food after a successful surgery. She told me she is “broken”. 

I have met a person who lost her mom within 3 months of a diagnosis and is now getting ready to get married without her there to help her. 

I have met a person who is one of only 80 people in the world with a certain genetic disorder. 

I have a met a person who asked me if I did funerals because she believes her 21 year-old son will not be around much longer… he’s had two overdoses this summer. 

I have met a person whose father has ALS.

I have met a person who was repeatedly sexually abused by her step-father until the age of 12, lost her sister to suicide, and was addicted to pain-killers.  

I have met a person whose parents told her to not bother coming home for Thanksgiving, because she was gay. 

I have met a person who recently lost her husband to MS, after taking care of him for years. She still says “at some point I’m just going to start crying and not be able to stop”. 

I have met a person who was sexually and physically abused as a child. 

I have met a person who was sexually and physically abused as a child by her parents who were on the elder board. 

I have met a person whose wife took a nap one morning and never woke up because she took too many pills. 

I have met someone who has tried to hang himself, shoot himself, and take an overdose, and said, I couldn’t even kill myself the right way. 

Writing these sentences, recalling these beautiful people, is causing me to cry as I type this at this very moment. 

I haven’t even mentioned miscarriages, addictions, teen moms, hundreds of illnesses, loneliness, eating disorders, broken relationships, doubt, frustration, or our 7 year-old neighbor who was hit by a car a couple of weeks ago and will never live anything close to a normal life again… and the list goes on and on. 

The pain is real. It’s hard. It’s staggering. And there are no easy answers. 

Sometimes it’s just good to cry in it.

you.

I’ve had lots of words typed in this space. Sometimes you just let Richard Rohr talk, because when he does, he makes whatever you have typed or written sound stupid. 

So... 

In the spiritual life, there aren’t too many absolutes I can make, but this is certainly one. On the spiritual journey, the message is always to you. The message s always telling you to change. Now, what most people do is they use religion to try to change other people. It’s always someone else that needs changing. No. Stop it. Once and for all. Whatever happens to you in your life is a message to you. Oh the ego wants to avoid that. So we look for something out there to change–somebody not like me is always the problem.