One of the scribes...asked Jesus “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” - Mark 12:28-31
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“She-ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad”
(‘Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One’)
So begins the Shema, recited daily by devout Jews. It’s considered by many to be the single most important prayer in Judaism. According to the Gospels, Jesus declared it to be the most important commandment of the entire Torah. It affirms that God is One, the Source of all, and that only God is worthy of the full devotion of the human heart, soul, mind and strength. It’s the essence of all monotheism, the belief in the oneness of God.
Read more“The glory of God is a human being, fully alive.” St. Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd century)
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“Healing is salvation. Salvation is healing. They’re the same thing.”
Father Kelly let his words hang in the hot desert air for what felt like minutes. As I did twice a week, I had come to visit him in his hermitage, nestled amidst mesquite trees in the heart of a 400,000-acre Southeast Texas ranch with no more than a handful of permanent residents. He had become my spiritual father, and during my year-long stay at Lebh Shomea House of Prayer these meetings were often my only human conversation for the week. I would spend about three hours a day in scripture study, four to five hours in silent prayer, and another four hours on my work assignments—cleaning bathrooms, pitchforking decomposing compost, watering young trees and weeding a cemetery. After several days of reflecting on scripture in solitude, I would come to see Father Kelly, and I’d ask him to expound on the meaning of key words of scripture. This week, I was asking about ‘salvation.’
Read more“The Person who loves God cannot help loving every person as themselves.” St. Maximos the Confessor (580-662)
In these times of great uncertainty and upheaval, it is of utmost importance to ‘stay vigilant’ to our inner state. We must ask ourselves, “What is the origin of our thoughts and emotions, especially when we experience fear?” In my last essay, I proposed a path for remaining vigilant within a framework of the primitive, rational, and spiritual minds.
Awareness is a good first step, but how do we move from simple awareness to actually loving those who we find difficult to love? The twin goals of a Christian life are love of God and love of others. How can we find this path of love in a time of great fear and hostility?
Let us look more deeply into how the primitive mind grows and hardens into a full-fledged ‘false self’ and how the teachings of Jesus call us home to our true self. But before we go there, let us explore the unconditional love we were made to dwell in and pour out to others.
Read moreMy invitation to each of us is to be spiritually vigilant. Whatever our beliefs might be, let us observe carefully the energies at work in our hearts. Do our hearts remain open to love? Do our minds have space for information that might contradict our narratives, or our groups’ narratives? Can we stay connected to God’s infinite, tender love of every human being involved in this pandemic, and pray for their well-being no matter who they are and what they think? These, I propose, are the essential questions for Christ-followers to ask themselves to navigate the ongoing pandemic in a spirit of faith, hope and love.
Read moreGod’s great longing is for human beings to share in the fullness of God’s own life. The story of Resurrection is of the Divine-Human One (Christ) triumphing over death to bring us through all evil into an infinite freedom and union of life, light and love. The training of the eight thoughts is a way of participating in God’s self-emptying love. We learn to recognize and let go of our attraction to each of the thoughts as a way of turning our will over to God. It involves moments of painful letting go but is always held in the larger arc of God drawing us to share in infinite freedom as God’s children. The training of the desert may appear as narrow and restrictive at first, but it is a narrow gate that leads to boundless life. By consenting to this journey of transformation, we can allow God to free us of the limits of the eight thoughts, and to lead us to the purity of heart where we see God, both in this life and in life in the age to come.
Read moreWhen we have emptied out our identification with our thoughts, we come to experience the joy of self-forgetfulness. We cease to experience our ‘self’ as the center of our awareness, and instead encounter the immense liberty of the Kingdom of God. In the space our egoic self once occupied, the Indwelling Spirit of Christ arises, and through this divine indwelling we experience our natural unity with God, other people, and all creation. We have returned to the Garden of Eden, abiding in intimacy and oneness with God and all creation. We have turned and become like little children, and in doing so have entered the Kingdom of God. We are again sons and daughters of God, not only in name but in our felt experience.
It is through this path of humility, participating in the Way of Christ, that our hearts are healed, and we are restored to our original nature in the image and likeness of God. This is the ultimate goal of the desert training on the eight thoughts. The training is a tool which we can use to become aware, to humble ourselves, and to unite our path with the path of the Divine-human One, Jesus Christ.
Read moreThe only thing ultimately worthy of praise in a person is the indwelling presence of God – which is not our own possession but a pure gift of divine grace. All else is temporary, fleeting, and ‘empty’ of infinite value. The desert teaching on vainglory is not about rejecting praise or status, but about clarity of vision. We are invited to see through the limited value of all human validation to find the only glory that can give lasting peace and freedom to our heart – the participation in divine glory as a free gift of God.
Read moreIn the spiritual life, acedia arises in response to our spiritual commitments and vocations. Weariness pervades precisely in the arenas of our life that had previously been a source of great joy. Prayer feels dry and cold, when before it was rich and alive. Scripture and spiritual reading used to be inspiring. The words now seem out-of-touch and even make me feel irritable. The same liturgy, worship services, and rituals that ignited my soul’s fire become boring and laborious. In vocational marriage or vowed monasticism, the wife, husband, nun, or monk wonders what they were thinking ten, fifteen, twenty years ago when they took these vows. What did I ever see in him? Or Why did I ever think this is what I was meant to do with my life?The marriage or monastery begins to feel small and suffocating. The person afflicted with acedia spends a lot of time looking at the door and wondering what it would be like if they walked through it.
Read moreLike Dejection, the thought of Anger is related to the frustration of the desires of ego. Whereas dejection is a sinking down, anger is a flaring out. Anger brings heat, intensity, and passion. It is activating and threatens to quickly take over one’s heart when it arises. Like the story of when I badly hurt myself, when we feed our anger it narrows our awareness, drives our actions, and blinds us to the fullness of reality.
Read moreThe root of the word dejection means ‘to be thrown down,’[1] and this is a good image of the effect of this spirit on our souls. Dejection pulls us downward, inward, and depresses or flattens out our energy. It is like a fog descending over our awareness, clouding our ability to perceive anything else. It is the energy of sadness, but a particular type of sadness that is linked to the refusal to accept our present reality and the inability to see a way out. When afflicted by the full-blow passion of dejection, life feels helpless and hopeless, and we may begin to question whether it is worth living. In this state, it is impossible to feel the presence of God, who is the superabundant fullness of life. We lose access to the trusting vulnerability of faith, the open-hearted cheer of hope, and the warmth of love.
Read moreThe desert elders tell us that “things are a means to invisible riches.” When we notice an attachment to the things in our lives, we have an opportunity to root out the desire to have, to possess, or to own. When we are not grasping, clinging, or preoccupied with money or things, we enjoy “a rich interior contentment with self, God, and others” the true joy of invisible riches. The paradox of greed is that when we pursue happiness through things, we are hounded by a sense of lack. When we let go of possessing things and pursue our happiness in God alone, we are filled with wealth beyond all measure.
Read moreSexual energy is an essential part of nature, and a beautiful and natural part of being human. It’s the energy of attraction, affection, and connection. It draws us to one another and fuels our longing for intimacy. From the onset of puberty until death, it’s probably the most powerful drive we experience within our bodies. In its natural form, it’s a beautiful thing.
The problem with sexual energy begins when it becomes co-opted by the self-serving nature of the ego. Lust is when sexual energy is directed for self-gratification, drawing us away from loving connection with both other people and with the Source of life (God). We can recognize the energy of lust by how it narrows us. It contracts our field of awareness. It increases tension and agitation in the body. It arises like a fire and overrides are ability to enjoy the goodness of the present moment.
The wider symphony of life goes silent, awareness of God disappears, and all that matters is the fulfillment of this one desire.
Read moreIt has taken me years to understand the spiritual benefit of fasting and that while traditional fasting is a discipline that involves food, it’s not simply about food. It’s largely about our thoughts. As mentioned above, beginning to notice thoughts about food is the perfect training ground for purifying our hearts – to begin to create space between a desire and acting on that desire. Creating a little bit of space gives us the opportunity to choose what we do, rather than acting out of our well-worn habitual responses. Freedom is being able to make this choice. I can choose to order a latte, or I can order tea, or nothing at all. Spending a 30-minute drive convincing myself why I deserve a latte when the night before I had decided not to have a latte is not a sign of freedom. It’s a compulsion. If I had not decided to fast from that Friday morning latte, I may never have noticed my attachment. Fasting is a tool that reveals where we lack freedom.
Read moreIn the fourth century, the ancient Roman world order, which had stood for a thousand years, teetered on the edge of collapse. Imperial Rome was being battered by enemies from without and rotting from corruption and social decay from within. The Roman state had become ‘Christian’ in name, whichonly furthered the resolve of Christian spiritual pioneers who stepped away from the collapsing society and fled to the wilderness. There, they built a new social order founded on radical fidelity to the God of infinite love and mercy. These pioneers became known as ‘The Desert Fathers and Mothers.’ They developed a system of spiritual practice that I believe has profound significance for our time.
Read moreAnger was blinding me. I could feel its hardness and constriction in my throat, gut, and heart. What then could I do? The wisdom of the desert tradition urges one to wait when they feel anger arise. "The antidote to anger is patience. To be silent and wait till the heart is stilled and the right action is prompted by the Holy Spirit is the way out of the affliction of anger."
Monday morning, I woke up with an inner whisper – God with us. I turned to the whisper.
Read moreI went into the pain, the uncertainty, and the grief of my unmet longing. I felt into the tension and fear in my body that I had been trying to ignore. I lamented. I prayed. I wept. On the other side of this purifying fire, I pulled a treasure from the ashes that I would not exchange for anything.
Read moreIn Advent we read about light and how it “shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it”(John 1:5). We rightly interpret this as a message of hope – that peace, justice, and love will ultimately reign in the world. Yet, in our focus on the promise of peace for the world out there, I think we often miss how that same light needs to shine into our hearts revealing what is hidden in the shadows. That doesn’t feel as comforting, but I am convinced it is a necessary step toward wholeness. However, we must take care that we don’t enter this work without the guidance and awareness of a loving God, lest we get mired in shame or give up on the task altogether.
Read moreA Recorded Sermon - Click to watch or read
“I believe three things are necessary to respond to the urgent needs of our time – Acceptance of current reality, the spiritual work of descent, and the practice of abiding in Divine Life.”
Read moreAs I finish my last few bites of ‘jungle squash’ and set down my fork, I look out the glass door frame across our hillside. It’s only a few minutes past seven in the evening, yet already the light of the sky is fading. The work of the day is done, and our family is settling into the slower rhythms of the darkness. It’s September, and there’s lots still left to do before winter comes. I feel the anxiety of wanting to push my active work into the night as I pull out the kneeler and light the candle to start Vespers. There will be time the next morning to create and control. Right now, it’s time to let go.
Read moreWhen we enter into the depths of prayer, we find an inner realm in which we experience our oneness with all others who are following Christ, and deeper still, a oneness with all human beings, and finally, a oneness with all life. In this spiritual ‘web’ of unity and interconnectedness, we can experience true com-passion (suffering with) for all people, as we intimately share in their experience of being.
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