Reading this book is like sitting at the feet of an elder whose distilled wisdom gets right to the heart of a hope that is able to live through the pain of a hurting world and transcend it at the same time. There’s something about people’s words, especially contemplatives like Howard Thurman, that seem to mean more after they are gone, and it’s not that they didn’t mean as much when they were alive, but they seem to become larger and more present after death, as if, a resurrection of deeper meaning is inaugurated. The context around someone born in 1899 and who lived through the heightened civil rights era from within a centered life speaks to the lasting potency of his words, which have been put together in this work for a praxis of life and meaning.

Thurman continually calls us beyond the individualistic life into the depths of God and community in ways that mirror the nature of Christ. Listen to his words:

“If a man is of infinite worth in the sight of God, whether he is saint or sinner, whether he is a good man or a bad man, evil or not, if that is true, then I am never relieved of my responsibility for trying to make contact with this worthy thing in him. I must love him because God causes the sun to shine upon him and me.”

Thurman gives us the simplest and hardest of facts: the unconditional love of God is what transforms us, and others, and we would never WANT to be relieved of such truth even though we may often fight for relief from such a consuming love. His statement says more about God than it does our judgement of another, especially when a person appears as an enemy, or deemed unredeemable. It is this then, that is one of our highest callings to work on ourselves before our projections of others gets in the way, as Thurman states:

“Is my enemy God’s child? If he is, I must work upon myself until I am willing to bring him back into the family.”

How true this is, that in Thurman’s own life at a time when the struggle for the rights of the segregated was in full swing, his central vision was one that transcended all race and category. What center was he living from in God, along with all of those who, regardless of the persecution and hardships being done to them, kept loving anyway? It is no wonder we see how MLK JR. was influenced by Thurman when he said:

“We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. So in winning the victory we will not only win freedom for ourselves, but we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that you will be changed also.”

And

“Of all the weapons, love is the most deadly and devastating, and few there be who dare trust their fate in its hand.”

Thurman also continually calls us to live in the present moment. To postpone such living in the present robs us of our calling to live deeply, of which we all crave whether we see it or not. So Thurman encourages us:

“What is lived deeply is securely one’s own, and nothing can ever take it away - neither circumstance, nor age, nor even death itself.”

This book is full of these kinds of insights that speak to the process of becoming like Christ through a life of prayer and community, which is ultimately secured in the reward of love. Thurman states: “The reward of love is to love.” You could sit with that statement for days and never get to the end of it, but it will surely continue to leave you in awe, which might be the response required to get up and live it.

All in all, I highly recommend you read this book as it reveals the great disclosure at the heart of life: oneness with God and humanity, and a life of genuine prayer that encourages our lives to be dealt with totally.

In closing, this book will do just that, call you to be dealt with totally, deeply, which I believe you want whether you know it or not. And, you won’t want to miss an excellent story Thurman shares about someone “rightfully” sleeping in church, so I’ll end with saying, don’t sleep on this book!

-PH

Thank you Plough Publishing for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

What does the text actually say?

How does wrestling with the text strengthen the call to love, pray, and intercede?

In this video teaching I give an example of wrestling through scripture to gather context around the troubling story of Ananias and Sapphira, which can lead to a better understanding of who Christ, and Peter, really is. May it be of some help to speak to y-our journey and formation.

Much love!

(Glendalough: A Celtic Pilgrimage by Michael Rogers and Marcus Losack)

On the fourth day in Ireland after our baptism in the upper lake, we finally found a way into St. Mary’s Church where women and children had lived within the inclusive atmosphere of the monastic city. Now, we turn to the voice of some women on this pilgrimage and their experience of finding this special place.

Our next destination was St. Mary’s Church, if we could find our way there. We could see it on the outskirts of the main Glendalough Monastic City, but it seemed like it was just out of reach, with no direct path to it, and surrounded by several enclosed fields of pasture.

The stone posted at the road near the Upper Lake that marks the obscure way to St. Mary’s church can easily be missed. We, ourselves, did not notice it until after we finished visiting the church ruins. The sign has three statements inscribed in it:

1. The first in traditional Irish translated, “In memory of the children.”

2. Below that, the Scripture, “Let the little children come to me,” Luke 18:16.

3. And lastly, “Pray for them,” also written in traditional Irish.

St. Mary’s church was a church where women could gather, commune, and worship the Lord, in the 10th-12th centuries. Named after Mary, the mother of Jesus, the church holds a special sort of covering for the feminine, for mothers, and even more specifically holds space for grieving mothers who lost their babies before they could be baptized.

Since it was unclear how to reach St. Mary’s church, we had to carefully climb over a couple fences to get to it. It felt like we were doing something we weren’t “supposed to,” walking quickly from one fence post to another, avoiding the sheep in the pasture. Once we climbed the second fence and were in the territory of the church grounds, I knew we were at the place that was set apart for the graves of the unborn, infants, and children. I lingered there for a few minutes, wondering about the site, before following to catch up to my companions who were already entering the church ruins.

Stepping through the doorway, I noticed the cross carved in the lintel stone overhead. I wondered at its X shape, (later learning it’s called a “saltire” cross). It wasn’t long, however, before I found my way back to the little gravesite again in the back corner of the lot, where we first had entered. There is a tree that stands by the graves, providing shade, shelter, and a quiet comfort. It was sobering and heavy - weighty - at this small burial site. I knelt down outside the perimeter bordered by stones, and observed the different markings, statues, the flowers, and the little stone celtic cross at the end. I took notice of the dew on the blades of grass in front of me, and the moss on the rocks - one big rock in particular that was part of the boundary around the graves. My fingertips tingled and I felt compelled to touch the moss. So I reached out and laid my hand upon the rock, and instantly I began to weep!

I wept for the children. I wept, feeling the tears and the cries and the heartache of all the mothers who were there before me, who lost their babies. I wept for Story. And for my broken stillborn dreams. The heavy emotion was all so sudden and unexpected! And the weeping only lasted for a few minutes, but it felt timeless.

And then I took a deep breath, released my hand from that mossy rock, and wiped my face. I felt like a weight was lifted off of me, like an “it is finished” had just occurred. Then I heard the voices of my companions coming nearer. So I stood up and joined them.

Reflecting on these events, I am reminded of Mary’s first fiat (which is latin for “let it be done”). Her first “let it be done” at the beginning of Jesus’s conception mirroring Jesus’s last “Your will be done,” at the end of his life, is a powerful and poignant picture of the thresholds between the two worlds that we are invited to experience today.

The first: a womb - the threshold for the coming of Christ.

The last: The Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying in angst and sweating blood, and his full acceptance of the cross - the threshold to eternity.

Entering through the threshold of St. Mary’s church, beheld there above our heads on the lintel stone bears the saltire cross, with outstretched arms to all four corners of the stone.

These thresholds, these mirrors, are sacred reminders of our own fiat, our own acceptance and surrender to the will of our loving God. The One who crossed through unimaginable thresholds to be with us.

And I wonder, can I be like Mary and say to him, “I am Thy little handmaiden, Acceptance-with-Joy…Let it be done according to Thy will?”

As we opened the stock gate to make our way to the road from St. Mary’s church, we had to walk through the pasture, passing a shepherd herding his sheep into a pen. I was expecting the shepherd to reprimand us for trespassing (thoughts like: you’re not “supposed to” go this way running through my mind). Instead, the shepherd warmly greeted us with laughter and friendliness. And it was a perfect reminder for me to “throw away the ‘supposed to.’”

I am reminded of the shepherds in the fields who bore witness to the coming of Christ in the humble dwelling of a stable. The fact that lowly shepherds were the first to be told of Christ’s birth is astonishing, and their response was to greet the King of heaven who crossed the threshold to be settled in a feeding trough for animals… what a picture of how “weakness” and “power” are not always what they seem.

As we said goodbye to the friendly shepherd, we saw the stone sign for the way to St. Mary’s church, discreetly posted by the road. Having gone out of our way to reach the church by hopping a few fences, we found our way out the intended way in… I wonder what that says about the mystery of Mary’s womb?

(The End of Bethany’s Reflection)

Following a beautiful re-baptism morning in the upper lake at Glendalough, we made our difficult journey to St. Mary’s church. St. Mary’s was part of the historic monastic community, and though set apart for the women, it was also intentionally included in this diversly community focused on doing life together. The wonderer, the saint, the outlaw, men, women, and children all belonged in this sanctuary. There is a beauty in having this sweet set apart place for the women, while recognizing that this church and the women in it were always designed to be part of the whole.

This day would mark our second attempt to access the holy ruins after trying and failing to find an entry point the day before. Walking back the narrow road from upper lake, we came across something small, tucked under the covering of trees and bushes. There we found a single stone hinting to the church. The “way” if it could be called that was not so much narrow as nonexistent. To access the church our pilgriming group scaled two fences and a wall over barbed wire. A frustrating although fitting metaphor to the journey to accessing the sacred feminine in faith community. After trespassing on a shepherd’s land and scaling the forementioned barriers we stepped onto what felt like holy land hushed in its beauty and its silence. It was clear St. Mary’s church had not been as frequented as the rest of the historic city. Even in our visit that day, voices could be heard in the distance on the other well-traveled trails; but not here. The sweet and holy place was saturated with the feminine softness of flowers and cradled in trees and brush that blocked most of it from view of the other visitors.

Entering the open-aired church, I considered what it would have been like to be in community there. I imagined a choir of female voices in worship, in fellowship, and at play, and tried to remember moments like that with my sisters in Christ. The beauty in that place was not just in construct but in the heart that could be felt; an echo of love, community, all in the presence of longing This place in its silence held a sweet peace but also the weight of great presence of loss.

Just outside of the church in the corner by the wall to the right of the exit lay a small graveyard designed to hold infants that never reached their birth, or their baptism. In the earlier centuries of the Catholic church, it was taught that children who died before their baptism did not go to heaven or to hell but instead were placed in a holding area in a space between, never to rejoin those destined for those two places. I stood on the land feeling the ache of loss a mother would carry imagining eternal separation from the sweet soul of a child she had so longed to hold. As a mother of three losses, the ache of a heart broken surfaced as I joined these women in their sorrow in this place that has held so many hearts spanning centuries of time. How terrible to imagine not having access to the hope of reunion on the other side, a day I so look forward to myself, and a peace that has helped heal my heart. Just like the feminine and St. Mary’s church, hope can be unnecessarily blocked off, limiting access that has always been created for all.

After we spent some time in silent contemplation in the church I lingered in the doorway and touched the uniquely shaped cross on the threshold. Transitional spaces have become so familiar to me. The large lintel stone with the cross is met by three intentional large stones placed to frame each side of the entrance. Three stones on one side are speculated to represent the three masculine gifts of ambition, rationality and protection, and three stones on the right represent the feminine gifts of intuition, compassion, and nurturing. This interpretation seems fitting as I find that most feminine spaces seek to include and broaden community. As I exited the church, I was met by Preston who walked over to me and handed me a single yellow flower. We gazed and marveled at the small patches of baby’s breath growing near the gravestones and see my shadow fall across the place where so many lay, how fitting.

Worried the shepherd might catch us on his land; we froze as he entered the field to move his flock of sheep with the help of his dog. Reclimbing the fences and making our way to the other side of his field, we were unsure if we would be scolded for breaking into his grounds, only to have those concerns melt with his gentle, warm and welcoming words. He encouraged us to enjoy our time in Ireland and that “that’s the main thing.” He had a jovial laugh, wonderful humor, and even encouraged us to stop now and then for a pint along our journey. Isn’t that just like the shepherd to be loving and welcoming instead of guarded and harsh.

Taking his words to heart we went back to the car and following a stop at a local textile shop, swung back down to the recommended local pub for two half pints of stout. It was the first real time in our journey where we sat and reflected on the meaning of the day and the significance of the rebirth in the upper lake, and the weight of the feminine in entering and holding sorrow.

To me there is a distinct link between the morning of rebirth in the upper lake at Glendalough, and the visit to St. Mary’s church with the gentle holding of loss. When we as humans make the journey through the birth canal our lives as we have known them die and we are born into a new reality in the outside world. The womb and the birth canal are both life and death together. Women are in our very nature a transitional space; we hold it, embody it. It is familiar because it is inside us, it is us. John O’Donnohue in his book “Walking in Wonder” talked about death being with us at birth and being our life-long journey partner, accompanying us though our lives. Wholeness includes birth and death, joy and sorrow. Being human about holding both, honoring both and in courage holding a place for it all to belong.

(The End of Jennifers Reflection)

-PH

While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment. “This man,” they charged, “is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.”

Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to them, “If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanor or serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since it involves questions about words and names and your own law—settle the matter yourselves. I will not be a judge of such things.” So he drove them off. Then the crowd there turned on Sosthenes the synagogue leader and beat him in front of the proconsul; and Gallio paid no attention to any of these things.

Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time. Then he left the brothers and sisters and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. Before he sailed, he had his hair cut off at Cenchreae because of a vow he had taken.They arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila. He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. When they asked him to spend more time with them, he declined. But as he left, he promised, “I will come back if it is God’s will.” Then he set sail from Ephesus. When he landed at Caesarea, he went up to Jerusalem and greeted the church and then went down to Antioch.

After spending some time in Antioch, Paul set out from there and traveled from place to place throughout the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah. -Acts 18:12-18

In these passages we see an attack on another person and bringing them to a “place of judgment” and even to a place someone in authority cares little to nothing for. Why waste his time arguing over your theology of God with ideas, words, names, and interpretations? Where in our life do we want to bring others to “a place of judgment” because we refuse to listen to something that might, in fact, bring us greater understanding if we’d only listen?

The crowd then turns on a leader of a synagogue and beats him to show their actions really do not come from God, but from their false ideas about God. The Apostle Paul moves on to another place where he “reasoned with” others. They seem to actually want to hear more, but he must leave while leaving them with a possibility of return. I wonder what gift of knowledge he left them with?

Paul continues on his journey throughout the land “strengthening” those who were learning to follow The Way.

Meanwhile, a man named Apollos with accurate knowledge of the scriptures was instructing others with great enthusiasm and boldness, although his knowledge was still limited, until a husband and wife pulled him aside and taught him The Way of Jesus more accurately.

What do you notice in his response?

Even though he spoke with such conviction of what he already knew, he immediately listened to the deeper dimensions of God he did not yet know. He continued to be teachable as he wanted to learn more, so he traveled to where more learners who understood these things were. His voice and knowledge was then combined with their learning to bring great encouragement to others, which made his public teaching that much more dynamic and accurate.

He understood there is always more to learn, and what a gift this is! It is here we remember that God is not unknowable, but endlessly knowable.

So here we’ve seen a contrast between those who follow The Way and those who think they know the way but don’t. Anger and judgement often accompany those who think they know, while great encouragement follows those who know they don’t know and are open to knowing more and more. This of course, regardless of how others treat them.

Which camp do you find yourself in?

Both bring people to a place of judgment: One leading to the harm of others in the name of God, and the other leading to the actual beauty and goodness of God.

The Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

-PH

Prayer: God, our Father, in the Light of Christ and the strengthening of the Spirit, continue to teach and guide us into all truth. Give us the weakness to remain teachable knowing the strength that comes from this way of being. Guide us in the Way, the Truth, and the Life of the Word of all words, and the silence for which we are able to listen, and know more than can be said, yet spoken through our lives. Amen.

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐩, 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐦, “𝐒𝐢𝐫, 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬.” 𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐰; 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐰 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬. 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦, “𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝. 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐲, 𝐈 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐢𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧; 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐟𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞. 𝐖𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐚𝐦, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨. 𝐖𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫. - 𝑱𝒐𝒉𝒏 12:20-26

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐝.

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐨𝐝.

What did you notice from today’s reading? First, regardless of what I am about to say, meditate on that.

In today’s reading we see some Greeks come to one of Jesus’ learners asking to see Jesus, so this learner goes to tell another learner of the request before they both go to Jesus to let him know the Greeks want to see him. Jesus wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter. There is a difference between seeing and following. Wanting to see Jesus can be a posture of distance from the truth; of wanting something to come close to you so you can fit it in with the way you already see, as if, you would really know what you are seeing then. Instead of going to Jesus, they wanted those closer to him to serve their purposes of vision and clarity.

The Greeks did not know what they were asking and did not know they needed to become blind to their way of being in the world. They did not know they needed to die to live; to die to all they thought they knew in order to live in the mystery of following, rather than wanting to be followed and seen.

Their fallowed ground needed seeds of life that would require the way they ordered their life to die in order for real life to emerge; to move beyond the appearances of their life that was being lived on the surface. “𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑰 𝒂𝒎, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆.” If they follow there, they would finally be themselves; to be what God meant them to be when God meant them.

Saul became blind from his vision of Christ as to finally be led; to learn to follow the mystery of faith rather than persecute others, therefore Jesus, according to what he saw and understood. We too then, must not ask to see Jesus, but to know truth in our inward parts; those places of hidden darkness where real light shines in the mystery of our being. We too, fall to the earth to die in order to rise up in real life by entering not into what is seen, but into what is unseen; to that which is eternal rather than temporary. It is finally following, or at least beginning to follow, from the deep heart.

In closing, we do not ask people to follow us so we can be seen, something so prevalent in our internet age. We ask them to follow the mystery so Christ can be known; to follow into His life, death, and resurrection as to ascend to our rightful place in His heart within our own. We’re invited to follow a Way that allows a Seed to fall deeper than our surface heart so the Life that has always been in the depths of its earth, resurrects.

Now, we are free to appear and disappear at His will. Free to serve all. And finally, we see without needing to be seen and without even needing to see.

Then, as of now,

“The hour has come...”

-PH

“Because I am here,

Where is it that I am absent from?”

- John O’Donohue

From my first journal entry in Ireland:

“I have crossed land and sea to see, You are already here. I am, wherever you are. Standing in the church under the open skies, the key hole is above me; the key is within me. Home is wherever I Am. I pull a blade of grass from the ruins of the church, a blade that is mightier than the sword. As I awakened on the first night I heard these words “You must start schools.” I wonder with these questions: ‘Who will attend? Who will attend to the flame? How do I intend to teach others to attend? Are we not already doing so by being…here?’ Yes and Amen.”

On the third day in Glendalough, our group reemerged from our prior day of individual immersion in the land. Together again, we pilgrimaged to various places within the monastic city. Here is a picture of the two arches at the entry of the city, which speaks of a threshold.

In our journeying this year we had read about the practice of thresholds that were so important to Irish monks. Christine Valters Paintner instructed us:

“Thresholds are the space between, when we move from one time to another, as in the threshold of dawn to day or of dusk to dark; one space to another, as in times of inner or outer journeying or pilgrimage; and one awareness to another, as in times when our old structures start to fall away and we begin to build something new. The Celts describe thresholds as “thin times or places” where heaven and earth are closer together and the veil between worlds is thin.” - (The Soul’s Slow Ripening)

Christine’s husband John “wonders if ‘thin places’ means they were worn thin by the many souls who have been drawn to these liminal landscapes and sought prayer there.”

We thought about how the city had been a place of education and refuge for all kinds of people including criminals, who regardless of their crimes, if they made it to the cross-inscribed stone on the wall just past the arches (seen to the left in the picture), they were deemed untouchable by authorities who entrusted them to the care of the monastic city for 90 days of sanctuary. On the 91st day they could be put back outside the city, which is why some of them surrendered to stay within the monastic way of life. Many would have found a refuge from their sins and a world… where trespasses are counted.

How true that 91st day must have been for those who realized the reality of the 91st Psalm.

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.” (1-2)

I wrestled with how surrendered the people of the monastic city must have been to accept the worst of criminals and how much trust they had in God’s ability to receive and transform people. May it be in us Lord, may it be in me.

As we crossed further beyond the threshold of the arches we began visiting various places inside. We were eventually approached by a kind government worker named John, who gave us a short history lesson that spoke volumes in how Celtic Christianity blended seamlessly with the people of the land who were already so close to nature; to God’s creation. We are talking about the Big Book here, and hearing it from a local in the land from within the monastic city had a deeper heart to it all.

It’s funny how many John’s we connected with on this journey: from John O’Donohue, to this government worker, to John Philip Newell’s wisdom on how the Celtic people loved Jesus’ disciple John as the Celtic image of listening to God in all of life. He was the one who rested against the chest of Jesus at the last supper…listening to the heartbeat of God.

May you too, as you read, be listening to this heartbeat.

Government worker John went on to share how the cross of St. Kevin that was standing in front of us is east-west aligned, and all the graves in front of it are facing east; the direction of resurrection. The literal landscape of this setup invites us to face reality. What we might perceive as an old graveyard is really a testament to that which outlives time, and we all, whether we know it yet or not, are seeking the place of our resurrection. Our journeys involve crossing thresholds into the unknown, especially in that misunderstood thing called death.

Valters Paintner goes on to highlight this along with the practice of peregrinatio, which is a kind of wandering, but intentional, pilgrimage within life.

“For the Celtic monastic tradition, wandering was a powerful practice, shaping much of their vision of Christian spiritual life. There is a unique term for this Celtic wandering -peregrinatio pro Christo-the call to wander for the love of Christ. This wandering is an invitation to let go of our own agendas and discover where God is leading. In this profound practice, God becomes both the destination and way, companion and guiding force. God is the call to the journey and the unfolding of the journey, and God greets us at the journey’s end. The goal of this wandering is always to find the place of our resurrection, the place where our gifts can be brought fully to life for the rest of our days.” (The Souls Slow Ripening)

One reminder of this was in one of the many churches we attended inside the city where I had spotted an empty snail shell. This empty grave reminded me of the resurrection that happens when we slow down and become present to our life, therefore, the life that is all around us, as well as within everyone.

And we would visit a few wells on our journey where wellness was, and still is, often sought. Of course, this is deeply connected to our inner journey where the wellsprings of life flow once any feeling of being damned… up, is removed. As we slow down, the waters of divine life speed up and we have no fear of being overtaken by its force.

While there were many other sites and churches we visited within the monastic city, those stories will be for those I speak to in person as I now start to bring this article to a close with what happened near the upper lake.

We visited a mound with a cross that had a broken arm and a fellow sojourner said that something pilgrims throughout history would do is to walk around it 7 times while praying. So, I began to do so while silently remaining open and listening for the heartbeat of God. About the third time around it, I began to feel a surge of energy throughout my body and being. I didn’t know what was happening, but do we ever really in experiences like these? When I finished the 7th round, I stared at the cross and heard:

“Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” - Colossians 1:24

And

“You are the missing arm of this cross. You fill up what is still lacking. You complete the cross as the cross completes you.”

I believe the you spoke of here is not just me, it is you who read this, among others.

It’s a reminder of the interesting things that happen when you stare at a cross and live your life around its meaning.

After this, I laid in the grass and soaked in what was happening, which I still did not know entirely. At one point a fellow sojourner had said to me, “It’s the Communion of the Saints.” That made more sense than my mind could comprehend.

In the next article, we will hear from my fellow pilgrims and an experience we had of not being able to find a way to the women’s church in the monastic city, a picture of course, of how hard it has often been for women to find their voice and place within church and society throughout history. Of course, we will share how we found the way less travelled, which will carry some important insights about women, children, and God’s reality beyond some destructive beliefs still held by others.

“Filling up what is still lacking…”

-PH

Picture: My wife hiking day 2 as we immersed ourselves in the land

I began our first full day in Glendalough with the Silence of centering prayer in the hermitage prayer room. If you are unfamiliar with centering prayer, you can see this article I wrote in 2022 and how it absolutely has, and continues to, transform my life as a daily practice. My wife and I eventually went for a hike in the Wicklow mountains just behind the hermitages where we both noticed the instant embrace of nature, the freshness of the air, and the beauty all around us.

You see again, many of the Celtic people understood something about God with believing there were two main books. One was the Little Book of the bible and the other was the Big Book of God’s creation. This makes sense since the Big Book came before the Little Book and both find themselves in the Word through whom all things were created and have their being. Those who ignore the Big Book often have very little understanding of what the Little Book is saying and those who ignore the Little Book often have not understood what creation has been saying all along. So yet, “Creation groans in expectation for the children of God to realize who they really are.” (Romans 8:19)

As we ventured through the mountains we paused along the way to overlook the Glendalough Valley, which was the picture in part one of this series. It is a reminder to get the right definition of overlook as to not overlook what is all around us in a blind sense. To overlook blindly, is to look past something that is there to reveal something, often precisely because we are stuck in the past or the future. However, when we tend to what is in front of us, deeper still what is deepest within us, we can enter the eternal past, present, and future at the same time.

In his book on Walking In Wonder, O’Donohue shares a poem from Wendell Berry titled, “I Go Among Trees and Sit Still.”

We loved how our bodies and spirit moved with the landscape and the rhythms of the earth around us as we continued through the mountains. We eventually came out at the monastic city and as we walked along the road my wife noticed a deer eating leaves directly behind two young men staring down at their phones.

The image was striking.

We were mesmerized by the deer while noticing the young men mesmerized by their phones. Now there is no judgment here as they were probably on break from work and doing all the things many of us do sometimes when we stare at these screens. For all we know, and we don’t know, they might have been reading something inspiring. However, what if they had noticed the deer behind them sharing the space with them; sharing information in the deer’s gaze of what it was looking down upon? Two souls being witnessed in their beauty and mystery. What happens when we look up long enough to see what has come to meet us? What might they have heard shimmering within?

Berry’s poem was incarnating here, that which comes and lives awhile in your sight.

The young men eventually saw my wife filming the deer and one of them quickly jumped out of the way. The other looked back to see what we were seeing and noticed the deer and was going to move before I smiled and waived for him to not bother moving. We were all in this together even when we are unaware. We know St. Kevin walked in this place and was known to feed the deer, while blessing the creatures of this valley. One legend even says a doe came and provided milk for an abandoned infant after Kevin had prayed.

It is times like these where I do not hear creation groaning, but singing, as we are finally allowing the landscape, and the creatures that inhabit it, to provide freely the gifts they long to share.

So what might we pray for today that has felt abandoned and in need of nourishment? What might we find if we walk in nature? What will come to meet us and take away our fears? What is longing to provide for us in ways we have not allowed?

In the next article we will journey through the monastic ruins to discover what always remains and what a broken cross had to say about all of us.

-PH

Picture of a tree from the Wicklow Mountains: A reminder to go among the trees and sit still. And of course, that the trees really do have eyes.

Picture: Shoreline in Dublin

If you have not read the previous post for a little context of our Pilgrimage and would like to, please click here.

We boarded a plane for Dublin, a more modern way to have the courage to lose sight of the shore and cross an ocean, yet our heart posture is different than a vacation. John O’Donohue, an Irish poet and mystic, said one of his fears was the way the government of Ireland relentlessly nurtures the tourist industry since Ireland is a small country. If the numbers weren’t modified, the country would be overrun, which can do a lot of damage from these “voyeuristic” pursuits. This is one reason St. Brendan, “The Voyager”, helped center our intention on the journey. One of his prayers can actually center us now.

John O’Donohue went on to say: “Rupert Sheldrake was asked what single change he would recommend for the new millennium that could make a difference to the world. His reply was that every tourist should become a pilgrim.” (Walking In Wonder)

Every Tourist Should Become A Pilgrim

There is a different feel to your life when you heed this advice and it’s even wise to be a like a pilgrim wherever you live. To be a pilgrim is learning to walk in, on, and through the earth, rather than missing the essence of what you are here to learn before moving on. After we arrived in Dublin, we went to the shores of the ocean to remind ourselves of the ocean we just crossed, and now, we were on the other side. A fellow sojourner and I both noticed black rocks with white streaks bursting out of them: A reminder of how darkness and light work together, and how light shines in the darkness. Whether a child coming forth from the darkness of a womb, the sun coming forth from the darkness of the night, or a soul coming forth from the darkness of ignorance, there is always a working together of these two.

Either one should not be ignored for the other.

We then headed towards our hermitage stay in Glendalough where we intentionally planned to immerse ourselves in the land for 4 days before the rest of the journey, which would eventually have us staying in a new place each night. Glendalough is one of those set apart places in the land where monastic ruins speak of ancient ways practiced as they stand as reminders of the things that outlast the hardships and destructive things done to others. After settling into our hermitages, I walked across the yard to the small library down the hall of the prayer room and was drawn to two books: Meister Eckart’s Book of Darkness and Light and John O’Donohue’s Walking In Wonder. How fitting the titles since we were drawn to those dark rocks with light streaking forth from them on the Dublin shore. When I opened the second chapter of John’s book, it was about Meister Eckart, which reminds me: “Where there are two or three witnesses…”

I opened to the beginning page of Meister’s book to read these 4 sentences set on top of each other:

Feel free to take some time with those sentences before moving on. They might open up to a beginning page in your own heart.

All these words are meaningful and we will get to a connection to the deep heart in a later article that you will not want to miss. For now, some of the other words from these sentences had been confirmed just after our planes wheels had come to a stop in Dublin where I heard the words within me, “Construction of a Soul.” The pilot had us lingering on the runway because of construction happening at our arrival gate; a call to pay attention to deeper meaning whenever one speaks. For all of us, there is a Pilot leading our life if you pay attention to where He is taking you. This kind of poetic hearing is all around us, like another Pilate asking Jesus, “What is truth?”

So I continue to testify.

The hermitages we were at also had construction being done to bring forth new ones. Thankfully they were finishing up their construction for the weekend, so our time was quiet to hear our own soul’s construction. As you continue reading, may there be things carved in you and Meister’s words ring true… that what is rough in you be removed to reveal what shimmers from within. May you know the image imprinted within you whose beauty cannot be erased regardless of how much is carved away. May you continue going deep into the heart of who we are.

All in all, one of my favorite memories will be the days we spent lingering in Glendalough as if a Black Bird was allowed to build a nest in my hand. St. Kevin who had established the monastic city there, paved the way for such patience. The next morning my wife and I would venture into the Wicklow mountains where the book of a deer had something to show us. That will be for next time.

.-PH

Picture: St. Kevin hanging in our hermitage

"To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim." - Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

A small group of us journeyed this last year through the landscape of Celtic Christianity, which culminated with a pilgrimage to Ireland. We met every two weeks for 40 weeks; the amount of time it takes for something to be held together in a womb before it is birthed. A pendant necklace of St. Brendan the Navigator, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, was presented to the group with an inscription on the back that read: “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” One person would wear the pendant for two weeks and then bring a song to the group along with the lyrics for meditation. They would then share why they chose that song along with how they had been journeying through the last two weeks. Then the rest of us would share what we heard in the song or what specific lyrics spoke to us. At the end of our time together for that session, the pendant would be presented to someone else as they were blessed on the journey of wearing it for the next two weeks and this cycle would repeat each time we met.

At the end of the 40 weeks, each person was presented with a necklace of their own.

We slowly read through a few books (The Celtic Way of Prayer, Christ of the Celts, and The Souls Slow Ripening), which included practices and invitations for developing the rhythms of a spiritual life our Celtic elders knew so well. There was the continual invitation to be immersed in The Little Book (bible) and The Big Book (nature), which the Celts knew intimately. We saw how Celtic spirituality was connected to the Ancient Paths; paths that have become overgrown through modern theology and ideas about God and humans that often fail to answer the big questions of our origins and our present life.

In the beginning of our time, we’d often enter a time of silence and centering before reading this text together:

“This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls...” - Jeremiah 6:16

Then we would all say together, “We will walk in it.”

This was the redemption of that verse above where in the ending, as read in the little book, it says the people would not walk in it. How important it is then, to know the ancient paths the Big Book has been telling us all along, if only we’d listen long enough. Jesus is still re-minding us: “Look at the birds of the air…Look at the flowers…”

Now, we have returned from our pilgrimage of literally being in the land of Ireland; the landscape that shaped our souls even before we got there and has now inspired the inner landscapes of our being. The next few articles will share some insights from the journey that is meant to inspire your own inner landscape.

-PH

(Picture: Glendalough Valley)

When I first read The Shack, I don’t remember if I knew it was a work of fiction, but I remember the story impacting me at a soul level unlike any work of fiction has. I remember saying things repeatedly to a friend who was also reading it, “This has to be true!” As another friend recently said to me when I told her I received an opportunity to review the book’s upcoming sequel: Return to the Shack: A Journey into Redemption, she recounted how she was so upset when she found out The Shack was fiction, but she also knew it was true at its core message. And it is, for so many of us.

We must all come to realize, as Paul Young has, especially in a culture so starved of sacred stories, that there is more truth in parables and story than one could ever seek to uncover, and that is exactly the kind of mystery God invites us into at every Moment. A story does something to us, when we really listen, and stories lead us into the depths of our own soul. You can read a story in one season of your life and be told all kinds of things, and then read it again in another season of life, and see things you never saw before.

Paul does some of this work for us in the sequel.

Some of the questions I had upon hearing there was a sequel to The Shack is: Can you really build upon that story? How can you do so without ruining the original message, or be faithful to it? We’ve all seen attempts to make a sequel of a well done movie or a book that has been so widely seen or read, only to be disappointed it could not live up to the original impact and message. The Return of Shack has not done that. Not only has it lived up to the original story, it allows you to enter into it in a way that will further confront your deepest questions of how something so tragic could possibly inch its way towards redemption. It answers questions about Reality both at the mind’s level, and deeper still, at the soul’s level of how something is worked out in real life. It tells multiple people’s stories from various angles of the Larger Story woven in the way that includes the possibility of forgiveness as a reality, not just as an idea. Of course, it tells of all the legit reasons we would resist such a story, as many will no doubt experience. The twists and turns that arise as you read it, are going somewhere, and usually, places you never thought they could. The twists and turns that arise as you read it, are coming from somewhere, places you’ve always known and longed for, but may not have had language for.

And here is another chance.

In the end, as in the beginning, The Return of the Shack delivers one of the most important messages of Reality the earth has ever known. The question is: Have we really heard the message? And if so, are we living aware of the message we, and everyone else, is already a part of? How do we participate with such dangerous wonder? How do we live in the consuming fires of Unconditional Love compared to the conditional ways of the world? How do we let go of our assumptions!?

Through this book, many will walk on the Holy ground of the character’s stories, while being invited to wake up the burning bush of your own story in the process.

One of the twists in the author’s note at the end is that Paul lets you in on how much of this story is true, but you’ll only understand that after you read it. Paradoxically, this brings us back to the fact that sacred stories hide within them truth that cannot be told plainly. They must be told through stories that connect us to the Eternal in everyday life, as Paul does. They must give the human being time to process and distill what is working its way into the depths of their being as they both read the story AND are being read by the story at the same time. As Emily Dickinson reminds us, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant… The Truth must dazzle gradually, or everyone be blind.” This is what the Return of the Shack does directly within the stories of different people slowly being told the truth and gradually learning to live in it; to see what it actually means in the midst of the greatest losses a human can feel.

In closing, I cannot recommend the book enough. Get ready to be surprised and informed again at a soul level that only a story like this could even begin to tell. Get ready to further wake up to realities both within and beyond our imagination where we are reminded of a God that actually does, and wants to do, beyond all we can ask, think, or imagine. As you read it, do not be afraid to feel deeply, ask deeply, think wider, and imagine the possibilities of Ultimate Redemption found directly in the tragedy and mystery of human life.

-PH

Thank you Apiary for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This book will be released on October 6, 2026.

“𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘶𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘎𝘰𝘥. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘎𝘰𝘥. 𝘞𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘎𝘰𝘥, 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘎𝘖𝘋 𝘐𝘚 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘎𝘰𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘴: 𝘏𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘚𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘩𝘪𝘮.” - 1 John 4:7-9

If the absolute nature, essence, and name of God is Love, regardless of if we do not yet understand what that means in its fullness, let us focus as best we can on a famous passage using Love, instead of the word God, to see what happens.

“𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌 𝘴𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌 𝘨𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌’𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘚𝘰𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦. 𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘚𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘩𝘪𝘮. 𝘞𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘯𝘦𝘥, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦, 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌’𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘚𝘰𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘵: 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵, 𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘣𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌.” - John 3:16-21

How did this rephrasing speak to you? Try reading it out loud to hear it in the atmosphere. Tell it to the darkness. See what comes to light. Rest and meditate in this before moving on.

In other words, 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 sent the exact embodiment of itself into the world for us to remember who we are; that we live, move, and have our being in and through LOVE. We cannot find our being in fear, judgement, or condemnation, for these do not exist in God, therefore we cannot find God in them either. They belong entirely to a blind world that is afraid of the light. (For more on what judgment is read this later.)

“For LOVE did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” - John 12:47

“There is no condemnation for those who realize they are in LOVE (Christ Jesus).” - Romans 8:1

This is one of the main meanings of life: to resurrect and wake up what has been enclosed in the tomb of our hidden life, which was never our own. We belong to LOVE. We were made to see and be seen, and we can only see with and in the sight of Love.

This has always been our origin; our original and inescapable being in God.

“Through LOVE (him) all things were made; without LOVE (him) nothing was made that has been made.” - John 1:3

“𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌 (𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵), 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘨𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘺.” - Col 3:4 (You realize yourself in him!)

“𝘜𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯), 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 of 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦.” - Jesus (In other words, until one remembers their origin)

Not realizing is living unreal; living in a kind of non-reality; living (dying) in an outer darkness blinded from the inner reality of the source of being. What is left then awaits the resurrection of real life; a healing and a return to the beginning; to start again and again until….

We remember what is real and cannot die.

What is real, or Israel, is persisting in the wrestle with God and one another in the work of waking up inside of LOVE and helping others do the same. To participate in a million resurrections. To come to rest by being in LOVE.

Now, can you trust that God/Love brings forth the realest, deepest, and original essence of your life without you needing to strive to do so? Can you trust the resurrection of dead things is inevitable and may appear in a different form? Can you trust LOVE heals and redeems all that is wayward and false? What is it to no longer run from that LOVE you cannot actually hide from; that you actually live in? What is it to return to Sabbath Rest, upon which the foundation of Reality and the original world rests? What is it for that LOVE to emerge from the depths of your being and turn on the light to any darkness you felt was in you? And when the Light turns on, does it matter where the darkness went when LOVE is all that remains?

God is LOVE.

Therefore,

You are LOVE.

Be and become what you were always meant to be when LOVE meant you.

-PH

“God is love. Whoever lives in love realizes they live in God, and God lives in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day our entire life is reviewed: In this world we are like Jesus, the embodiment of love in the flesh, the manifestation of the God of Love who made us in love and who gives his life away freely, while keeping no record of wrongs. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.” - 1 John 4:16-19

When digging into meaning it is inevitable to discover older foundations, which if you kept digging, would reveal older ones underneath them, until one finally returns to the beginning foundation. “Seek and you will find”, Jesus confirms, while also saying he has “uttered things hidden since the foundation of the world.” (Matt 7:7, 13:35) There is a supreme foundation that many don’t even know what it is as it remains buried and hidden, even if some correctly mouth that the foundation is Christ, or at least, that Christ is the chief cornerstone. When Jesus “utters” those hidden things, that word utter could very well mean “belch”, or to come forth suddenly like gases from the stomach. No wonder people an be offended at a more primal sound than their currently accepted language and manners.

Some of the more Jewish understandings of the text are helpful, as many of them speak and read the original language of the first scriptures naturally, and some have the unique heart required to allow the holy text to speak for itself in ways that will look as different and unique as each created thing our Creator has made. This means, the example of the text being like a diamond is a helpful metaphor. Depending on which way you spin it, the light will reflect in various ways as it passes through multiple dimensions of meaning at the same time, and this is regardless of whether one is yet conscious of those layers or not. Said another way, the same text can mean one thing to someone and another thing to another.

That last sentence can cause a major disturbance in some people for fear of making the text say or mean what you want it to. That is not at all what I mean. Do you see the need for translation! What I mean is said from that immovable beginning foundation, which allows God/Spirit/Holy Spirit, name it whatever you want to name the essence of God as God is, to speak directly to our soul with a double edged sword, which might even be quadruple edged if necessary. The text itself reveals many names for God on purpose, because the essence of God is so multifaceted, that diamond nature is both endlessly describable and indescribable at the same time. Any Word directly from God speaks to each one in a way that awakens them to the meaning for their time, their season, and their situation. So what is that immovable beginning foundation?

The immovable foundation is uncovered as one who continues to lose their ego; their need to be right; their desire for any kind of perfection in order to control their fear of the unknown; which has plagued religious and human culture for millennia. The bible then, while being so much more than this, contains the basic instruction before leaving ego.

Jesus had no problem NOT giving people direct answers. He would often tell stories and answered most questions with questions, something much of modern religious culture is allergic too. It’s easy to pretend you’ve built your life on the foundation of Christ because you can ace a theological exam, but it is another thing to live the questions you otherwise refuse to ask that haunt you at the core, especially if you are remotely conscious of them. The ego thrives in spiritual language and spiritual cultures because it can be easy to “appear” one way when your own unexamined depths are glossed over because your mind is so certain you know the meaning, or at least, think you know where you are going to heaven when you die as if Jesus’s life was all about that. Dig deeper until the foundation of our very essence is uncovered, which is far deeper than six feet under and expands across the world and universe, while at the same time being located in a flower.

As to modern translations of the bible or anything in English (which I speak), there inherently will be flaws. God does not first speak through human language to begin with and God’s first language, as many have reiterated, is not even a vocal language. I love the person who said, “God’s first language is silence, all else is a poor translation”, but I’ve covered that in other articles. For now we must know you can learn more from the created world than you can from words, and only after looking at creation intently could you even begin to start naming something. Just look at the first human Adam. The animals were brought to him by God to see what kind of names he would give them.

What is God revealing here about an egoless nature that allows another to name something, to describe what it is for them, and for God to be happy at such a partnership? Will not the animal, regardless of the name, still be living and active in the world?

An egoless foundation, though I know there are also healthy understandings of the ego, cannot be shaken. God shakes everything built on ego until one finally comes to a level with the only thing that can be built upon that lasts forever, both in this life and the next, and the next. Said another way, those who walk humbly with God know meaning can pop out of anything without needing to kill it in order to dissect it, thus thinking we would know what a living thing is when dead…but at least we would feel in control of it right?

It takes a resurrection of the dead things in life to see what was living the entire time. It takes a dying to the ego way of life in order to rise to the Way of life as intended from the foundation of the world. Not only do our translations of the text constantly need the ability to deconstruct old meanings and to grow the intended fruits of older meanings that seem new, our heart posture to what has always been underneath the texts must be awakened to see what actually lives and sustains life. Otherwise, the letter kills, hardens the heart, and rejects the Spirit that is the thing actually giving life to any word or world.

For our present context, the Passion Translation is the one I have been thinking of that has been brought into question. There are some brilliant things in this translation, or commentary, and it might just be plagiarism is the culprit according to some reports. Without endorsing any translation outside of the original text, or more importantly, outside the One who gives us our very being, the point is not to deny the criticism or beauty of any translation attempt, but to see what the Spirit might be saying “through” everything on all sides. Hold that diamond up to the light a little longer!

On plagiarism, what a weird concept for divine matters. When it comes to speaking of the things of God, whether a text or someone claiming to be inspired by God in or through anything, especially a translation, it would be impossible to plagiarize should something actually be coming from God! What acknowledgment can come from another’s work that says it is your work and not God’s? What acknowledgement comes from saying this is your work and does not belong to another?! Does it belong to you, or does it belong to the entire world?

To this Paul reminds us,

“For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos, (Or insert your favorite authors/teachers/pastors/translators/denominations/religions etc.) are you not mere human beings?’

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” - 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 21-22

All things are yours!

The credit we are due and any work we do with God comes to us without needing to fight for recognition, legalize it, or patent it as if a legal trademark of some kind could make it more ours or more real. All things are already ours as Christ is the foundation of Reality! You were bought with a price and you do not belong to yourself; you belong to Christ and we belong to one another.

May the bible become to you, at the very least, a text with basic instructions before leaving ego. To become the least of these is to realize what is at the original foundation will always rise to the top, not of its own accord, but of the Spirit that transcends human logic, yet is comfortable speaking inside any language to help others eventually learn with their being, not just their mind. What is at the original foundation will rise up, even if killed, to reveal what is stronger than any death or misunderstanding of Life. To serve others is at the heart of it all, and what serves one will not always serve another, at least not with a consensus recognition, so why not be all things to all people as long as you are living from the original foundation! As Jesus reveals, even if you become unrecognizable but still living from the foundation of it all, you will one day be known fully and what is lifted up from that foundation will eventually and selflessly, draw ALL people to itself.

To close, we must never discard the drawings of a child, for a loving parent knows what the child is trying to reveal, even if it doesn’t look professional. There is One artist at work who is the author and finisher of the painting of our lives and it will be translated properly in due time. We will know fully rather than seeing in part, just as we are fully known in God. All translations will fall away in direct communion with the One who is making us in Their image, now and forever.

Amen,

-PH

“Whether you realize it or not, we have been thinking about the hermeneutical endeavor, that is, the process of bringing meaning out of a text, especially scripture. Behind the whole hermeneutical endeavor lies a danger, rooted in a presumption that has developed directly out of the informational dynamic of our culture. It is the presumption that meaning is communicated primarily, if not wholly, at the cognitive level of human existence. This presumption believes that if only we could merge the cognitive horizons of the New Testament writers with the cognitive horizon of modern interpreters, then meaning could be communicated. If we adopt this perception of the transfer of understanding at a cognitive level, at an informational level only, then the only parameters we have to evaluate our understanding are our own self-referenced parameters. This is why the Bible tends to be interpreted in the light of modern philsophical presumption. We simply read back into the text our own world-view in order to maintain our cognitive, rational control of the text.”

- M. Robert Mulholland Jr. (Shaped By The Word: The Power of Scripture in Spiritual Formation)

“To find self formation by means of scripture reading, I must be open i docility yo what its text may eventually tell me about myself; I must abide with formative reading until it yields to me its treasure. Formative reading implies, more-overm my willingness to change my current self in light if the formative insight scripture may radiate to me. The word as formatie has the power to transform me, It can give rise to a new self in Christ, permeating all dimentions of my life. The word as formative can lift me beyond the stirrings of my ego and vital life so that I may discover my graced life form in the Eternal World.”

- Adrian van Kaam

“Humans were never designed to live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

- Jesus in response to satan quoting scripture.

In Part 1, we explored the story of our family caught in a thunderstorm on top of Black Elk Peak and what was revealed in the process. We just returned from a second family trip to the top of Black Elk Peak where we only experienced light rain on the return down the mountain; a much calmer and peaceful experience than the first climb. This speaks perfectly to the point of part 2 where we explore some more mountain and thunder themes to get to a deeper revelation. What exactly is being revealed that is heard as thunder? How do we perceive it, or miss the sound in thinking a voice speaking to us is something else?

At the pinnacle of Jesus’ life before his death he begins to explain the significance of what death in the earth means in order to rise to new life. Like my son thinking he was going to die in the thunder on the mountain, there is a weightiness to the heavens speaking. Jesus includes the voice of his death as a life lived to serve the whole, which comes into the oneness of love that finds meaning. As he is speaking of this, and of the trouble he feels for the storm he is about the face, a voice comes from heaven. Some people heard it and thought it was just thunder, which is an inadequate response to what Jesus is saying, but at least they heard something. Others thought an angel had spoken; a response closer to the point, but still missing it. So Jesus says:

“The voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the time of judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”- John 12:30-32

Jesus was living and speaking in Kairos time. This was the opportune moment which highlights every moment when someone is drawn into Kairos time; when they are lifted up into higher meaning both in and outside of time.

In Genesis 12 Abram was called by God to leave his familiar world and to go to where God was leading him; to a place he did not yet know. The literal translation in Hebrew is to “Go to yourself” or “Walk to yourself.” Pause here and reflect on what this might mean for you too. Write it down even if you do not know what it entirely means.

How did this understanding initially sit with you to know it is just not about a geographical move? What tried to resurrect in you when you heard the call to “Walk to Yourself?”

God’s call for Abram to do this does not negate a call to walk geographically, for it is often in walking to somewhere other than where we are that we become aware of what has been with us all along. In walking we are invited to find our true selves; to find where we’ve always been, who we truly are, and what it is our true home. To be at home with ourselves is to be at home with God, wherever we go. What a picture!

What is it to leave what we are familiar with, in our own families and cultures, and walk towards the culture of our divine origin? What is it to know where our true home is, not just in heaven as some might be waiting for, but to know that home now as if Jesus was actually telling us the truth when he said the Kingdom/Reality of God is within us?

Now we enter into the deeper voice, especially if the call to walk to yourself seems to be shaking something in your core.

“The Lord said to Elijah, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came the sound of sheer silence.” - 1 Kings 19:11-12

When God’s voice thunders, it is not to cause terror, but it is to remove that which terrorizes us and get it out of us even though it is often misinterpreted through our inner projections of shame, anger, or fear. One of the progressions from Moses hearing God in the thunder to Elijah hearing God in the sheer silence or soft whisper, is that in Elijah’s case God is finally revealing He isn’t really in the noise that causes one to tremble, but God’s gentleness is so powerful that it causes all that is not living in rest to vibrate out. Oh that we would just let it work its way out from within! If you’ve ever seen, or known yourself, the power of God coming upon you, there can be that same trembling as a body may vibrate or shake violently. That is a removal of something and a resetting of the nervous system, and when it is authentic, that is a true deliverance, which is something charismatics might know, but can overemphasize to the point of glorifying the trembling and thus creating parroted imitations.

Even modern therapies are finally seeing the benefit of intentionally shaking the body, something the animals have been revealing to us for a long time.

So when the 7 Thunders sound, as Black Elk himself knew, we must learn what the thunders are actually saying. What is happening in the shaking we are not to fear? Here we learn what cannot be repeated or written down, for it is only known within our secret heart through experience. The voice is for our true self’s sake as all that is false is shaken and removed until we receive that which cannot be shaken.

“When he called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.” And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there would be no more delay, but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.”- Revelation 10:3-7

When we see the true meaning of the thunders, the angels often mistaken for them, and the voice of what was really being said, we see through the noise into the ark of his testament as the secret chest opens inside our very chest! You cannot explain or write this, for it is only known between lovers who need no words. The sheer silence speaks of a love that is home in itself, home in God, and home in another. The thunders, lightnings, earthquakes, and fires all become a beautiful show for what is really going on in a soul coming home; a soul that has walked to itself.

“And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.” - Revelation 11:19

So here we see the 7 thunders speak of what you cannot repeat and you must eat the scroll instead, because those mysteries must come from within you, not just repeated or memorized in your head. They must be found in the belly of your being. Only then, will you live and speak from Kairos time. Only then, will the sound of sheer silence no longer frighten you, but speak like the heavens speak without a need for words. Now the heavens and earth have met within you and you see their meaning in the stars.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

-Psalm 19:1-4

The next time you hear the thunder or mistake it for an angel, listen closer, until the noise drops away and the meaning is revealed in The Voice. In that sound of sheer silence the Voice is heard and the meaning is known; the soul has come home to itself.

-PH

(Picture from the top of Black Elk Peak and my oldest son pointing to it.)

This is the curious faith like a child type of stuff, which we’ll eventually see, is of extreme importance.

This week my oldest son and I went to the movie Disclosure Day, which would have been a movie I would have loved to watch when I was younger. I do not believe this movie is a must see, but it has some insight into those who might have a crisis of faith should something like it turn out to be real; a crisis of faith should one come to realize we are not the only ones in the universe. There are typically two responses in someone who might come to some sort of serious awareness that aliens are, or could be, real. One sinks into fear in questioning their own existence as if they are now not the supreme creation of their little world which causes them to question God’s existence; something that already happens regardless of the topic. Yet another comes to say this only makes God’s existence more likely as they believe in the vastness of a Creator. Of course, there are those who currently do not believe in God regardless, which will still lead us to the greater disclosure, but why the contrast in the first two?

Anytime something appears bigger than yourself and what you are familiar with, these two responses are likely. One can drive you further into instability and the other deeper into God’s ability. We might ask then, “Who or what is actually driving what we believe?” Unidentified flying objects are more than what is happening in our skies, but what is driving the unidentified in our heart. It usually takes a close encounter of a third kind to wake us up.

What these questions can reveal is the very things we are slaves to. Are we a slave to the fear of the unknown, a slave to duty, a slave to distraction, or have we entered into the faith like a child realm who knows the goodness of their being belongs to a Being that sustains them, and all of life for that matter, both within matter and out. This matters precisely because it deals with awakening to the meaning of our existence right here, and therefore, the existence of all things possible. To free us from slavery of any kind, is God’s movement at this very moment; a movement of a third kind.

George MacDonald, a man written off as a kind of alien and a heretic by many in his day says:

“God indeed does not love slavery; he hates it; he will have children, not slaves; but he may keep a slave in his house a long time in the hope of waking up the poor slavish nature to aspire to the sonship which belongs to him, which is his birthright.”

He goes on to say,

“Those to whom God is not all in all, are slaves. They may not commit great sins; they may be trying to do right, but so long as they serve God, as they call it, from duty; and do not know him as their father, the joy of their being, they are slaves-good slaves, but slaves. If they did not try to do their duty, they would be bad slaves. They are by no means so slavish as those who serve from fear, but they are slaves; and because they are but slaves, they can fulfill no righteousness, can do no duty perfectly, but must ever be trying after it wearily and in pain, knowing well that if they stop trying, they are lost. They are slaves indeed, for they would be glad to be adopted by one who is their own father! Where then are the sons?”

To this we take a slight turn from the question of aliens to that which is already alien to many of us. The earth. How would we ever know the heavens if we do not even know what our own earth is telling us? Creation has been asking us this question, “Where are the sons and daughters of God placed in the garden of the earth’s own being?”

When we are alienated from the earth we’re already alienated from the life and mind of the One who created it. If one were to begin to even entertain the possibility of other life in the cosmos they would need to be familiar with the life of their current home situated in that very cosmos. Light must come to a darkened understanding and the hard shell of unidentified objects surrounding their heart must soften to reveal the Light that drives it to begin with. They must wake up to the Father of our being. They must wake up from being alienated from their own meaning. They must wake up from this ignorance to a full disclosure of who, and whose, they really are.

“They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” -Ephesians 4:1

One of the key themes in the movie Disclosure Day is to listen, rather than assume or close your eyes and ears for whatever reason to that which may shake your world, but would also wake you, and others, up. What if we actually listened to the earth? What if we looked at the birds of the air and flowers of the field as Jesus instructed? What if we went for more contemplative walks outside? If we listened, what would we see and hear? A man named Job says,

“But ask the animals, and they will instruct you; ask the birds of the air, and they will tell you. Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? The life of every living thing is in His hand, as well as the breath of all humanity…” -Job 12:7-10

What is it to know, the life of every living thing unidentified or identified, is in His hand?

You have one job, and that is to figure this out.

It is when this question is answered that we might accept God speaking of and through the heavens and the earth at the same time, like when God goes on to ask Job:

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear and her cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth? Can you command the clouds so that a flood of water covers you? Can you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? Who has put wisdom in the heart or given understanding to the mind?” -Job 39:31-36

So “here we are” floating in the middle of a vast universe in which we have been directed to first learn of the earth in which we have been placed. The song is still being sung, “The whole world is in His hand.” As we learn of the earth, the greater questions no longer scare us, nor make us afraid, for we are no longer slaves to the unknown, but children who are known by the One who gives life to all. The birds that both touch the earth and fly above it reveal something to us. The full disclosure is that we are the children of God if we’d but listen to our Father speak; if we’d but listen to the being of earth He created we would eventually notice what the heavens are saying too. Then, we would no longer see others as aliens and foreigners, especially on our own planet, but as the brothers and sisters we really are regardless of the skin suit we wear. We would be prepared for all else that has life that eventually reveals itself. And when we are asked “Do you believe in aliens?”, the answer would be no, for we are no longer aliens and foreigners to mystery; no longer separated from the life of God; no longer slaves to fear or the unknown; for we are now lost and found in the wonder and curiosity of a child about the vastness of our Father we belong to, and to which, the entire cosmos belongs.

God would be all in all.

So Listen:

What is the creation that is already here telling us; the tree’s, the animals, the plants? What are they asking you to notice?

Listen:

What has God been speaking to you all along in how you already belong to both the heavens and the earth?

Listen:

You have always been a child of God; the very offspring of the Creator of everything that lives, moves, and has its being.

This is the great disclosure.

The film ends with a word, which was a central theme throughout: Listen.

This call to listen is a central foundation of the bible and all of Life. A line central to the purest of religion in the universe is found in the verse: “Hear oh Israel: The LORD our GOD, the LORD is One.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) Meaning: listen and hear all of you who wrestle with God and humanity; who wrestle with the known and unknown; who wrestle with your very existence and the existence of others; your Father is the Father of all. You are loved entirely, therefore love others, especially those that appear as aliens or strangers among you, and by doing so you will love God with all your heart, mind, strength, and being, just as God, our Father, is already loving us now.

-PH

Warning: Mature Content Ahead Based On Real Life.

My youngest son on the autism spectrum was having a hard moment when he was fixated on wanting something to happen immediately that I was trying to work with him to have patience for. It is one of our greatest challenges with him, whereas he is mostly easy going and happy, fixation moments are where we have to be extra careful and sometimes they are really hard. When he cannot work through it, he might resort to behavior issues like breaking things, even things of his that he really likes. The other night I thought we mostly worked through the most recent one, but he still went to bed not quite settled. Later I heard him doing something in his room after he had been in bed, so I went in to check. He had broken the cord to his boombox in frustration and after a bit more time working through it, he finally went to bed.

The next day, and this is the brilliant thing about many autistic kids, they can’t lie, he told me he had written bad words on his wall with a sharpie and on the clothes he had been wearing. I had completely missed this the night before, but thankfully, he can’t help but tell the truth. I walked in to see the bad words on his wall along with a drawing of a penis.

You see, years ago he and his brother were exploring under a bridge where he first learned of these words and that image, (well the words part might have first been from his mother) and those words and that image were now being remembered. (Autistic minds often remember details like crazy.) So when he was upset, he resorted to the worst thing he could think of at that moment to write or say in order to express his frustration. I am sure some of you can relate to doing something like this at some point in your life when you were mad at someone or something.

In the past I would have been more upset by seeing something like this written on his wall, but I understand now he is merely trying to process his emotions, so I told him calmly that it was not a good choice, which he understood, and that he would need to paint over it.

My oldest was hearing this conversation and I did my best to tell him to not scold his younger brother, for the parent has already spoken, something of which he has struggled with himself in trying to be a parent to him, which of course, he does not need to do. I was encouraged later when I saw he had taken the initiative to help his younger brother cover the writing with some white paint, but it obviously needed another coat as the words and image were still somewhat visible.

Before he had done that though, in my genius, I had taken the sharpie and made the words something other than what they were. I tried to make the penis into a rocket-ship and change the letters of Fu%* by adding another line to turn the F to an E and so on, so that it was now merely gibberish.

But what a nice thing for his older brother to do; to help out, and he even fixed the boombox!

This weekend my parents were here to celebrate my birthday and my mom was with my youngest in his room. I heard her get really excited saying something like, “Oh no, what did you do!”, as she was quite dramatic and disappointed. I heard my son calmly say he had written bad words on the wall and I walked in to see he had painted completely over it with darker paint to cover the gibberish, yet the paint did not match the color of the wall. I explained to my mom this was a good thing, he was simply finishing the work to cover what he had written and it did not matter that it was a different color, or that a nice towel from the bathroom was used to set the stirring stick on, which now ruined the towel. (It’s a perfect rag now!) You see, cleaning up our messes in life can be…messy, but the intention here was pure goodness regardless of what it looked like. It was to be praised, not scolded. It is a reminder to not judge a wall by its colors.

You see, love is like that.

It covers us in ways that might not look the best to those on the outside, who do not know the context of what has been done and what is being done. Love covers a multitude of sins… and naughty words on our walls and hearts, or images in our minds. Love turns penises into rocket-ships to take us higher into the realms of growth, love, forgiveness, and better intention. It understands that walls are merely that, walls, and no matter what color they are, they still function the same way. The messy off colored wall says more about reality than it being nicely painted. This is also why children writing on walls in general are never a thing to be shamed, but a thing to be naturally praised, of course, while still correcting if they are not writing good things.

At the end of my life, I’d rather see my child’s art in my memories than remember what color the wall of his room was. The Artist is still at work on us!

Yet what happens when our own walls begin to fall, when we confess our misdeeds in the open and allow them to be covered in ways that might not appeal to others, but cover none the less. Rather than hide, they reveal, and here is where covering is the difference between covering up and covering over; between living in the light even when frustrated, rather than keeping things in the dark. Not even trolls under a bridge can conquer those who build them.

My youngest teaches us a few things.

1. Raw Honesty

2. Responsibility For Wrongdoing.

And not judging how these are done, while praising them both for being done with the right intentions regardless of what it looks like.

At the end of the day, we all get fixated on things from time to time, and if we get fixated on the wrong things, or on the right things in the wrong way, we all process things differently. We are learning the same thing in different ways. The key is to continue the journey of holding each other, giving space to process, and allowing things to come into the light. Sometimes that requires the possibility of having to make rocket-ships out of God given organs for new creations to emerge. We are invited to think from above and to understand that all of life below is a training ground for what really matters in Life. It is not the color of your walls, the size of your home, your job title, the appearance of things, etc. It is the intention by which we are learning to love, to allow things to come into the open, to cover when necessary and to leave alone when not, and to create beauty out of chaos.

Love is how we intentionally change hurtful words to something other than what they were in order to begin the process of restoration. To reframe the most hurtful thing said or done. To build bridges to understanding. To make seemingly unrepairable or offensive things seen for the gibberish they are and allowing a new canvas to emerge with fresh possibility and insight. To resurrect things from the dead.

So it is with little surprise we end on the verse where some of this idea was communicated, from a man whose name has sometimes been used as slang for penis.

Peter instructs:

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” - 1 Peter 4:8

Here’s to making more rocket-ships when necessary, and to cover the gibberish with what deeply matters…

Above all.

-PH

This image is not AI, it’s the actual wall talked about in this article.

We were:

Present to this moment.

Paying attention.

Watching.

The owl was unfazed by people walking by with their dog, unfazed when our oldest returned on his bike directly in front of it, and unfazed when he opened and closed the front door not too far from where the owl was sitting. What a creature this is that is so aware of its surroundings, unfazed by the noise or actions of others, and going about its mission to find what it was looking for. It sat in that tree for a long time turning and shifting its head.

What happens when we sit intentionally for a long time, while things turn and shift in our own heads, yet we finally pay attention to something deeper turning and shifting in our heart?

What is it to become like that owl, to pay attention to our surroundings, yet focused inwardly on what you are seeking to find?

Owls have been important messengers to me over the years. They are stealthy and not easily seen, so when they appear, there is a message of light being drawn out of the darkness. These messages in the night, especially when hearing them outside my window, reveal things about our journey through life. It is moments like these, when we pay attention, that we realize how God speaks to us through creation and why Jesus instructed people to pay attention to the “birds of the air.”

Rather than see this as a nice experience and moving on about our evening like scrolling to the next thing in our feed, we listen deeply with an inner sight to navigate the growing darkness and the growing light that shines in that darkness. We are being fed in a real time feed as we listen to the things the ancient scrolls have been telling us all along.

“This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” - Jeremiah 6:16

One of my favorite songs captures the message of our journey through life likened to an owl, learning wisdom, and navigating the ancient paths before us.

Some lyrics go like this:

“When the night comes, and you don’t know which way to go. Through the shadowlands, and forgotten paths, you will find a road.

Like an owl you must fly by moonlight with an open eye and use your instincts as a guide, to navigate the ways that lay before you. You were born to, take the greatest flight.” - Josh Garrels (White Owl)

Growing in our ability to see in the darkness is essential. It is how we learn discernment between an authentic messenger of peace and a disguised one, or an angel of light masquerading as a messenger of peace, but is really from an unhealthy darkness. Yet it is the healthy messengers of darkness, like an owl, that often gets interpreted as an angel of darkness when it’s actually revealing the light. How often does transformation come in the darkness and rather than going “through” it, we run from it thinking we are to reject or war against it?

Often when an actual angel of light appears in the ancient texts, and our everyday lives, we are afraid, but wisdom tells us that light is only exposing the fear that is still inside of us, rather than it confirming our interpretation that it is there to harm us. But something begins to happen when we learn to see in the darkness and we begin to interpret our lives, especially the dark and difficult, through a process by which something is being made. As our journey through life continues, we will be met by these various messengers and invited to discern.

What messengers have shown up in your life that you initially rejected out of fear of the unknown?

“God who sees in secret will reward you.” - Matthew 6:4

This is a powerful secret of Reality. When God created the light and the darkness they are not separated in how we might think, yet there is a continual process of drawing out light from darkness seen from the very beginnings of creation. It is the call to allow the wheat and tares to grow up together since we so often misinterpret too quickly what we think is light and darkness; good and evil. Therefore, we are to be initiated into seeing this process and allow its work in our life; to learn to see in the darkness.

We all are being initiated, it is what this life is; a giant initiation developing who we are to become. Earth is a womb and a cocoon, a place of struggle and delight designed to strengthen the inner essence of what we really are. This mysterious process is to be made known as the light is drawn out of our darkness taking form until certain forms return to the dust, and the essence of what we are continues the formation process from this life into the next phase. Do you see it? Something is separated, but it still had meaning and purpose. This real spiritual process is why spirituality is central to all of life. It cannot be ignored, and to do so is to resist or be ignorant of meaning in both its temporary and eternal forms. We who are spiritual turn to draw the Spirit out of others as we are called to “walk in the Spirit”, which shines regardless of a sun or moon. There are deep and hidden things in the darkness that are to be made known; things of spirit and light, of the reality of creation and its purpose.

“He reveals the deep and hidden things; He knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with Him.” - Daniel 2:22

The God who sees in darkness invites us, like Moses, to enter that darkness or cloud of unknowing in order to know. There is nothing hidden from God, who not only fills the heavens, but fills the earth, therefore, there is no place where God is not. The key then, is to learn to see God everywhere and in everything, especially the darkest places we do not yet perceive God to be. In this reality, our entire life is seen as an initiation process; we are waking up.

“Can a man hide in secret places where I cannot see him?” declares the LORD. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the LORD.” - Jeremiah 23:24

God, like the owl God created, sees in darkness and we are invited to pay attention to what is happening in the darkness that allows the light to be drawn from it. This oneness between light and dark becomes aware of the illusion of separation and we are no longer needing to run from that which is being formed in all of it.

The dark then, will no longer be dark to us.

So what is the darkness in your life now? Relationship or health issues? Political upheaval? Raising kids or not being able to have them? On and on the list goes inviting us wherever we are to slow down and pay attention, to watch and see how light will be drawn out from these circumstances, rather than running from them thinking it will just go away. No, you have to go through the darkness to return to Eden. The flaming swords are spinning and glowing to light the path. The owls are showing up to remind you to watch and pray; to listen.

Then, what is to be revealed to you will slowly dawn, just like a rising moon in the sky, and the greater and lesser lights become part of the process of what eventually comes out of the darkness of any womb; of what is being birthed in you.

At these crossroads, stand and watch. Ask and see.

The Ancient Paths are being revealed in time, and digital watches cannot tell you what time it is.

-PH

The journey to the top was full of beautiful views and beautiful weather. As we reached the top where an unused fire tower now sits, we saw a storm rolling in with thunder sounding in the distance, yet our autistic son Kairos was venturing way out onto the rocks moving quickly away from us. We called out to Kairos to come back, but he would not listen. My oldest and I ran out to chase him over the boulders as I feared he might fall off the mountain or be caught in the approaching storm. We were now in a race against chronos time, which I thought the storm was a part of, as I continued chasing and calling for Kairos.

If you are not familiar with these two understandings of time, chronos is the time of the clock whereas kairos is unbound by the clock; timeless. Kairos is transformative and chronos is transactional, and we all know this when we pay too much attention to the tick tock of the clock, rather than the eternal time of our truest essence. My son Kairos lives his name, often living in another world, while being uniquely present to this one. It is to this we are all called to hear our name from the timeless realm, which directly affects what happens in time.

When we finally reached Kairos, he was out on a tall point looking out. I said we can grab a quick picture but we need to hurry back to the tower before the storm hits. Once we got back to the tower, people were quickly heading down the mountain to outrun the storm. We decided we would try that too, but as we got down a little ways it began to hail and the thunder’s distant voice was now much closer. So we hunkered down in the cleft of some rocks to take shelter from the hail stones that had started to land around us, but soon, the thunder was getting closer and closer; louder and louder.

Which briefly reminds me of someone else, Moses, who was in the cleft of the rocks once, but before that experience he experienced this:

“And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder.” - Exodus 19:19

Eventually, we found ourselves in an absolute downpour to the point where water began to rush down the mountain soaking our feet and the lightning was striking closer and closer with some of the loudest thunder we’ve ever heard. Kairos was the most afraid and started yelling, “I’m going to die!” It seems, like many sacred experiences which may not feel sacred in the moment, there are many who have experienced the rumblings on a mountain where we are in fact, invited to die to what we think is going on, and instead, to listen within and beyond the noise to what is being said to us.

I had to surrender to the rushing water, now baptizing my feet, and embrace the elements beyond my control. As the storm increased, I decided we needed to make a run back up to the tower and we started the ascent back up, which eventually required us to run up a few metal stairs (in a thunderstorm) at the top. We made it to the tower where another family had taken shelter. Slowly, a few more people ventured into the shelter from the storm. We were cold and a little wet, but finally safe.

“When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm.” - Black Elk

When the terror of the storm passed, we spent a little more time on the top of the mountain before safely venturing down where more lessons awaited from the experience. As I meditated on this the next morning; the pilgrimage to the top and the return; the chasing of Kairos; the intensity of the storm, I heard these words in prayer:

These words were later confirmed by a second witness through a t-shirt at a local coffee shop that read: “No Clocks On The Rocks.” There it is again, Kairos time.

For tourist purposes, this shirt represents the beauty of being in the Black Hills without having to worry about the time, to just be on the rocks and explore the land, but we were not just there as tourists. Kairos is the calling of being lifted up into that deeper dimension within and outside of time, wherever we are. Though still connected to chronos, it is superior, like my oldest son Courage being lifted into a vision on Lake Superior the day he became a teenager. It is why we named our youngest Kairos, for our names speak when we are named well, like Black Elk.

Black Elk’s visionary experience at the age of nine was, and is, of Kairos time:

“I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy…but anywhere is the center of the world.” – Black Elk

His vision is a reminder that Kairos is the seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things. Unexplainable, but not unexperienceable. It is being so present to the moment that all moments find themselves there. All moments that could be arise from there. All moments that have been, are there. All moments that will be, are there; therefore they are…here.

This is the oneness that Jesus talked about as being the main point of his message and a main story of creation.

Black Elk knew it too.

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”

So how do we get to here? How do we stop chasing chronos and live in Kairos? How do we inhabit time? Why does God hide mysteries in other dimensions; in Kairos. How do we not only hear Thunder, but a Voice speaking in and beyond the noise?

This we will explore in part 2 titled: “Black Elk Peak: Hearing God In The Silence.”

In Kairos,

-PH

Picture of my sons on the journey up pointing to the point in the distance.

Who is it today that seeks to destroy others, whether on reputation or actual death?

Who seeks to use the power and attention of the people against the people?

What stories or authorities are you listening to?

So these “leaders” asked Jesus by what authority he was doing the things he was doing and who gave him the authority to do so. As Jesus often did, he answered their question with a question. As they reasoned among themselves they realized they could not give a straight answer because however they answered, they would not be able to refute what he said. Answering one way would expose their unbelief and answering another way would do the same, but also lead to the very death they were seeking to happen to Jesus.

They were trapped in their own trap, so when they correctly answered that they did not know the answer, Jesus said he won’t answer their question.

Why tell someone the answer when they can’t receive it?

So Jesus turned towards the people and as he also often did, he told them a story.

The story only made the religious authorities and “leaders of the people” more upset as they knew this story was told against them and so they wanted Jesus dead that very hour, but they feared the people.

These leaders continued to watch Jesus and sent spies who pretended to be righteous in order to continue trying to trap him in his words.

Who are the spies pretending to be righteous today?

Who are the ones twisting words people say to catch them; to get people to turn on them?

The spies came and complimented Jesus as if they agreed with him and asked him a political/religious question to get him in trouble with political authorities; those they knew had power to judge and kill him by the laws they themselves did not agree with, but wanted to use to their advantage.

Who is complementing Jesus today without actually believing him?

Who is using politics to trap Jesus’ way of life and kill the essence?

Who critiques the empire yet loves the benefits the empire brings?

Then he asks for a coin and leaves them with an example of thinking deeper than they currently are, along with an invitation to live in the tension with how the earth and political institutions function, and how God works within and outside of them.

The “spies” could not catch him as their attempts to get the people to turn on him failed. Even though the answer to their questions was standing in front of them, they were further away in their attempts of spying out the truth.

Who is spying out our freedom?

What are we spying on that leads us further away?

Then some religious leaders from another affiliation, who did not believe in resurrection, came and asked Jesus a question. They seemed a bit more genuine, so he answered their question more directly, while implying the reality of resurrection. Their question was about a woman who had 7 husbands and which would be her actual husband after death…if there even was a resurrection.

Jesus again tells the crowd the difference between earthly relationships and faulty understandings of life and death. He said there will be no marriage in the resurrection for the point is to be married to something deeper today, and described those who become… “sons and daughters of resurrection.” If we are married to meaning beyond life and death, we are able to include both in a resurrected form that transcends the limitations, which are essential for the time being. Once you are no longer just a time-being you become aware of eternal-being; that which never dies.

That which has been living the entire time…for all time.

Anyone who awakens to the process of becoming the sons and daughters of resurrection is living more and more in the Reality of Union with God, and everyone else, even if they are not yet awake. You simultaneously live in the past, present, and future. You are living in the One who always was, always is, and is always to come.

Jesus then points to their sacred texts involving Moses as revealing the dead are raised and that God is not just the God of Moses, but of three other people they would remember from the past as having died, yet they were now being brought to the present moment as if they were still living…resurrected.

He says,

What is it to wake to the reality “all live to Him?”

What is it to know and participate in what never dies?

What is it to be surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses that have gone “before” us?

What is it to speak to and hear from that cloud; to witness, rather than fear the people currently dead in understanding the living and the dead?

Some of them started to realize he knew something they were missing and that he had spoken well. After that, they dared not question him anymore.

Once Jesus realized their questions had reached their end, he further drove the point home. It is at this point where questions start to be answered in those starting to listen AND we are starting to receive the answers that are deeper than our own.

We might even realize what we’ve been participating in the whole time.

Maybe some of you are (t)here right now.

Jesus then turns to those who are actually following him, while again speaking so that ALL the people could hear.

How does he speak directly to some and indirectly to others, therefore directly speaking to all?

What is designed to be overheard?

It is here the posture of our inner lives and the state of our hearts can tune into his point.

Will we try to trap him?

Will we walk away?

Will we sincerely ask another question?

Or will we face the challenge of following the One that can never die by knowing that long obedience in the same direction is producing something in us now that is to be resurrected beyond earthly understanding?

That is the question that determines if we are becoming Sons and Daughters of Resurrection now, and forever.

This is really about questions and stories and finding ourselves in the story, while learning to not be offended if we don’t hear what we thought we wanted to hear.

So read the story yourself. See where you find yourself in the story. See where you find yourself in the past, present, and future, now. See if you can wake up for the time-being.

This particular story is found in Luke Chapter 20.

Go and see.

-PH

“𝐃𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐞.” (𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐝𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠/𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐦.)

“…. 𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐠𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐝𝐨, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬, 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲.” - 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐰

𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, “𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬...” - 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝟏𝟔:𝟏𝟐

𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬, 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥. 𝐖𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬, 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧. 𝐓𝐨 𝐝𝐨 𝐬𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐬, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐮𝐬.

𝐀𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐦 𝐰𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐄𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐎𝐧𝐞, 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬; 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬; 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐨𝐞𝐬, 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐦𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬. 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐖𝐢𝐬𝐝𝐨𝐦.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡. 𝐖𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐜𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐛 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞.

𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐠𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦. 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐬, 𝐚 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝, 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐬 𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐘𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞, 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧.

𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬:

“𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝, 𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐛𝐲 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡—𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥—𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡.” -𝐇𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝟐:𝟏𝟒-𝟏𝟓

𝐄𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐥, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞. 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐦 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐖𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧.

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧, 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐮𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐮𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐬, 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭. 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧, 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞, 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐚𝐫𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞. 𝐖𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡, 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐄𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲.

𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐮𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞; 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧. 𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠.

𝐒𝐨 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬’ 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡, 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐛, 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐮𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐛. 𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥. 𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐞, 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐨𝐧. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐰𝐞 𝐧𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞, 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞.

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨, 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬.

𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠?

“𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥, 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥, 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐆𝐨𝐝, 𝐛𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫. 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐧.” - 𝟏 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐲 𝟏:𝟏𝟕

-𝐏𝐇

“𝐁𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐞𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝.” -𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝟐𝟎:𝟐𝟗

When the past is present the future is here.