SILENCE

The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it’s the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don’t love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.

We won’t have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it’s not a technique at all. It’s precisely the refusal of all technique.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 106, day 114

Prayer:

Listen to the stillness, the language of God.

~~

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the founder of the Cistercians, set the gold standard for mystical writing in his  Commentary on the Song of Songs. All he could resort to was the one erotic book in the Bible to communicate what happens between God and the soul.

He said that we are the mutual food of one another, just as lovers are. Jesus gives us himself as food in the Eucharist, and the willing soul offers itself for God to  ¢â‚¬Å“eat ¢â‚¬  in return:  ¢â‚¬Å“If I eat and am not eaten, it will seem that God is in me, but I am not yet in God ¢â‚¬  (Commentary 71:5). I must both eat God and be eaten by God, Bernard says. Now this is the language of mystical theology, and is upsetting to the merely rational mind, but utterly delightful and consoling to anyone who knows the experience.

The mystic sits in the silence of such language until it silences him into the experience itself.

~ Richard Rohr
A reflection on the feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux

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At times we have to step into God ¢â‚¬â„¢s silence and wait. We have to put out the fleece as Gideon did (Judges 6:37-40), and wait for the descent of the divine dew, or some kind of confirmation from God. That is a good way to keep our own ego drive out of the way.

There are other times when we need to go ahead and act on our own best intuitions and presume that God is guiding us ¢â‚¬“but even then we must wait for the divine backup. Sometimes that is even the greater act of faith and courage.

When either waiting or moving forward is done out of a spirit of  union and surrender, we can trust that God will make good out of it ¢â‚¬”even if we are mistaken!  It is not about being correct; it is about being connected.

~~

One good thing that silence and waiting has taught me is that  our lives are always usable by God. We need not always be effective, but only transparent and vulnerable.  Then we are instruments, no matter what we do. Silence is the ability to trust that God is acting, teaching, and using me ¢â‚¬”even before I perform, or after my seeming failures. Silence is the necessary space around things that allows them to develop and flourish without my pushing.

God takes it from there, and there is not much point in comparing who is better, right, higher or lower, or supposedly saved. We are all partial images slowly coming into focus, as long as we allow and filter the Light and Love of God, which longs to shine through us ¢â‚¬”as us!

Adapted from  Contemplation in Action, p. 134

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The goal of all spirituality is to lead the  ¢â‚¬Å“naked person ¢â‚¬  to stand trustfully before the naked God. The important thing is that we ¢â‚¬â„¢re naked; in other words, that we come without title, merit, shame, or even demerit. All we can offer to God is who we really are, which to all of us never seems like enough. I am sure this is the way true lovers feel, too.

As you know, the act of lovemaking requires some degree of nakedness, and perhaps sacred silence to absorb the communion that is happening. The same is true in loving and being loved by God. We have to let go of our false self (as either superior or inferior) to allow God to choose us  ¢â‚¬Å“in our lowliness ¢â‚¬  as Mary says (Luke 1:48). To do that, we have to be silent and wait. What a crucifixion this is sometimes!

Silence is the language of God, and the only language deep enough to absorb all the contradictions and failures that we are holding against ourselves. God loves us silently, because God has no case to make against us. Silent communion absorbs our self-hatred, as every lover knows.

Adapted from  Simplicity, p. 97

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Prayer is largely just being silent: holding the tension instead of even talking it through, offering the moment instead of fixing it by words and ideas, loving reality as it is instead of understanding it fully. We must not push the river, we must just trust that we are really in the river, and God is the current.

That may be impractical, but the way of faith is not the way of efficiency. So much of life is just a matter of listening and waiting, and enjoying the expansiveness that comes from such willingness to hold. It is like carrying and growing a baby: women wait and trust and hopefully eat good food, and the baby is born.

~~

We don ¢â‚¬â„¢t need to project or maintain any kind of self-image at all, when we discover ourselves  ¢â‚¬Å“hidden with Christ in God ¢â‚¬  (Colossians 3:3). I hope this doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t sound too esoteric, because it isn ¢â‚¬â„¢t. This is exactly what happens in true prayer and in true lovemaking too:  ¢â‚¬Å“I am my beloved ¢â‚¬â„¢s and my beloved is mine. ¢â‚¬  This lovely phrase is used three times in the  ¢â‚¬Å“Song of Songs, ¢â‚¬  and is often found on contemporary Jewish mezuzahs, to be touched and invoked as you pass the doorway.

This is what will happen when we live first inside of silence, the silence that surrounds everything all the time. Only then can we stop exposing ourselves to the judgments of the world; only then will we stop  ¢â‚¬Å“picking up ¢â‚¬  the energy of others; only then can we cease our endless self-commentary. We are who we are in God ¢â‚¬”no more and no less. We probably do need to remind ourselves of this almost every time we pass through a doorway.

Adapted from Simplicity, p. 184

Prayer:

Listen to the stillness, the language of God.

~~

PARADOX

I don ¢â‚¬â„¢t think the important thing is to be certain about answers nearly as much as being serious about the questions.

When we hold spiritual questions, we meet and reckon with our contradictions, with our own dilemmas; and we invariably arrive at a turning point where we either evade God or meet God. Mere answers close down the necessary struggle too quickly, too glibly, and too easily.

When we hang on the horns of dilemmas with Christ ¢â‚¬”between perfect consistency and necessary contradictions ¢â‚¬”we find ourself in the unique place I call  ¢â‚¬Å“liminal space. ¢â‚¬  Reality has a cruciform shape to it then ¢â‚¬”and we are taught best at the intersection of order and disorder, where God alone can make sense out of the situation and we must surrender. All real transformation of persons takes place when we ¢â‚¬â„¢re inside of such liminal space ¢â‚¬”with plenty of questions that are open to God and grace and growth.

Adapted from Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer:   Lose my life, find my life.

~~

God is the only one we can surrender to without losing ourselves. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s a paradox. I am increasingly convinced that all true spirituality has the character of paradox to it, precisely because it is always holding together the whole of reality, which is always  ¢â‚¬Å“Both/And. ¢â‚¬  Everything except God is both attractive and non-attractive, light and darkness, passing and eternal, life and death. There are really no exceptions.

A paradox is something that appears to be a contradiction, but from another perspective is not a contradiction at all. Paradox admits that every profound truth is countered by another, and usually less flattering, profound truth.

You and I are living paradoxes, which everybody except ourselves sees. If you can hold and forgive the contradictions within yourself, you can normally do it everywhere else, too.

~~

Jesus is giving us a win-win worldview (which is why it is called Good News!), but what the ego invariably does with the Gospel is make it into a win-lose game. That ¢â‚¬â„¢s the only way the dualistic mind can think. You ¢â‚¬â„¢re either in or you ¢â‚¬â„¢re out. It defines itself largely by what it is not. The mystical or non-dual mind is alone capable of win-win.

Yet we don ¢â‚¬â„¢t know how to include, how to forgive, how to pour mercy and compassion and patience upon events as God apparently does. Augustine of Hippo, a man filled with contradictions, was a master at holding those contradictions within himself and before God. He describes the power and simultaneously the deep powerlessness of true God experience. Faith absolutely knows and yet it does not know at all ¢â‚¬”and is content with this! Thus true believers are very humble and yet quietly confident in the same moment.

Adapted from  Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox  (CD,  DVD,  MP3)

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When Christianity aligns itself with power (and the mindset of power, which is the need to be right and certain one is right) there ¢â‚¬â„¢s simply very little room for the darkness of faith; that spacious place where God is actually able to form us.

So when we speak of paradox, I ¢â‚¬â„¢m trying to open up that space where you can  ¢â‚¬Å“fall into the hands of the living God ¢â‚¬  (Hebrews 10:31), because YOU are not in control and only God is right. That is always the space of powerlessness, vulnerability, and letting go. Faith happens in that wonderful place, and hardly ever when we have all the power and can hold no paradoxes. Thus you see why faith will invariably be a minority and suspect position.

Adapted from  Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox  (CD,  DVD,  MP3)

~~

If God is  ¢â‚¬Å“crucified flesh ¢â‚¬  for Paul, and that is what he has fallen in love with, then everything is a disguise: weakness is really strength, wisdom is really foolishness, death is really life, matter is really spirit, religion is often slavery, and sin itself is actually the trap door into salvation. People must recognize what a revolutionary thinker Paul was with such teachings as these; and we made him into a mere moralistic churchman.

So the truth lies neither in the total affirmation nor in the total denial of either side of things, but precisely in the tug of war between the two. Hold on to that, and you will become wise and even holy. But be prepared to displease those on either entrenched side.

Adapted from Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation

Prayer:   Lose my life, find my life.

~~

The human and the divine coexisting at the same time is real religion. This creates honest people, people who don ¢â‚¬â„¢t waste time proving they ¢â‚¬â„¢re right, superior, or saved, but just try to live and love the mystery that they are.

There are basically four world views: 1) Reality is just matter, 2) Reality is just spirit, 3) Through religion and morality we can work to put matter and spirit together, and 4) The material world has always been the place where Spirit is revealed ( ¢â‚¬Å“Incarnation ¢â‚¬ ). You cannot put them together. They already are ¢â‚¬”as in Jesus. Only the fourth position deserves to be called Christianity.

~~

In paradoxical language, if you try to rest on one side and forget the other, you lose the the bigger truth. The whole is always Both/And. The opposite of every profound truth is another profound truth.

We ¢â‚¬â„¢ve seen some Christian cultures that are entirely centered on the Cross and they lose the Resurrection. In wealthy countries like our own we create the  ¢â‚¬Å“prosperity gospel, ¢â‚¬  as it is called ¢â‚¬”which is all trumped-up resurrection and almost no reference to the pain and suffering of the world, and often denying our own dark side.

We lose the full mystery of God, and the mystery of our own transformation, when we stand on one side and refuse to hold the creative tension that Jesus held on the cross. He even let it destroy him. It is the horizontal line of two nailed hands,  ¢â‚¬Å“between the good and the bad thief, ¢â‚¬  as it were, that crucifies Jesus and that liberates us.

Adapted from  Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation  (CD)

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COMPASSIONATE ACTION

The term  ¢â‚¬Å“liberation theology ¢â‚¬  has a negative connotation in the minds of some people. It sounds like something heretical, leftist, or Marxist, and certainly not  ¢â‚¬Å“Biblical. ¢â‚¬  In fact, it is at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition and marks its very beginning. It is amazing that so much of Christianity has been able to avoid the absolutely obvious for so long. It probably reveals that the ego has been in charge, not the soul.

We see the beginnings of liberation theology as early as 1,200 years before Christ with the Exodus experience of the Jewish people. Something divine happened that allowed an enslaved group of Semitic people in Egypt to experience many levels of liberation from slavery to a  ¢â‚¬Å“promised land. ¢â‚¬  The Exodus became the standing Biblical metaphor for both an external journey and an inner journey. If the inner journey does not match and mirror the outer journey, we have no true liberation at all. Most groups choose just one side or the other; very few choose both. That is what liberation theology is honest enough to point out.

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Moses is the historical character at the heart of the experience of any  ¢â‚¬Å“exodus ¢â‚¬  and the spirituality that goes with that experience (Exodus 3:1-15). This is the primal historical template and pattern given us at the beginning of the Bible. This is what God is forever doing.

A murderer on the run, Moses has a  ¢â‚¬Å“burning bush ¢â‚¬  experience out in the wild. It has nothing to do with formalized religion. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s a nature experience and also follows an experience of human failure, which first religious moments often are. The voice he hears from the bush immediately tells him to confront the Pharaoh and tell him to let his slaves go!

So first you have the religious experience, symbolized by the burning bush ¢â‚¬”and that God experience immediately has  social, economic, and political implications!  That is what liberation theology is saying ¢â‚¬” ¢â‚¬Å“contemplation ¢â‚¬  and action, spirituality and the social order, religion and politics are forever connected and can not and must not be separated. This creative tension is the story line of much of the rest of the Bible.

~~

Very early in the Judeo-Christian tradition there is a split between theExodus  tradition, which I believe is the mainline tradition of full liberation, and the parallel tradition that soon develops in  Leviticus  and  Numbers,which is called the  ¢â‚¬Å“priestly ¢â‚¬  tradition. If you read these two books, they have none of the drama of  Exodus, but reflect what happens when the priests take over and try to organize and control the inner experience and avoid the outer implications.

About eight centuries before Christ we finally meet the spiritual geniuses ¢â‚¬”the Jewish prophets ¢â‚¬”who try to link the two traditions: inner God experience and outer work for justice and truth. We continue to have halfhearted divisions ¢â‚¬”in the form of Right or Left, liberal or conservative, establishment or disestablishment, contemplative or activist ¢â‚¬”down to our time. They really do need one another, but in most of history, as in Judaism, the priestly tradition has clearly been in control. The prophets are always marginalized. We always need the prophets to balance out the priests, but they are not just pushed off to the side, but usually killed, according to Jesus (Matthew 23:29-31). Which is exactly what happens to Jesus himself, with the full cooperation of the priestly class. How can we miss this message?

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The terms  ¢â‚¬Å“Right ¢â‚¬  and  ¢â‚¬Å“Left ¢â‚¬  came from the  Estates General  in France. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s interesting that we now use them as our basic political terms. On the left sat the ordinary people, on the right sat the nobility and the clergy! (What were the clergy doing over there?!) I think you see the pattern, despite Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ clear and consistent identification with the outsiders and the poor.

In most of history you will invariably have these two movements, because we didn ¢â‚¬â„¢t have the phenomenon of the middle class until very recently. The vast majority of people in all of human history have been poor, as it was in Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ time. Yet the people who wrote books and controlled the institutions have almost always been on the Right. Much of history has been read and interpreted from the side of the  ¢â‚¬Å“winners, ¢â‚¬  or the Right, except for the unique revelation called the Bible, which is an alternative history from the side of the enslaved, the dominated, the oppressed, and the poor, leading up to the totally scapegoated Jesus himself. He tries to put inside and outside together, but is killed by those entrapped and privileged on the inside.

~~

When you truly know things in a spiritual way, the indicator is that you also know that you do  not  know! Truly holy people are always humble and forever beginners. If you are not humble, one knows you have not experienced the Holy One which utterly humbles you. In any religion, if you don ¢â‚¬â„¢t see humility, you know it ¢â‚¬â„¢s not on the right course.

The prophets are always calling Israel to such humility. They represent the self-critical and honest part of religion.  Without such a prophetic element, religion is almost always self-serving and idolatrous. True prophets, however, please nobody, neither Left nor Right ¢â‚¬”which of themselves are mere ideologies, and two places for the ego to hide. According to Jesus, the  ¢â‚¬Å“whole world will hate you ¢â‚¬  if you follow him (Matthew 10:22). When you are truly prophetic, both the Left and the Right will invariably mistrust and attack you. The Gospel position is much larger than either of these ideologies, and is often a lonely position.

Adapted from the  CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action
(Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer  (CD,  DVD,  MP3)

We see in the Gospels that it ¢â‚¬â„¢s the lame, the poor, the blind, the prostitutes, the drunkards, the tax collectors, the sinners, the outsiders, and the foreigners who tend to follow Jesus. It is those on the inside and the top who crucify him (elders, chief priests, teachers of the Law, and Roman occupiers). Shouldn’t that tell us something really important about perspective? Every viewpoint is a view from a point, and we need to critique our own perspective and privilege if we are to see truth.

Many fail to appreciate liberation theology because of 1,700 years of interpreting the Scriptures from the perspective of the secure clergy class, rather than from the perspective of those on the bottom or the outside. After Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire (313 AD), we largely stopped reading the Bible from the side of the poor and the oppressed. We read it from the side of the comfortable and, I am sorry to say, from the priesthood, instead of from people hungry for justice and truth. Now you know why Jesus said,  ¢â‚¬Å“I did not come for the healthy but for the sick ¢â‚¬  (Mark 2:17).

Adapted from the  CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action
(Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer  (CD,  DVD,  MP3)

It seems to me that it is a minority that ever gets the true and full Gospel. We just keep worshiping Jesus and arguing over the exact right way to do it. The amazing thing is that Jesus never once says,  ¢â‚¬Å“worship me! ¢â‚¬ , but he often says,  ¢â‚¬Å“follow me ¢â‚¬  (e.g.,  Matthew 4:19).

Christianity is  a lifestyle ¢â‚¬”a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, inclusive, and loving. We made it, however, into a formal established religion, in order to avoid the demanding lifestyle itself. One could then be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain at the highest levels of the church, and still easily believe that Jesus is  ¢â‚¬Å“my personal Lord and Savior. ¢â‚¬  The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.

Adapted from the CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action (Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer: Help me be compassionate in my action.

~~

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER

The contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular world view, because it really is an altogether different mind. The ego cannot rely upon it to do its bidding.

The calculating mind of the  ¢â‚¬Å“small self ¢â‚¬  reads everything in terms of personal advantage, short-term effort, and  ¢â‚¬Å“What’s in it for me? ¢â‚¬  ¢â‚¬” ¢â‚¬Å“How will I look? ¢â‚¬ ,  ¢â‚¬Å“How can I look good? ¢â‚¬ . It cannot see things in a new, imaginative, or disinterested way. It is still  ¢â‚¬Å“all about me. ¢â‚¬ 

All the great religions have taught that we need an utterly different perspective, a different vantage point, and a different starting point to see things as God sees them. It cannot start with  ¢â‚¬Å“me, ¢â‚¬  or it will end with  ¢â‚¬Å“me, ¢â‚¬  too.

~~

 ¢â‚¬Å“Contemplation, ¢â‚¬  or meditation as it is called by some, became more popular in contemporary times through the writings of Thomas Merton. The word most Christians were more familiar with was simply  ¢â‚¬Å“prayer. ¢â‚¬ 

Unfortunately, in the West prayer became something functional; something you did to achieve a desired effect ¢â‚¬”which puts you back in charge. As soon as you make prayer a way to get something, you ¢â‚¬â„¢re not moving into a new state of consciousness. It’s the same old consciousness.  ¢â‚¬Å“How can I get God to do what I want God to do? ¢â‚¬  It’s the egocentric self still deciding what it needs, but now often trying to manipulate God too.

This is one reason religion is in such desperate straits today. It really isn’t transforming people, but leaving them in their separated and egocentric state. It pulls God inside of my agenda instead of letting God pull me inside of his. This is still the small old self at work. What the Gospel is talking about is the emergence of  ¢â‚¬Å“a whole new creation ¢â‚¬  and a  ¢â‚¬Å“new mind, ¢â‚¬  as Paul variously calls it.

~~

In order to understand contemplation and the contemplative mind, we need to talk about our true self in God. This is the only self that has ever existed, and the only self that contemplates reality in its first and final big frame. The small, false self can only  ¢â‚¬Å“calculate ¢â‚¬  ¢â‚¬”with itself as the reference point. As if it were! The work of religion is to get you to know who you are and always have been:  ¢â‚¬Å“hidden with Christ in God ¢â‚¬  (Colossians 3:3). From this vantage point of love and union alone is spiritual knowing possible.

You came from God and will return to God. Your deepest DNA is divine. You are already a spiritual being ¢â‚¬”the much more difficult question is how to be human! That is what we have yet to learn. I believe that’s why Jesus came as a human being: he didn’t come to teach us how to go to heaven but to teach us how to be simple, loving human beings here on this earth. Some  ¢â‚¬Å“non-religious ¢â‚¬  people do this much better than us  ¢â‚¬Å“spiritual ¢â‚¬  folks.

~~

The  ¢â‚¬Å“false self ¢â‚¬  settles for ritualism and legalism, petty moralisms instead of true mysticism (which is available to all once one does not make it a contest or an achievement). The true self is not about requirements, it ¢â‚¬â„¢s about relationship ¢â‚¬”the quality and capacity for relatedness.  This lays the foundation for contemplation. The contemplative does not need to be  ¢â‚¬Å“right, ¢â‚¬  but only in relationship.

The false self will say its prayers but the true self IS a prayer. This is why Paul can say  ¢â‚¬Å“pray always ¢â‚¬   (Ephesians 6:18). We pray always whenever we live in conscious union with God. Then every action is a prayer no matter how secular, mundane, or ordinary it might appear. I would more admire someone cleaning the house in loving union than a priest saying Mass outside of union.

~~

I think some experience of God is necessary for mental and emotional health. You basically don’t belong in the universe until you are connected to the center and the whole, and a word for that is  ¢â‚¬Å“God. ¢â‚¬  When you live in the false self you are  ¢â‚¬Å“eccentric, ¢â‚¬  or off-center. You’re trying to make something the Center that is not the center ¢â‚¬”yourself or anything else. It will never work. Thus the ONLY real sin is idolatry ¢â‚¬”making something God that is not God!

I would call the false self a relative identity. I would call the true self your absolute identity. The relative identity is not of itself bad or wrong. It’s simply not the true self! It cannot get you where you finally need and want to go.

~~

The word  ¢â‚¬Å“presence ¢â‚¬  is a relational term. The real Presence is offered in the Eucharist, but if we don ¢â‚¬â„¢t know how to be present to the Presence there is no presence; certainly no  ¢â‚¬Å“real ¢â‚¬  presence that can change you. What we ¢â‚¬â„¢re doing in contemplation is learning, quite simply, how to be present. We’re learning how to access what is ¢â‚¬”and how to offer ourselves to it.

The reason most people run from contemplative prayer is because what comes up first is usually the garbage. That ¢â‚¬â„¢s why most teachers of contemplation insist on at least a 20-minute sit to begin with, so that you have a chance to separate from the garbage ¢â‚¬”a chance to move to a level beneath your thoughts to the level of pure being, the level of what we call pure consciousness or the prayer of quiet.

~~

Contemplation is meeting reality in its most simple and immediate form. The only way you can do this is by getting rid of your usual mental grid ¢â‚¬”your practiced ways of judging, critiquing, and computing everything. That’s why the mind has to be placed to the side. It just operates in its habitual neural grooves, and nothing really new can get in. God, who is always new and mysterious, has very little chance of breaking through.

Finally,  ¢â‚¬Å“you, ¢â‚¬  that is, your small mental ego, is out of the way! Once you experience this more oceanic awareness, you ¢â‚¬â„¢ll never finally be satisfied with anything less. You now have  ¢â‚¬Å“the mind of Christ ¢â‚¬  (1 Corinthians 2:16), as presumptuous, arrogant, and scary as that might sound.

Adapted from the CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action

(Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer (CD, DVD, MP3).

Prayer:  Clear my mind for your truth.

~~

THE REIGN OF GOD

Jesus announced, lived, and inaugurated for history a new social order based on grace and not on merit. He called it the Reign or Kingdom of God. It is without doubt his most common message and metaphor, so it must be very important. Maybe we would just call the Kingdom  ¢â‚¬Å“the final and big picture. ¢â‚¬  In the end, all will be found and revealed inside of the love and mercy of God ¢â‚¬”for everyone without exception ¢â‚¬”and for all of creation.

This now and not-yet Reign of God is the foundation for our personal hope and our cosmic optimism, but it is also the source of our deepest alienation from the world as it is, which is all based on merit badges, and various forms of win or lose (at which almost all lose!). Living in this Big Picture of God will leave you in many ways as a  ¢â‚¬Å“stranger and pilgrim ¢â‚¬  on this earth (Hebrews 11:13), I am afraid. Our task is to learn how to live lovingly in both worlds until they become one world ¢â‚¬”at least in us.

Adapted from Jesus’ Plan for a New World, pp. 3-4

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The True Sacred, which is synonymous with the Reign of God, always reveals that:

• God is One, timeless, and inclusive of all.
• God is above any national or group ownership or personal manipulation.
• God is available as a free gift and not through sacrificing things.
• God needs no victims and creates no victims. Jesus ends religion as sacrifice  ¢â‚¬Å“once and for all ¢â‚¬  (Hebrews 7:27,  10:10) by revealing the tragic effects of scapegoating, by what happened to him on the cross.

Jesus personifies this type of God and speaks defiantly in defense of such a God. Nowhere is he more succinct than when he quotes the Prophet Hosea,  ¢â‚¬Å“Go and learn the meaning of the words:  ¢â‚¬ËœMercy is what pleases me, not sacrifices ¢â‚¬â„¢ ¢â‚¬   (Matthew 9:13).

Adapted from  Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, p. 5

~~

The Reign of God has much more to do with  right relationship  than with being privately right. It has much more to do with  being connected  than with being personally correct. Can you feel the total difference between these two? The one encourages an impossible notion of individual salvation and creates individualists, the other introduces cosmic salvation and creates humans, citizens, caretakers, neighbors, and saints.

The Reign of God is not about a world without pain or mystery but simply a world where we can be in real contact with all things, where we can be inherently connected and in communion with what Mary Oliver calls  ¢â‚¬Å“the daily presentations. ¢â‚¬  Then the whole world is our temple and your church. Then we can realistically hope for both  ¢â‚¬Å“a new heaven and a new earth ¢â‚¬  (Revelation 21:1) as the Bible finally promises.

Jesus is a consummate Jew and he was quite aware from his own Scriptures that God was saving history itself, and all of us in its sweep ¢â‚¬”and all of us in spite of ourselves, just as he always loved Israel in spite of its constant infidelities. Salvation for the Jews was a social and historical notion, not this much later regression into  ¢â‚¬Å“How can I personally go to heaven? ¢â‚¬  This gross individualism pretty much defeated any real notion of God ¢â‚¬â„¢s victory and  ¢â‚¬Å“reign. ¢â‚¬ 

Adapted from  Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, p. 11

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Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ notion of the Kingdom is a different understanding of personal freedom than that of most religious and secular leaders today. We think of freedom as not having to do what we don ¢â‚¬â„¢t want to do, but divine freedom is the capacity to be fully who we already are, to develop our inherent and true nature in God, as much as possible ¢â‚¬”really wanting to do what we know we have to do.  Only God can create that freedom inside of us. A mustard seed, yeast, and light, that grow from within, are some of Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ central metaphors for the Reign of God.

Secular freedom only creates individualists, and private freedom, but not a society. It never gets around to  the common good,  which is a central principle of Catholic social teaching and the Gospel, which demands from you and demands  for  others. Then you become who you most deeply and truly are, a member of a family, a neighborhood, a society, and a planet. If you are trying to  ¢â‚¬Å“go to heaven ¢â‚¬  alone or on your own merits, you are preparing for a place other than heaven.

Adapted from  Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, p. 14

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There are always two worlds. The world as it operates is largely about power; the world as it should be, or  ¢â‚¬Å“the Reign of God, ¢â‚¬  is always about love. How can you live in both worlds at the same time? As you allow yourself to loosen your grip on the first, you will gradually see the inadequacy and weakness of power as domination or control. You will then tighten your grip around the second, which is the ever purer motivation of love for others instead of yourself.

Any exercise of power apart from love leads to brutality and evil; but love that does not lead people to a whole new kind of power is mere sentimentality and emotion. I must admit, it is rare to find people who hold both together in perfect balance ¢â‚¬”who have found their inner divine power and use it for others.

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 ¢â‚¬Å“Thy kingdom come, ¢â‚¬  as we say in the Our Father, clearly means that the Kingdom is something that enters into this world or, as Jesus puts it elsewhere, the Reign of God  ¢â‚¬Å“is close at hand ¢â‚¬  (Mark 1:15,  Matthew 4:17). Don ¢â‚¬â„¢t project it onto a later world. The Kingdom of God breaks into this world whenever people act as God would act.

When that can happen in terms of structures or groups, then you have a taste of the Kingdom descending to earth. To be realistic and honest, this seldom happens with more than  ¢â‚¬Å“two or three ¢â‚¬  rightly gathered (Matthew 18:20). It is the critical mass, or  ¢â‚¬Å“leaven ¢â‚¬  and  ¢â‚¬Å“salt ¢â‚¬  who can and will change the world. This is Jesus’ basic and first image of church, yet it is found only in Matthew ¢â‚¬â„¢s Gospel. It is sad to say, but institutions as institutions can seldom operate at a Kingdom level, except on paper and by occasional courageous decisions. They can also educate, protect, and promote enlightened individuals, as many churches and organizations often do.

Adapted from  Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, p. 110

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I hope you ¢â‚¬â„¢ve met at least one  ¢â‚¬Å“Kingdom person ¢â‚¬  in your life. They are surrendered and trustful people. You sense that their life is okay at the core. They have given control to Another and are at peace, which paradoxically allows them to calmly be in control. A Kingdom person lives for what matters, for life in its deepest and lasting sense. There ¢â‚¬â„¢s a kind of gentle absolutism about their lifestyle, an inner freedom to do what they have to do ¢â‚¬”joyfully. Kingdom people feel like grounded yet spacious people at the same time, the best of the conservative and the best of the progressive types at the same time.

Kingdom people are anchored by their awareness of God ¢â‚¬â„¢s love deep within them and deep within everyone else, too. They happily live on a level playing field, where even God has come to  ¢â‚¬Å“pitch his tent ¢â‚¬  (the literal translation of  John 1:14).

Adapted from  Jesus’ Plan for a New World:
The Sermon on the Mount, pp. 110-111

Prayer: Your will be done.