There is a great danger lurking about—the combination of isolation and easy access to information. Combined, they seem to be undergirding a pernicious despair that seems rampant among folks I see. We seem to be moving farther and farther away from truly connecting with one another min deeply meaningful and, ultimately, healthy ways, despite our ongoing anxious anticipation of the number of Notifications or Inbox pm’s on our Face Book Home pages and our eager attunement to the incoming text ringtone from our smart phones. Not an observation new to me, but combine that with easy internet access to a universe of world religious beliefs and philosophies from most ancient to post-postmodern, and, to my observation across several years of facilitating spirituality group in both in and out patient behavioral health settings, we have a unique opportunity for deep and pernicious despair becoming well integrated deeply in the psyches of already hurting, grieving, traumatized people.


Obviously, anyone can believe anything they want but, it pains me deeply and challenges me as both a pastor and a clinician to hear over and over again things like this gross oversimplification: “I believe in Karma. I was Ivan the Terrible in a previous life.” Using this as a rational and well reasoned explanation for ones many sufferings and misdeeds in this life; all the while, negating any belief in potential for enlightenment within oneself or life. No dharma, no Buddha nature. Despair. No potential to transcend ones pain.

Or this: “I read my bible, I always have. It’s given me great comfort over the years. I just simply ran out of faith;” from someone who has not ever attended church and who has clung to their bible through decades of an abusive home life.

We are designed from community, for deep and meaningful connection. Both emerging (and some established) science and the historic faiths and philosophies tell us that. We are meaning making creatures in deep need and longing for our sister and brother meaning makers. With them we can find new hop and new meaning for our daily living.

They hold the other half or The Story, they hold the other half our story. St Paul said it, “…faith, hope and love.” Love is the greatest. We cannot love ourselves or anyone else deeply all alone.

We cannot end our suffering sitting alone under a tree, even a very lovely tree. Buddha only attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree after seeing great the suffering of others in the world and realizing that he too would one day suffer. After enlightenment he waded back out to into the suffering of others.

The Desert Mothers and Fathers of the early Christian tradition, lived and meditated alone, except for the time they spent in relationship with the monastic community of which they were a part.

We cannot heal from whatever ails us without deep meaningful connection to the faith, hope and love of those who hold and embody the other side of our rational and well reasoned explanations. Amen.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:19b, 20).


I am grateful for the presence of the Christ who has walked hand and hand with me as I have lived into a future which has seemed more and more uncertain, as I have learned, not only to live, but to enjoy a life that no one would choose.

Jesus and Paul were intimately familiar with the tender balance of the Lament Psalms, the gentle holding of the deepest throws of human grief and sorrow in intimate connection with our only true hope, witnessing the gracious Presence who does not hide from us in our times of trouble though it is often easier for us to trust the reality of our pain (Psalm 10:1). I am grateful for the Presence I could often see only by its dim reflection and the patient offering of the delicacies of a grace I am only poorly coming to comprehend. Amen.

To stand outside the community gathered. To be invited into the courtyard to be trusted with what no one dare whisper aloud is the privilege of the few of the faithful community of those who have stood across the centuries along the margins. The position of solitude yields faint whispers of the less popular truths —the greater value of the lesser portion. The margin come the center, hidden heart of faith, the Word given just a few bits of flesh. Amen.

It’s my 57th Birthday! I talked with my biological mother this year for the first time, shortly before Mother’s day. Now, for the first time in my life, I’m celebrating another year of living knowing the story of how and where I was conceived and the story of my birth… that against all the misguided 1950’s wisdom and rules about “what’s best for theses mother and their babies,” she insisted on holding me before surrendered me to the care of unmet strangers with the benediction, “I love you.”

In those first blessed and fragile movements of this life, where grief and love mingled in all tenderness and hope, the course of my living was set. This past half-century-plus, I’ve surrendered time and time, a thousand times again, to moments as heavy laden as my first. I have been called time and time again to learn that, faith and hope are all that abide, and that there is no stronger force, none in life or in death, greater than the arms of that same Love which, long awaited, held me for what could never be time enough, relinquishing me, in all sadness and uncertainty to all the precariousness that is living.

Faith, hope and that same Love have nurtured me into a heart of grace for the patients that we serve: My birthday wish for year 57 is prayer and meaningful action. Too many times, we must surrender lives struggling with addiction, mental and physical illnesses to a society’s system (healthcare, mental health, social services) were no real help is available. We cannot say things like, “go here and they will help you try to end your unrelenting physical or emotional pain, or with a place to live, or food to eat, money for car insurance or gas so you can know the simple human dignity of paying for those thing with money you earn from the job that small bridge of financial assistance afforded.” Or things like, “go here and you will be able to get the best possible treatment for your normal human reaction to growing up in a family where those who ought to have cared for you betrayed that sacred trust.”

A kind PCB friend said to me, not all that long ago, “you could have chosen to do horses or anything, but you chose this (things religious).” What she didn’t know is that, I could not, cannot, choose anything less than living the Love of my mother’s benediction of my life; to pray and try to live as if the Word has a bit of flesh on it and to pray and try to act Compassion’s love in the world…

Please spend some time today praying and acting for a more just, compassionate system for the least among us….

Prayer To Let Go So We Can Cling and Confide

Protestant Christians Celebrate Reformation Day, October 31.

“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”

Martin Luther. Luther’s Large Catechism, “Commentary on the First Commandment.”

On Halloween Day, 1517, Luther a young Augustinian Monk and scholar nailed 95 “Theses of Contention” to the door of the Cathedral at Wittenberg. This practice was the accepted way of engaging in scholarly debate in the days before books were widely available and the power of Guttenberg’s movable type was only just beginning to be felt. Seeking only to change some minds and a few practices, Luther changed the Western world.

May we come to prayer with faithful hearts in these days asking for the trust and courage to fall away from those old confidences whose seasons have passed but to which we cling. May we come with hearts seeking to know the hope and reassurance for our living which comes only by clinging to and confiding in That which we can only know in faith and trust and courage as we fall. Amen.

Prayer for Hope, Faith & Love

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our life time; therefore we must be saved by hope.

“Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

“Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.” Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

If, in the coming days, we begin to feel that what we are doing makes little difference, may we pray for hope and a heart that is content with the long view; when we have difficulty seeing the truth or beauty or good in our lives, may we pray for theses and for the faith to believe that we are always a part of something Bigger than that which we can see; and may we pray for the reassurance that in all we do we are never alone: may we pray to know that we are loved. Amen

Seek Others Seeking Faith

I am so very sorry that your dear son is gone from you and that he is not here to share the joys of this life with you and big his sister. And, gosh, how very sorry I am that, when you most needed the compassion and love that are at the core of Christ’s ministry, you ran across a Christian Vicar who so painfully, obviously has missed the point of Christ’s teachings and the faith.

There are a lot of boring (unless you like that kind of stuff) theological and biblical reasons why many Christians have strong reactions to the idea of Reincarnation; most of them having to do the soul going heaven to live with Jesus after death. I am also aware however, that there are many doctrines surrounding Reincarnation offered by Hinduism, Buddhism and other ancient Eastern and more contemporary spiritualities. And too, there are many ways that Christians understand both Reincarnation and the teaching of their own Christian traditions about life after death. The short answer is: no one really knows what happens after we are dead.

Though I am the kind of person that likes this boring kind of stuff, I find that on this grief journey of mine I am placing greater importance not on the thought that I will one day be reunited with Elizabeth, Claire and Alice, though I certainly hope and look forward to that, but on how I allow my grief of them to gentle into greater compassion and love as I seek and pray for healing. As I face the sorrow and pain of the loss of my Dear Little Ones, how I survive these griefs which seem unbearable reminds me that somewhere in the universe is a power greater and more powerful than they and that I survive only by its mercy and any growth I obtain is by its grace.

For me that power is the love and compassion of my crucified and risen Lord, but as I understand Buddhism--poorly perhaps, it could also be in my meditation, especially in my grief, on the Dharma or compassion of creation for myself and all living things. As I understand Hinduism--again I am sure quite poorly, I might be seeking, in my meditation on my grief, to know the truths my higher self might want me to know about this life on my grief journey.

I personally encourage you to seek out others who share your faith and who seek, as do you in its meaning, a gentling of life’s deep pains and sorrows.

My reading of Christian scripture and my knowing of Christ in prayer is of someone who would offer you compassion in your grieving, mercy a mid your pain and an offer of rest and comfort to you, no matter what you believed, in the name of the One he called by the Aramaic equivalent of Daddy.

Wishing you days of compassion, mercy, rest and comfort.