All Mercy, All the Time

In his merciful way, our good Lord always leads us as long as we inhabit this impermanent life. I saw no anger other than humanity’s, and God forgives us that. . . . The ground of mercy is love, and the ministry of mercy is to preserve us in love. For mercy works in love, with generosity, compassion, and sweetness. And mercy labors within us, preserving us, and converting everything to the good. Through love, mercy allows us to fail, at least in part, and to the extent that we fail, we fall. To the extent that we fall, we die. For we die without fail when we no longer see and feel God, who is life. Our failure is frightful, our falling inglorious, our dying wretched. Yet never does love’s compassionate eye turn from us, nor does the operation of mercy cease.
(Julian of Norwich, All Will Be Well: 30 Days with a Great Spiritual Teacher, Ave Maria Press)


Last Thursday, May 8, was the Feast Day of Julian of Norwich. I’ve long been drawn to Julian for several reasons, not the least of which is my close friend, Peter of Norwich, who grew up in Julian’s English city. She is most famous – besides residing in the city of Peter of Norwich – as the recipient and conveyor of 14 visions, given to her by God, and called “shewings” (showings or revelations).

The showings are known as “revelations of Divine love.” And so they are. This year, I have been struck most by Julian’s capacity to see deep into the heart of God, and to find there all love, all the time. She writes about God’s mercy and compassion, God’s tenderness and kinship with us. In fact, she says at one point that if there is any anger or malice present, they come from humans. God is all mercy.

It is important to note that she did this in an era of plague and death, war among nations, and sharp divisions within the Church. In other words, during a season in which most people were drawing lines, labeling some as comrades and others as enemies, and attributing the devastation of the days to God’s wrathful vengeance, Julian saw that God was only mercy, tenderness, and sweetness.

Further, Julian reports these things in a way that few male mystics can, or do. Historically, male writers made magisterial pronouncements about God, drew lines to delineate the outsiders from the insiders, speaking of holiness, godliness, and righteousness as something earned, a status symbol of the moral life.

[Francis of Assisi is the notable male exception to this bias. He is more closely associated with the female mystics in his heart of tender compassion. It is evidenced, not only in his relationships with people, but also in his connection to the created world. He tenderly accepted what seemed outrageous, even vile, in the created world (the wolf at Gubbio, for example, and the leper on the road).]

Julian didn’t witness to a God who made decrees or a God who was busily angry with humans for their failings.


This is the great act intended by our Lord God from eternity, treasured and hidden in his heart, known only to himself. By this act he will make all things well. For just as the blessed Trinity made everything from nothing,
just so will the same Trinity make everything wrong to be well. And I was overcome with wonder at this: our faith is grounded in God’s word, and whoever believes in that word will be preserved completely. Now holy doctrine tells us that many creatures will be damned. And if this is true, it seemed impossible to me that everything should be well, as our Lord had shown me by revelation. And in regard to this I had no other answer but this: “What is impossible for you is not impossible for me. I shall honor my word in everything, and I shall make everything well.” So I was instructed by God’s grace to hold steadfastly to the faith, and, at the same time, to believe firmly that everything will turn out for the best. For this is the great action that our Lord will accomplish, and in this action he will keep his word entirely. And what is not well shall be made well.
(Julian of Norwich, All Will Be Well: 30 Days with a Great Spiritual Teacher, Ave Maria Press)


Remarkable! This one woman, much given to sickness, who lived in a small room at the base of the church in Norwich, stood against the official doctrine of the entire Church, speaking for a way of love, mercy, and tenderness, rather than judgment, self-vindication, and works righteousness.

In modern times, I hear echoes of Julian in someone like Greg Boyle, the Jesuit priest who has invested his life in inner city Los Angeles among street gangs. Boyle doesn’t carry a message of judgment to the homies who are gangbanging in the barrios of LA. He simply lives among them in tenderness and kinship, mercifully offering second, ninth, and twenty-seventh chances to those who feel like failures.

This is the kind of mercy and tenderness to which I aspire. It’s both what I want to convey from my life, and it’s what I want to experience within myself. But as my Mercy Street friend Gregg says often, “If this is what I so desperately want, why do I continually choose to live in some other reality, governed by fear and anger, judgment and worthiness?”


We are blessed through mercy and grace. . . . So Jesus is our mother. We owe him our very being for this motherhood and all the delightful protection that follows after. For as surely as God is father, so surely is God also mother. He shows this in all, but particularly in these sweet words: “I am the strength and goodness of the father, I am the wisdom of the mother, I am light, grace, and lovely love, I am Trinity and unity; I am the innate goodness of every creature, I draw you toward love, I endow you with longing; I am the endless completion of all desiring.” So Jesus is our true mother by nature because he has created us. He is also our mother by grace, for he took our created nature upon himself. All the lovely deeds and tender services of motherhood may be seen in him.
(Julian of Norwich, All Will Be Well: 30 Days with a Great Spiritual Teacher, Ave Maria Press)

I don't think I know me . . .

A friend commended a folk rock group called Eddie from Ohio. I have a couple of their cd's, and am especially drawn to their song, "I don't think I know me."

The song rehearses a litany of ways the songwriter lives a "responsible" and upstanding life . . . faithfulness to dog and spouse . . . paying utilities (mostly on time) . . . mowing the lawn on Saturdays . . . believing in Jesus' words . . . saying prayers . . . attending the church on the hill . . . looking both ways at stop-signs . . . going on family picnics.

But then, with tongue planted in cheek, the writer records some very surprising things he has done . . . stealing a car for a joyride . . . taking a neighbor's Harley . . . driving the Harley through the potluck line at the family picnic . . . you get the drift.

The chorus, then, is the repetition of this refrain:

I don't think I know me
as well as I thought I did
I don't think I know me
like I thought I did

Couldn't any of us sing this refrain? Don't we all live under some kind of illusion about the kind of person we are?

You may live out of an interior script that says, "I'm terrible. I'm a failure. I'm a moral wreck. My life is a disaster. I'm a worm . . . a wretched sinner." And then you tell yourself -- and others -- stories that support this version of yourself. Sometimes, we even find that others want to confirm this view of us . . . family members, the Church, the educational system. All you know of yourself is that you are a mess.

Or you may live more out of an interior conversation that says, "I am responsible. I do the right thing. I am loyal and hard-working. I am successful. I follow the rules." So you, too, find stories about yourself that support this particular version of your selfhood. You work hard to appear successful, moral, and law-abiding, whether you truly are or not.

Most of us, then, hold either our shadow/darkness or our light. When we notice something about ourselves that is counter to our familiar script, we push it aside, or bury it somewhere deep within us. We get shocked. Surprised. We can even act hatefully (or violently) toward others in the world who have the qualities we ourselves have denied or repressed.

In that sense, wherever we are on the spectrum, we can say, "I don't think I know me as well as I thought I did." Some of our behavior will rise up to surprise us. We will scratch our heads and say, "Where did THAT thought come from?"

Blessed is the woman, blessed is the man, who can hold together both their light AND their darkness . . . who knows with a deep, inner knowing, that they are not fully either one ("either/or") but that they are both ("both/and").

I love the Eddie from Ohio song. It makes me smile. And reminds me that I never know myself as well as I think I do.

Psalm 24 . . . In Three Voices

Here are three ways of praying our lives with Psalm 24. The first is traditional, from the New Revised Standard Version.

The second is an honest rendering, offered by my friend Peter Johns. Peter has called it his "Ozymandias Version" of the psalm.

I wrote the third after spending several days this week praying Psalm 24.

Psalm 24 (NRSV)
The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it,
the world, and those who live in it;
for he has founded it on the seas,
and established it on the rivers.

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
Those who have clean hands and pure hearts,
who do not lift up their souls to what is false,
and do not swear deceitfully.
They will receive blessing from the LORD,
and vindication from the God of their salvation.
Such is the company of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is the King of glory?
The LORD, strong and mighty,
the LORD, mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts,
he is the King of glory.



Psalm 24 (Johns)
This is my world, I own all that is within it.
For I have forged my own space and made my own way.

Who may enter my world, who may stand in my universe?
Only the one whom I decide is worthy.
The one who meets my standards and does not pollute my life.
The one who agrees with me and holds true to my beliefs.

I will bless them and encourage them.
I will fight for their right to be just like me.

I will close up my gates and barricade my doors.
No one shall enter except me.
I am king of my world and I am glorious.
I will cocoon myself in the castle of my life.
I am king of my world and I am glorious.



Psalm 24 (Webber)
Always and everywhere
You are
Every time is Yours
and every place
Earth, world, universe
People, every race and tribe
Four-footed beasts, winged’ fowl, fish
Mountains and marshes
oceans and plains
Always and everywhere
You are

So who is the one aware of Your presence?
Who acknowledges You in the world?
The one with open hands and a quiet heart
The one humbly rooted in the ground of their truth
The one who can hear You in utter silence
and see You in the darkest nights
The one who lays aside self-interest
and does not perpetuate the lie
that dollars rule
that bigger is better
that success is measurable
that others exist to serve me

Such a person lives in fullness of life
they bless others
and bless the world

Open wide, you door of my heart
Swing wide, you long-closed gates
Your Heart-lover
Your Soul-shaper
lays siege to you
silently awaiting an opening to enter

Who is this Heart-lover
Who is this Soul-shaper
who besieges me?
The Glorious One
my Beloved
my Friend

Open wide, you door of my heart
Swing wide, you long-closed gates
Your Heart-lover
Your Soul-shaper
lays siege to you
silently awaiting an opening to enter

Who is this Heart-lover
Who is this Soul-shaper
who besieges me?

Ahhh, my Beloved
my Friend
it’s You,
You at last.

Come in.

Holding On and Letting Go

John 12:24 - 26

"Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

I'm not often certain about how some words are translated from one language to another. For example, I only know enough Greek to be dangerous, so I can't vouch for the Greek word translated "hate" in this passage. I've heard all sorts of things about it from those who are determined to make good, common sense out of its difficulty -- and of course, doing so in a thoroughly American way.

So I don't know that where I went this morning is kosher or viable by academic standards. But for me, to "love my life" may mean to love the life I have so much that I hold onto it. I clutch it, grasp it, so "in love" with my life I am. And when that is my stance, I lose life. It means that I cannot step into another life, because I cannot let go of the one I have, the one I am in love with. To hold onto the life I have closes me down to any other possibility. It closes me down to anything else that may come at me. I have so set, so fixed my way on one thing in particular that I cannot respond to anything else that comes toward me or invites me. I cannot allow any other life into my imagination.

The mystics through the centuries have said to us that God is always waiting to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them. When I "love" my life as it is, I may actually lose the life God has dreamed for me.

To "love life" is to hold on and close down.

On the other hand, to "hate life" may imply the act of letting go and opening up. It is possible that I could be so enamored with the life I have so as to miss the life that is awaiting me. In that sense, I "hate" this life, preferring the life that is still unfolding in me. The life I now have does not satisfy me, so I stay open to what is yet to come. I am willing to step beyond where I have been.

Authentic growth and becoming implies that I have to stay open, that I have to be able to step onto paths I have not foreseen, that I have to recognize possibilities where I have seen none. When I hold onto life as it is, I short-circuit my own becoming. The tight clutching hides my becoming behind my current state. It deflects those things that would bring me to my truest self, the person God created me to be.

I wonder if this is the same "love/hate" language Jesus uses in Luke 14:26:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple."

Is Jesus saying that "loving" family (and even your own life) is holding on to them in an attached way that gives you no identity apart from them? . . . and that "hating" them means letter go or detaching from them, so that you come to some sense of who you are apart from them? Doesn't Jess recognize that we come to our most basic, core identity apart from what others say and think about us, even those closest to us? We live into our true self not because of the identity others give us, but out of our own lived-experience of who we are in God.

Relationships are important, and others can help us hear the notes of our particular song; however, no other person, no matter how close they are, can impart to us our most authentic self. In an ultimate sense, no one else can name you and validate you.

But this is the difficult work of letting go, the work of releasing the life to which we cling in order to receive the life of God. It entails the difficulty of trusting that the life for which I was created is still becoming within me. None of us are good at this, and we don't enjoy it.

This is our spiritual challenge that takes a lifetime . . . it is the challenge of "loving" and "hating," of holding on and letting go.

Two Images for Life and Prayer and Reality

This summer a large group of folks with whom I share life is reading Anthony De Mello’s The Way to Love. I’ve come across a couple of images in recent days that illumine the spiritual journey in some helpful ways. It occurs to me that they may be companion images that would help process De Mello’s ideas in The Way to Love.


First, we each respond and react to life and to life situations in ways we have learned over many years. Most of these responses live beneath the surface of our awareness. We react in certain ways and then assume, “This is just the way I am,” or “That is just the way life is.” In a sense, we have a whole storehouse of internal videos that play in our heads. These “videos,” which include our commentaries on people and events, also include attributing motives to others which may or may not be factual.

For instance, if we feel excluded, we may have a video that plays back other times we felt excluded, and the video may include a commentary that says things like, “That person has always excluded me,” and “I must be a bad person to be excluded like this,” and “She is a bad person because she has shunned me” . . . and on and on it goes.

For me, anyway, the impact of this internal video and commentary is spiraling. I spiral downward . . . downward . . . downward. The further I spiral, the more outrageous my commentary becomes. And all the while it seems very reasonable to me. If I don’t catch the “spiral” early and stop the internal video, I can be in a deep funk for hours and even for days. (“I needed to talk to him. . . . He didn’t answer my phone call. . . . He never answers my phone calls. . . . He must not like me. . . . I’ll never call him again. . . . Maybe I need to quit my job. . . . I should move to another city. . . . I’m such a failure. . . .”)

See? It makes no rational sense. If it weren’t so real, it would be humorous to see it written like this. But this is the internal noise with which each of us lives.

Every person has a whole host of these internal videos. In a sense, they have served to help us make sense of life. And for most of us, they have served as defense mechanisms, ways we have protected ourselves from the hurts and cruelties of life.

Most often, though, these videos are the cause of our upset, turmoil, fear, and defensiveness. We may say to another person, “You did this to me,” but the other person did not “cause” our specific reaction to their behavior. While their behavior may have been inappropriate, unhealthy, and even hurtful, our response to them is mostly a product of the internal video that plays within our minds in reaction to them.

The spiritual life invites our awareness of these internal videos that play within us, some of which are dear to us or seem hardwired within us. Awareness of the videos is the first movement toward detaching from them and from their compelling, addicting pull on us.


Here is another image.

Imagine you are in a valley, looking up at a mountain. You see the mountain and its shape, the trees and rocks that cover it, and the peak of the mountain. The mountain is really there. But take your gaze off the mountain for just a moment . . . then look at the mountain again. This time, you cannot see much of the mountain, because clouds have moved in to block your view. Your vision is obscured by the weather pattern.

If you didn’t know better, you could believe that the mountain no longer exists, or at least that the mountain’s pinnacle is no longer there. You could easily believe that the clouds are the main thing, that the weather is the only reality. After all, on this gaze, the weather is all you can see.

And in fact, the weather pattern is one part of the reality, but it also masks another more solid, more foundational reality . . . which is the mountain or the landscape behind and beneath the clouds.

If I am not careful, I can allow the clouds or the weather to determine my perception and shade how or what I see.

And the reality is that the weather will change. The clouds will move in and out, based on the weather.

You could liken the clouds and the changing weather to our human perception of reality, to the way we see life. To lean on the previous image, the clouds are something like an internal video. They are the immediate focus of our sight, what we most quickly perceive. If our gaze stops there, we will miss the more solid, foundational reality behind and beneath the clouds.

In a sense, the clouds, though beautiful, are a distraction. They obscure the mountain and its peak. The clouds come and go, but the mountain remains.

Spiritual vision, which is grown within us over time, is a function of prayer and meditation, the slow unmasking of the clouds and the gradual learning to trust what is behind the clouds. Quiet prayer, contemplative prayer, gives a foundation for connecting most deeply with God, grounding us in the Real, learning to recognize the distractions for what they are, and helping us to see beyond the scope of our physical vision.

When Is "Love" Love?

The daily reading for today is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The passage, Matthew 5:43 – 48, says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

It may be the most challenging passage in the Christian Scriptures. Those outside a Christian framework notice when professed Christians act in ways that are hateful or resentful or counter to the words of Jesus.

I lived many years in a religious climate that often said things like, “I love you, but I do not like you” . . . or said, “I love you,” but quietly implied, “I’d love you more if you’d change your behavior” . . . or that communicated, “I know I’m supposed to love people – even enemies and rivals and those who threaten me – but I’m human and I cannot do that, so I won’t even try.”

So basically I learned lip-service to love, while resigning myself to live far beneath the invitation to live a loving life.

Love loves what is without trying to change it or manipulate it. Love is not invested in making the object “love-able” (as if that could happen anyway!). Love is not dependent on a love-able object or person. Rather, love arises from the inner core, from the depths of the lover.

To paraphrase the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, love trusts what is . . . love stays with what is . . . love is not continually manipulating and controlling, trying to get someone else to conform to who I am or to what I think should be the shape of reality . . . love bears with what is . . . love does not try to align everything “right” in the outside world, thinking that will put things right in the inner world.

Love bears long with what is . . . love believes long with what is . . . love hopes long with what is . . . love endures long with what is.

I notice today that love leaves for no exceptions and no escape-clauses. Thus, love leaves no room to say, “I will love if” or “I will love when.” Love loves what is.

This kind of love is not based on contingency or what changes in the outer world, but on an inner state.

And for the people or groups that I don’t want to love, the ones I want to change before I give myself to them in love, there is no escape-clause, no exception, no path out of love. Even for enemies, rivals, those with whom I disagree, and those who threaten my security, Jesus says, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who do harm to you.”

If I excuse myself from loving others because I am a weak human being – and it is the human condition to be self-serving and self-protecting – and if because of my human condition I want to hang onto my resentments and want to go on hating enemies and wishing harm on those who are different than I am, then at least let me make that statement of my human weakness as a confession of my sinfulness and my waywardness. Let me say that I am a weak human being in all humility . . . and not as a statement of pride, not as a prelude to enjoin war and hatred and venom on my enemies.

In other words, if I fall back on my fallen human condition, then I had best do so in humility and repentance, not in pride, anger, and venom toward those who are different from me. My inability to love should be a confession of my sinfulness, not an excuse to perpetuate hatred.

“Loving enemies . . . praying for those who persecute you” . . . this is a way counter to basic human learning, but this is the radical way of love, the radical way walked by Jesus, the Trailblazer. This is the new framework, the new construct – called the Kingdom of God – to which I (and you) am invited, in Jesus’ name.

Getting beneath the Resistance

I've spent a lot of time the last few days noticing my own interior reaction to a couple of situations "out there."

In one situation, I've been directly in the line of fire. I've been caught in the crossfire of someone else's issues.

The other situation doesn't directly impact me, yet, I have taken on its weight and felt personally attacked . . . even though the persons actually involved have no idea who I am. Strange, huh?

Both issues, and others of a more mundane, day-by-day nature, have invited me to pay attention to my own interior landscape. Specifically, I'm trying to ask hard questions of myself about my own resistance in these situations. What has stirred up within me? Why have I resisted so vigorously in these very different settings?

Frankly, this is interior work I don't like to do. And I don't always come to it quickly. Often, I'll swim around in angry thoughts for several days before I begin to track my own emotional and spiritual state back to my own inner framework.

That's not to say that what goes on in the outer world is "fair" or "right" . . . but then again, I'm not responsible for someone else's life, for the way they treat people, for the fences they build to exclude and alienate others. I am responsible for my own interior state.

In Matthew 5:20 - 26, Jesus invites persons to trace their behaviors and outer reactions back to the source within a person. In other words, what you are doing or feeling outwardly has some kind of interior component. An explosion of anger bursts out of some internal source. The feeling of resentment comes from some place within us. Our confrontation with the assertive co-worker or family member may arise from our own need to be right or to be perceived as knowledgeable.

Often in a class or workshop, I'll present a difficult idea or offer an image for the spiritual life that is unfamiliar or outside their normal "box" . . . something that challenges the life-framework of the class . . . then I'll invite the group to notice what they are resisting in this new idea.

Sometimes there are folks present who simply shut down. They say, in one way or another, "I'm not going to go there. I won't even consider that."

Some may stay with it, but start enumerating a "belief-system" on which they fall back, and which prevents them from seriously considering any new images or ideas.

There are others who get defensive, even combative. What I've said touches a little too closely to something within them, so they begin to discredit or demean what they have heard.

You'll find it to be a great gift in your own growth -- what I would call, your "becoming" -- to notice intentionally what you resist, what you object to. Try to get behind the accusations or blaming that you are tempted to throw at someone who seems to be causing your discomfort.

What is the "tender" spot within you that has been touched?

What is the "trigger" that this person or group has set off?

What is the "open wound" into which someone has just poured salt?

Track your resistance, if you can. Ask God to help you find its source.

I haven't finished with my interior work related to these issues in my own life. They are ongoing. But I want to notice, to see what is really there.

This "me," the "flawed, angry me" is the real me . . . and this is the "me" God loves.