If you want to keep peace in the community, judge yourself and no one else.

John Trithemius

Whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk in the same way as he walked.

1 John 2:6

One of the beautiful things about the church year and living out the liturgical seasons is that we travel the depth and breadth of the human experience together. Each season is filled with common experiences: joy (Christmas!), daily life (Ordinary Time!) and longing (Advent!). During Lent, we are invited to participate in a season of vulnerability. This is our collective opportunity to share our pain, struggles (including our temptation to judge), mistakes and fears with each other as siblings in Christ so that we know and be known, love and be loved, forgive and be forgiven.

Isn’t it interesting that a season built on repentance and self-reflection also provides us opportunities to distract ourselves by judging our neighbor’s piety? Without always realizing it, many of us judge the reverence (or perceived lack of reverence) of someone in our community: a sibling in Christ, a fellow church member or an acquaintance on Facebook. We look at an Ash Wednesday selfie and convey our disapproval at the public display of this holy marking by making sure we do not click the “like” button. We overhear someone during coffee hour mention their pre-Maundy Thursday pedicure appointment, and we do our best to keep our face politely benign while internally congratulating ourselves for bringing our humble, un-pedicured toes to the foot-washing liturgy. But judging how others travel this holy season does not help us walk as Jesus did. It is simply spiritual busywork that damages our relationship with the Body of Christ, building partitions between us and them, instead of opening ourselves up to what God might be revealing through them.

For Reflection
Is there an area of judgment you are struggling with this Lent? How could you replace these thoughts with an act of vulnerability?

Only God, its Creator, who is incomparably better and more worthy than it, can make the human Spirit content and happy.

Louis De Blois, Spiritual Doctrine

God also spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name ‘The Lord’ I did not make myself known to them.”

Exodus 6:2-3

I work with a lot of young people, from children and teens to new adults. I have struggled to find a way to articulate what I have experienced both personally and communally—that “only God, its Creator…can make the human Spirit content and happy”—in language that resonates with them but is not heavy-handed or manipulative. Many young people in our communities, even the ones active in youth groups or church camps, do not claim to “believe in God” in the way I might. To them, this language feels false and rigid. And yet, I cannot escape the Holy Spirit-given desire to pass my faith along, to share the Good News of God in Christ, to convey to them the unfailing, all-abiding gift of God’s love and presence that comforts, companions, convicts and calls me beyond what I could muster on my own. But the words I use seem to fall flat. You might have experienced that, too.

In Exodus, we see that Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, Leah and Jacob know God one way while Moses knows another. Perhaps then, there are still more ways and names available. And so last summer, I began to offer other names and words for the Holy to help bridge this understanding. Of all the options we tried, Love as a name for God has broken down the most barriers and assumptions, allowing us to come together as a community, to pray and praise, to lament and to wonder with greater shared understanding at the work of the Holy Spirit among and through us.

For Reflection
What if, this Lent, you replaced names for God with the name Love in your prayers and some scripture readings? For example, “Only Love, its Creator, who is incomparably better and more worthy than it, can make the human Spirit content and happy.” Could you share your experience, good or bad, with your community?

Together we shall try to find the exact answer to each one of the problems.

Abba Pachomius to housemaster Thomas

During Lent, we read of Jesus alone in the wilderness for forty days, hungry, tired and repeatedly tempted by the devil. Of all the trials in this passage, the one I find the most disturbing is the trial of aloneness. Some folks find inspiration in strong, stoic, loner Jesus, perhaps forgetting that he didn’t exactly thrive on his own. In Matthew and Mark’s accounts, angels come and tend to a worn-out man who very well may be on the edge of dehydration and starvation, not to mention mental anguish.

I don’t think it is an accident that immediately following this lone-ranger trip into the wilderness, Jesus begins to gather his team of disciples, his community of friends and co-ministers. And, except for a few moments of prayer, we never again see Jesus on his own; instead, he lives, ministers, dies and reveals his resurrection within the context of community and within the context of relationships.

We believe that our life-giving, loving, liberating God gives all, gathers all and draws us all toward a shared wholeness with one another. If we are to join God as co-creators in this work, then we must follow the learnings of Jesus, traveling even our most challenging roads with each other instead of trying to power through alone. We must lead with vulnerability and humility, ministering and being ministered to in all circumstances, removing aloneness, bearing each other’s burdens and sitting together in the ashes.

For Reflection
How do you feel about being vulnerable with others when you are walking a tough road? Do you ask for help?
How are you for listening and creating a safe space for others to be vulnerable with you? Do you make space for other people’s needs?
How can you learn from Jesus’s choices regarding community?

Do your work in peace.

John the Small

As Christians, we believe we are called to right the wrongs and sins of the past, even as we strive to repent of those sins and any we continue to commit. Sometimes, this call to right wrongs means advocacy and activism, such as bold and public protest. And sometimes we right wrongs one small, quiet seed at a time.

In March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a little project called the Good News Gardens movement was born. This project, hosted by The Episcopal Church’s evangelism and creation care departments, was born from a desire to help the church mobilize to share the Good News of God in Christ right where they were—at home.

A call went out, inviting individuals and churches to three commitments: 1) Plant more than you would under average circumstances to share the bounty. 2) Pray daily for a restored right relationship between the church and Creation, repenting of the harm humans have imposed upon the earth. 3) Proclaim the love of God through word and example by sharing your Good News Garden bounty and publicly sharing the stories of your commitments and gardens.

In the four and half years since this movement began, hundreds of Good News Gardens, chicken coops and beehives have sprouted, and people who had never before seen themselves as creation care activists began to find their place in righting the sins of the past. They discovered their unique work in our common struggle to become beloved community with all of creation.

For Reflection
Working to right systemic and generational wrongs such as climate change or racism can seem daunting. Like planting a Good News Garden herb box, what is one beginning step you could take?

Do not always be wanting everything to turn out as you think it should but rather as God pleases then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer.

Abba Nilus

Once, during a question-and-answer session, I was asked how to discern the will of God. I fumbled for a moment and then gave an answer that combined the Greatest Commandment (love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself), the Ten Commandments as given to Moses and a bit of WWJD bracelet theology, “What would Jesus do?” For good measure, I also threw in a smattering of the Baptismal Covenant and the Catechism from the Book of Common Prayer.

Had I been prepared, I would have said that I believe that the “will of God” is the flourishing of all of creation, what author and theologian Verna Dozier called “the Dream of God.” She wrote, “The dream of God is that all creation will live together in peace and harmony and fulfillment. All parts of creation. And the dream of God is that the good creation that God created—what the refrain says, ‘and God saw that it was good’—be restored.”

Of course, this understanding of the will of God doesn’t give us easy yes or no answers about what job we should seek, what liturgy rite we should use on Sunday mornings, or whether we should even have church services on Sunday mornings anymore. Instead, this approach to the will of God asks us to consider the flourishing—the peace, harmony and fulfillment—of every part of creation impacted by our decisions. We are not asked to consider what has always been done, what would be most popular, or even sometimes what it is that we want. Instead, we are asked to consider what will move the good of creation—in our homes, our land and climate, our churches and schools and our communities and workplaces—toward being restored to the dream of God.

For Reflection
This Lent, what question of discernment are you or your faith community wrestling with? How could your discernment process change if you consider the flourishing of all of creation as the guide instead of making people happy?

Holiness…has something to do with being who we are, claiming our truths, opening our hearts, giving ourselves to the other pure and unglossed.

Sr. Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict

Once, during a tough season, my therapist introduced me to a nervous system-regulating concept called the Window of Tolerance. As I understand it, the idea of the Window of Tolerance is very similar to what I call “margin” and what some folk call “emotional bandwidth.” It is a way to talk about our capacity for handling everyday challenges depending on the other stresses, trauma or trauma triggers we are experiencing. Sometimes, our windows are wide open, and we can handle all the big and little common challenges that come our way, and other times, as stress or trauma increases, our windows begin to close, the opening becoming more and more narrow.

During one of my own almost-closed-window seasons, I took a trip home to Arkansas, a trip during which I moved every few nights, visiting as many friends and family members as I could. A different level of intimacy happens when you cohabitate with loved ones, even for a few days. You see each other with bedhead, share bathrooms, argue over thermostats and stay up until it’s too late to suffer pretense. Here, in this closer-than-normal state, everyone crosses some sort of time and space continuum that results in a different kind of knowing—a knowing that offers the opportunity to see and accept each other exactly as we are, giving ourselves, unglossed, bedhead and all, to each other. It is a knowing that provides emotional safety, helping us open our windows of tolerance just a bit wider as we remember we are not alone and are loved as we are. This kind of emotional safety is part of what Episcopal Relief & Development is doing with their early childhood development programs, helping parents open their own windows of tolerance wider and wider to better provide the nurturing care children need.

For Reflection
What helps you give yourself to others, unglossed and honest, in who you are?