Mother Theresa

~

“Imagine you’re walking through a forest.

Full of tall strong beautiful trees

Resilient against the wind and the rain

Beneath the soil

They are tied together

Intertwined

Beneath the soil

There are millions of roots

Connected

And they are better together

And when I think of these trees

I think of us

And how we try to go through life by ourselves

The times we’ve felt broken

The times we felt left

The times we’ve been hurt by someone else

We proclaim this loud and bold

But unlike the trees

We decide

To go it alone

I marvel at the pain

We can too easily shut out

I marvel at the years

We choose to lose sight

Everyday we see people’s wounds

But we never see past them

We never see through

We pick up our pace

We pick up our stones

We cross the other side of the road

We say there is no more room at our table

We love at a distance

We are only fair weather friends to weather the storms of this life

Because loving people’s imperfections is inconvenient and messy

Yet there’s no line of Scripture where Jesus commands us to seek our ease

No line where He commands that we seek our self

We look at people’s broken behaviours

ignore,

belittle

condemn

judge,

Look for quick cures but we do not see

Every broken behaviour comes from an unmet need

Behind every broken is someone who looks like our saviour

We go it alone

But alone is not what we were created for

Alone is not what the church was created to be

Isn’t it the one who cares for the poor and needy

The little and the least

Whom Christ will say come sit at my table

Come sit with me

When I hear this my immediate thought is

Where can I find a hungry

thirsty

naked

foreign

sick

imprisoned

stranger

Whom I can relieve

But In my attempts to love the needy

I discover my own poverty.

In clothing the naked,

I discover am naked of all virtue

In visiting the prisoner

I realise I am imprisoned by prideful thoughts

In visiting the sick

I learn I am sick with selfish desires.

I am who Jesus is referring to

I am the Least of These

It is not that poor guy on the street corner

Or the lonely girl in the corner,

who are the least of these.

No, it is me.

I am the least of Christ’s brethren.

I may not be poor naked sick or imprisoned in body

But I am poor naked sick and imprisoned in soul

I am starved of loving kindness

parched by lack of forgiveness

Sick with the disease of lust

Naked of compassion

Imprisoned by habits of self-indulgence.

And if I am the least,

If I really know that I am the least

Then the least that I can do

Is not go it alone

The least I can do is share my bread

When I am the one who hungers for righteousness

The least I can do is share my cup

When I am the one thirsting for Life.

The least I can do is share my stuff

When my I am so poor of anything valuable

The least I can do is sit with the lonely

When I am too lonely of the Father’s house

I have no clothes to cover my own sinful nakedness,

I have no medicine to heal my own blindness

I have no key to liberate my imprisoned soul.

Yet

He calls us His temple

Because we are pieces that come together to build and hold up one another

He calls us His body

Because we are all different parts and no purpose or function is like the other

He calls us His vine

Because we are only living when we are connected to one another

In Him

Like the trees

We were made to stand tall here

We were made to be a part of this forest here

Standing firm against all odds

Creation representing creator God

But our own fears of being hurt

Casts a shadow on the reality

That the fissures I see in my neighbour

Are the same fractures that covers me.

Wrapped tight in this fear, we act out against love.

And when we act out against love

We act out against the One Who loves us. “

“God is love.”

1 in 3

3 in 1

A community

Just as love is meaningless without something to love.

So we are meaningless without our brother

When our brother is our life

Just as one God exists as three Persons in one,

So we were created to be wholly ourselves

When we are wholly one with the other

We don’t pray my father

But our father

We are His children

Our husband

We are his bride

Our shepherd

We are His sheep

He is the one who never leaves the one behind

No one is saved alone.

Everyone’s freedom is tangled

Everyone salvation tied up

Roots beneath the soil

So there can be no fences

There can be no hedges

No neat marked out lines

Of what is yours and what is mine

Because where my life ends

Yours can begin

When we need each other to survive

So let’s close the distance between you and me

Trade in our fear for curiosity

Tear down our fences to build bridges

Open our door for those who have no place of their own

Step into each other’s darkness with kindness as a burning lantern

Love others through their brokenness

Because our brokenness makes us more alike than unlike.

The powerless, the wounded and the weak

All those who cannot speak

Come sit beside me and tell me your story

Tell me of the million and one ways a soul can bruise

And I can tell the million and one ways a soul sees the Light.

The Light loves with abandon

His wounded hands love the wounded with no bounds.

Because we were created for one another

We belong to each other

No matter the weather

Like trees in a forest

Stronger

Taller

Together”

~

Our loneliness has caused us to be so needy and as a result we have become overly sensitive to any hints of someone trying to attack us. We are quick to lash out to anyone who seems to be rejecting us.

A product of our defenses and protective walls are the external structures to keep out strangers. We protect our properties with dogs, double lock the doors to our homes and have security guards in airports and train stations. Our society has titled those that who do not speak the same language, those who are unfamiliar, those who dress differently, as strangers. This is what has created fear and hostility within us. We will often find ourselves even calling our own family and friends as strangers. The communities we live in have become battlefields rather than places of peace and places to bring us closer.

Rather than living as persons who share in each other’s pains, laughers, and sorrows we have become individuals who move away from one another, ready to strike at any moment we feel threatened.

Henri Nouwen offers a solution to this hostility; hospitality.

To most people hospitality often means an open door for guests to come into their homes and make themselves comfortable.

Abraham’s hospitality is the most beautiful example of true hospitality. He welcomes graciously his three guests as he camps by the oak of Mamre. As a result of Abraham’s hospitality, something or Someone priceless was offered to him and his wife.

Both the Old and New Testament demonstrate this, when hospitality is offered a gift is offered to the host. To Abraham his gift was the revelation of the Lord Himself. When the widow of Zaraphath offered a place of refuge to Elijah, Elijah revealed himself as a man of God. On the road to Emmaus as the two friends offered the Stranger a space to walk with them, the Stranger revealed Himself as Christ the Risen Lord.

The key to each of these events is the ‘space’ that was offered by each host to their guest, a space that was created to allow the stranger to be transformed to a friend. The guests were welcomed as they were, not on the host’s terms but their own. Each stranger and guest has a great gift to offer us, to heal us and enrich our lives.

The German word for hospitality is Gastfreundschaft, which means friendship for the guest. The Dutch word for hospitality is Gastrijheid, meaning freedom of the guest. The beauty of illustrating both these definitions paints us a full picture. Hospitality is the place for friendship with no conditions and freedom without abandonment.

Every person we sit with, every person we encounter on a daily basis is our guest, a guest in our ‘personal space’, a guest to our thoughts, feelings and way of life.

We must create a space of emptiness for them to explore freely in our presence. We always feel the need to bombard our guests with our own ideas, opinions and feelings. Yet hospitality shows us something different. It shows us that the guest has the freedom to sing their own song, speak their own language of pain, joy and laughter, to dance their own dance and even leave freely having discovered this own calling.

You see, hospitality, is allowing our guest to find himself rather than be conformed to our ways, our thoughts and our lifestyle. We offer our guest that gift, ‘to find their own personal way of being human.’

We as the host must lay down our weapons and invite our guests to do the same.

Johannes Metz describes this in the most profound and enlightening way when we says:

We must forget ourselves in order to let the other person approach us. We must be able to open up to him to let his distinctive personality unfold— even though it often frightens and repels us. We often keep the other person down, and only see what we want to see; then we never really encounter the mysterious secret of his being, only ourselves. Failing to risk the poverty of encounter, we indulge in a new form of self-assertion and pay the price for it: loneliness. Because we did not risk the poverty of openness (Matthew 10: 39), our lives are not graced with the warm fullness of human existence. We are left with only a shadow of our real self.

We subconsciously say and do things every time we are with others trying to make them like ourselves, but we end up pushing them away. The fall of man led to this ‘sameness’, where we want everyone to be like ‘us’, the intolerance of distinction and particularity in every human being.

In the famous icon of the Trinity by the Russian iconographer, Andrei Rublev, the image of hospitality is portrayed. It was said of the hospitality of Abraham that it was three angels that came to him and Sarah. According to Tradition it was the Lord Himself. The three Persons illustrated in the icon have wings yet each carries a staff in their hand. The Divine joins our weary journey, revealing how we to must walk with our guests.

The center of the icon is the table, or the altar where the slain Lamb is. The story of the hospitality of Abraham is transformed to the hospitality of God to us. The Trinity is inviting us to sit and dine with them, at the Father’s house, to come disarmed and free to be yourself. I enter in with my unique personality and unique way of expressing myself to the sacred place of the Beloved. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit all with their arms open, invite me to come and be the completion of the circle around the table, to join in with their Divine and eternal Dance.

The table is prepared and the door is open. My host, my Father calls out to you and me, ‘Come.’

I challenge you this week to get together with one person in your community whom you have labelled as a stranger and see what gift they have to give to you.

And that’s okay.

I hear you.
The weary heart that is tired of all the voices telling you to just “get over it already.”
The disheartened heart that wonders if she can ever love anyone as much as she loved him.
The broken heart that mourns the loss of years of friendship.
And you, who keeps telling yourself “not this” – that it’s been way too long for you to still feel this way.
I hear you.

I guess as humans we naturally progress, and we always want to move on. We want to come to a place of learning how to breath like we used to, without that other person. Arriving at the place where we no longer care, at least that’s what we’re made to think. We’re told that to move on is to stop loving, stop caring, and enjoy that all ties have been severed.

The truth is, you cannot drain an ocean and when you have loved deeply, you cannot one day wake up and unlove. Whether a relationship or a friendship, when another’s name has been etched into our heart, our world is changed because of them, especially when we have discovered parts of ourselves through them.

Human connection is one of the most fundamental cravings and perhaps that is why it is unerasable. Perhaps that is why, like tree roots in barren soil, we take the mould of those whose lives are mingled with ours. Perhaps that is why even after countless months of silence, speaking to them again is like finding a place you forgot existed; like travelling for so long and realising they are home, with the same scent and laugh as they had all that time ago. A place with the front porch light on and an open door, greeted by a smile that still remembers exactly what to say and how to say it. A coffee cup with your name on it, coffee poured just the way you’ve always liked it. Home. Connection. Belonging. And it’s like you never left. And maybe the truth is, you haven’t. Because they are a place where you will always feel known and seen for all that you are.

And that’s okay.

Maybe moving on looks more like making space for the complexity of those “it shouldn’t be like this” torrents of missing them and learning that we don’t need to act on what we feel no matter how potent our desire or longing is. Sometimes every inch in our body bemoans and laments strong feelings for someone and having to silence it. So don’t silence it: write about it, pray about it, sing about it but know when it’s time to put the pen down and walk away. Peace is found when we allow the paradox to be just exactly as it is. Sometimes we expect total clarity with zero doubt, believing it to be an indication that we should stay in a relationship or go back when perfect resolution isn’t there. But that is deceptive, perfectionistic and not very self-compassionate. Then there are the times you realise love isn’t enough and you have to do hard things like leaving.

In the end remind yourself, that just because the space their love left is still hollow, it isn’t a sign that your lives must be intertwined. That means learning to let go of control and living in the tension – wanting but not having, missing but not making what you miss a reality. Our feelings should not surprise or scare us – they are but a glorious, devastating testament to the sheer power of connection.

So what does it mean to move on? I guess that looks different for everyone. For some people it may mean deleting their number or unfriending them on Facebook, for another person it may mean choosing to stop asking about them and for another it may mean going to the places that remind you most of them but making new memories there. Disconnecting the connection is a road overgrown and we must all learn how to travel down it.

Maybe moving on doesn’t look like waiting for change, hoping for that ‘I was wrong’ apology or the day they come back fighting for you. Maybe moving on will never just happen with time. Letting them go is letting go of more than memories and the photographs painted on the inside of your mind. It is letting go of the safety of arms you carved into your own, the sweet dispositions and wide-eyed gazes that only you knew the meaning of and the connection that echoed the largeness of life. Moving on is the daily choice to not carry that love, or loss or that person as your identity.

Maybe moving on isn’t about unloving, and moving on in this way can sound dangerous and feels like losing. But maybe moving on in this way is the bravest thing we can do: to not fear admitting how much love still remains, yet not pursuing that love anymore. Maybe moving on looks a lot like courage; believing that there is a greater cause to live by than our fears.

Maybe moving on is choosing not to shape the memories into our bones – not to live in the past, not to relive the past. Choosing ‘now.’ Choosing to surround yourself with those who can love you well, to remind you that all love is not lost because love is not that person.

And we’ll be okay.

“To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name,
and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone,
it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.”

– Nicole Krauss

Co-written with Sandra.

a) the fear of knowing yourself

b) the power that it gives the person we are being vulnerable with

Being vulnerable, whether that’s apologising or confessing a fear, mistake or insecurity requires a level of self-reflection and it is terrifying to go into your own darkness.  By sharing that with another person we’re taking a huge emotional risk by placing this sacred piece of our soul in their hand. A piece that they may not know how to handle with care. A piece they can either be compassionate and gentle with or that they can totally break into fragments if they react in disgust or rejection to our vulnerability. So vulnerability is hard because knowing my own darkness is agonising and also because taking someone deep into that darkness means they can confirm our worst fear – that we’re too dark to be loved or worthy of love. And that is a kind of pain that can leave the most damaging of scars.

But I think there is also another part that we miss which makes vulnerability seem so dangerous and uncertain.

When I take someone into that darkness and I reveal a part of me that is wounded or hurting,  an unspoken level of accountability is forged. Especially if I deeply love the person with whom I’m being vulnerable with, which is normally the case, because love requires that I do whatever it takes to be the best for them. So it follows that if I am ready to share a shortcoming, I am ready to try to move away from it.

Most of the time, vulnerability in any relationship will happen when we’re apologising, trying to explain our actions to someone or trying to help them understand why we reacted in a certain way. It usually means that the very thing we’re being vulnerable about probably affects the person that we are being vulnerable to.

By sharing this with them and releasing it into the open and into the light, I can no longer say I didn’t know about my own inadequacies. I can no longer turn a blind eye or ignore it. More importantly, I can no longer hide from it because now another soul can see. I am faced with one choice – confront it, fight it and grow.

I think that’s an incredibly scary thing about vulnerability – more than the emotional exposure, it’s the place that the emotional exposure thrusts us. And where is that? A place that means we must choose to be different and change.

Vulnerability is hard because “despair is more comforting than hope.” In the pit of my own darkness I am free to languish in hopelessness and sorrow, but once I am vulnerable, whether I’m received with compassion or not, I have no excuse to remain in my tattered fig leaves rather than animal skin. The fear is that: ‘What if it takes me too long to change? What if they give up on me?’ This is when the shame creeps in and like our forefather, Adam, we want to run.

Vulnerability creates accountability and that’s a huge responsibility to shoulder.

Perhaps that’s why vulnerability can be much easier in retrospect, sharing wounds that have been and gone. Being vulnerable in the moment, being vulnerable about the very brokenness that still breaks you so well, really is the biggest risk. And here is the kicker: ‘What if, by revealing my shame or weakness, so that I may be known,  I’m actually giving them the reason to walk away from me?’

Maybe this is why vulnerability feels like weakness; not just because of the exposure but because of the position of responsibility it puts us in where there is no more space for blaming others and pointing fingers. I must own the story of my weakness.

Vulnerability doesn’t guarantee anything. It isn’t a miracle in a bottle. Yes, it is ultimately a risk that can leave us naked and alone, but without it we have no connection.

So there will come a time, when we think of the past; every single time trust was offered to someone in vulnerability and was irretrievably broken, when we think of the present, the people in our life we are called to love as our own soul and when we think of the future, the kind of love we want our life to profess and we are compelled to ask: “is vulnerability worth it?”

What if staying and being vulnerable with those trusted souls in our lives breaks our plan? Everything comes at a cost, and though waters may rise and vulnerability may fail us along with those we trust, if love is the fulfillment of the law, then there is no cost that is wasted. Nothing is wasted for love – may our souls never forget to wear this God-breathed truth like second skin.

Click here to read part 1 of our vulnerability series!

Photo courtesy of  Zachary Snellenberger

“Courage (from latin: coeur): to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.”

Connection with others gives purpose and meaning to our lives. It’s how we were created. Even on a physiological level it’s how we’re wired neurobiologically.

Too many of us have been conditioned to respond, “Good. How are you?” to the disingenuous but seemingly obligatory question of “How are you doing?” as we pass by an acquaintance. Side note: I actually had someone say “Good. How are you?” in response to me trying to mix things up and say “Hey man! It’s great to see you!”

Too many of us long for deep connection and intimacy but don’t want to take the risk required to expose ourselves to build the mutual trust that makes relationships worthwhile.

Too many of us prefer to numb ourselves to grief, shame, and disappointment but don’t realize that we are numbing joy, gratitude, and happiness in the process.

Where are those who desire to imitate our Lord Jesus Christ

who willingly hung naked on a cross for the world to see
who willingly asked us to come and touch His wounds
who took a risk and gave Himself up knowing that some still might reject Him

You see, vulnerability is not weakness. It is the most courageous thing you can do. To let ourselves be seen.. to let ourselves be known. For it is only when we are fully known that we can be fully loved.

Let us love with our whole hearts even though there’s no guarantee. Let us lean into the discomfort of exposing ourselves knowing that to feel vulnerable means that you’re alive. When you ask the questions,

“Can I love this person this much?”
“Can I believe in this as passionately?”
“Can I be this fierce about this?”

do not give into fear but know that this is what it means to be alive.

Let us not try to make uncertain things certain; let us have the courage to be imperfect; let us not pretend but rather present people with the most authentic version of ourselves.

Let us dare greatly and learn from failure when it comes our way instead of avoiding it by not trying at all. This is the only way to grow.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Let us follow in the footsteps of our Maker:

God takes risks. The Incarnation of Jesus was perhaps the greatest risk ever taken… God shows His true greatness when He shows His ability to be weak. To condescend – to get down on our level – is the way God makes Himself open to us. And by doing so He makes Himself vulnerable (Fr Meletios Webber in Bread & Water, Wine & Oil).

By His most human action, an action which expresses all the weakness and impotence of our created nature, Christ shows Himself to be God. The profundity of this puts one at a loss for words (Fr John Behr in The Mystery of Christ: Life and Death). 

Vulnerability is not weakness. It is strength. It is power. It is love. It is truth.. and it is truth that sets us free.

“True love is borne out of true vulnerability, and true love is humble enough to be rejected, to be crucified, to be killed. However, we need to go through the cross to get to the Resurrection and we need to go through vulnerability, through the risk of being rejected if we hope to reach the sort of relationship and communion that come from being fully known and fully accepted.”

There is a question that I believe can transform our relationships, a question we need to all ask each other more:

How can I comfort you?

Above all, remember “if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves…Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.” (Philippians 2)

It is the comfort God has lavished on us that calls us to comfort others. Because of the pain we’ve felt, we no longer have to be strangers to the pain of another. When we choose to walk through the difficult times with Him by surrendering our ego and emptying ourself, we can receive the tenderness and gentleness of His healing presence. When we experience the power within His humility that invites, the power within His soft touch that had no fear in gently touching the blind or lame, nor writing carefully in the sand to help another; we will know how to comfort others out of our own ache.

Yet how often do I ask my loved ones how they need to be comforted? How often do I wonder how they receive comfort best? How often do I pay attention to learn which actions or words resonate deeply with them and which don’t? How often am I quick to comfort those in my life in the way I like to be comforted, neglecting that they are not me? Comfort has a language of its own and there is something undeniably powerful in a friend who knows how to speak the language of comfort that your soul understands, like feeling that everything you lost in the pain is coming back to you.

“The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.”  Stephen Covey

I still remember the day I found out that I had to withdraw from medical school. I remember wanting nothing more than to run from the torment of failure as I felt the foundation that I had built my dreams, hopes and even identity crumble. That was the same day I tasted comfort, like the Promised Land dripping of milk and honey in the midst of a wilderness, in a way I had never known before.

My friend stayed with me, cried with me, wrapped me in a red blanket and sang Psalm 13 to me.

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?…But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” 

Divine comfort took on flesh in my friend’s faithfulness to stay. This Psalm embodies the true unsurpassed beauty of comfort. Though it may not change our circumstances, though it may not take away the pain, it strengthens our heart to praise in defiance of the moment. True comfort is a fortress against wailing winds and the fearful elements of disaster that threaten to swallow our home. Because my friend stayed, I know that it takes an embrace and a shirt to stain with mascara and tears, to remember to breathe, find a moment to be still – just like that, I settle, soften and make space for the pain. The harsh voice of judgement drops to a whisper and I remember again that as much as I want to stop the madness and control the chaos, I can ask for the grace to let go through the healing found in comfort. Together with those who are long-suffering enough to bear our burdens, who choose to decrease as He increases in them by comforting us, we walk slowly into the mystery. The mystery that more than answers or solutions people desire comfort. More than fleeing from a broken and contrite heart, refusing the suffering, God desires our surrender. Surrender is not defeat, but victory. To learn how to comfort and to be willing to receive comfort from one another is how we win.

“You cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives. All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other…instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace.” St Seraphim of Sarov

Sometimes comfort comes to us in unexpected packages; His is the gift of his own life within us, sharing His own joy and love in the midst of the confusion and anxiety that encloses us, in the midst of all the ways we try to escape from the pain outside of His life in us.

With His life in me, I am given a choice, to waste my pain and the pain of others or to give and accept comfort freely. And so as with all of life, it is always choices such as these that determine where we are going and how our own journey moulds us and influences those around us. It is a choice to be a healing presence to others. With this choice, pray to be sensitive to how the person before you longs to be comforted. Be brave enough to give sacrificially to meet each other’s need to be comforted and to ask: how can I comfort you?

“Love is not contingent on our wholeness. Love is with us in our shame, our fear, our weakness, and is with us through it. And Love has the final word”

“What does it mean to become a healing presence? And probably more important, how do we increase our ability to do that? I think already you can see that this definition is an operational definition for love delivered; love on the street; love in our lives; love with each other.

Let’s look at what a healing presence is. It means that when someone, you or me or some other human, has done something to give me strength or hope. And you might ask in your life recently, who in your life did give you strength or hope when you felt in need a little? And what were the ingredients of that? How was that done? That’s the way we learn how to do that for each other. It means that I do something and give someone else what Christ gives through me. Grace has a life of its own. And in that sense, healing can become contagious. Others feel it, experience, and see it, and then perhaps do it a little more themselves.

Christ is our physician; our complete healer. And He wants us to be His humanity on this earth for each other, to the extent that we can. We’re His healing presence for each other or not. We are a healing presence to others when we give them strength; we have an encounter with them. We give them strength when we give them hope. They leave us, whether it’s a very brief or a sustained encounter, with strength and hope.”

Albert Rossi

To those who have ever loved,

To those who have ever lost,

To those who have never forgotten.

This is for the broken ones who have learnt the lessons of love and faith the hard way; even in imperfection there are notes of freedom, flashes of beauty and redemption.

This is an open letter to those who have emerged from relationships with a masterpiece of scars splattered on a canvas of remorse. This is an open letter to those who never felt wanted and pursued. This is an open letter to those who have watched from afar as one after the other of their friends evaded the pain of unrequited love while they have felt stung and stuck in the same place. This is an open letter to those who have been lied to or cheated on. This is an open letter to anyone who has made a mistake in the arena of love and to the generous lovers, the brave ones who refuse to be defeated and will rise again to enter the arena one more time. There is a reason your heart is the size of a fist, keep fighting, keep feeling, keep loving.

To the lonely,

When did you feel lonely?

I know you crave companionship and intimacy. The art of human connection is to be unashamed and unafraid in intimacy. The freedom of Adam and Eve – the intimacy in union. It is not wrong to desire that. You are not somehow faulty or defective. Believe that God’s will is such that no sin, ignorance, or miscalculation on your part can thwart. His love is so strong and so inseparable from us that not even our own blindness or foolishness can hinder His perfect love. Lonely hearts know they have need, and heaven knows that all we need in this life is need. A need that says I need the shadows of Your wings and the arms of Your embrace. Maybe you have realised now that He is the one that always stays when all else fades away. He is the one who always picks up the pieces. Lonely hearts know that to be known and found is freedom when it is found in the all-knowing Creator. Let the sense and the thoughts of the light shine upon us and let us not be covered by the darkness of pain that we may deeply praise Him. He is our Hiding Place, from our hidden places of ghosts and secrets that make us sick. In the light of the morn there is no shadow left to hide other than His and when the rays beat down we can emerge from the shadow days. His mercy crashes in and endures forever.

It’s easy to feel like a fraud when you understood the temptation to fill emotional needs through external attachments. The struggle is going through the very lesson you thought you knew so well, that you could avoid. Remember that struggle you go through is to pump healthy blood into the body of Christ. One blood courses through the veins of the one body and nourishes them all. If anything can comfort you is that your struggle is for the sake of many. For the church. St Paul’s heart of service was to suffer for the sake of the body. And even though we think we are strong, we are weak for the glory of God. God offers himself that way, life in place of death, holy desire replacing deceitful desire, life planted and growing and filling all the hollow of a soul. We are the weak ones, but this is not bad news. Isn’t brokenness the fertile ground for seeds of hope, the low place where Jesus meets us? We are the weak and we were made for hope and until we find our True Hope, there is no true strength; He renews the strength of those who hope in Him. God’s love is our hope. Keep your eyes on Him and if you can’t see His love fix your wandering eyes and bind it to Him once again.

May our afflictions, our seasons spent waiting patiently to be fixed and free be used to fix and free the body knowing that we have received comfort from the God of all comforts. May you be the unashamed comforter, held and put back together in His perfect love. There is nothing given away that Christ cannot retrieve from the abyss, for though we make our bed in hell, He is there too. He is always there, His eyes fixed on ours, placing our trembling hands on his own pulsing wounds so that we might believe Emmanuel – God with us. He never left.

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” Henri Nouwen

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3 NKJ)

Jesus is not stingy with His comfort, light or strength, especially when we ask. In stillness and quietness we forge an opening to the healing fire within.

As Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain said, “Unless we maintain contact with our inner depths, unless there is a still center in the midst of the storm, unless in the midst of all our activism we preserve a secret room in our heart where we can stand alone with God, we will lose all sense of direction and will be torn in pieces.”

“Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all” Nicole Krauss

You are loved

I sit close by my sister; yet not close enough, for the Atlantic lies between.
I hold out my hands as she drops word by word into these palms.

She says, he shot himself while driving on the freeway.
She says, all I ever thought was how he had his own friends, how he never needed me.
She says, you know I wish I wasn’t so obsessed with myself.
She says, what if I had been there, what if I had listened?

I watch a beautiful woman cry in the arms of my mother. I watch how my mother gracefully listens, pours out love all over her, holds her up with the truth of who she is. And I realize, my mother’s hospitality was never just an invitation into her home but an invitation into her heart.

I think of dark nights that I have known, dark nights of tears and demons of despair, and the faithful friend who has held the broken girl in me. How she listened silently to my every word, let her own heart break for my sadness. In those dark hours I am known, in those dark hours I am loved.

Amidst the cries of a multitude of people longing for more than superficial friendships, longing to be known to their core, longing to be loved, I marvel at how we are made; with all the auditory apparatus we need that we may take in the spoken thoughts of one another.

We are made for more than just acknowledging the sound waves of each other.

We are made with the ability to listen.

We are made for this kind of worship.

It is only through listening that we come to know others. It is only when we know others that we can love. Because listening is an invitation, it is welcoming the story of another into our heart. To be welcomed without an agenda to change or manipulate, without judgment or need to prove wrong or right.

When we listen as friends, we listen as the curious lovers who want to unearth the roots behind every statement, who want to examine the frames hanging on our walls like an exhibition and who want to read between the lines of every story. When friends take the time to listen, they see that we are all just stories. And in each of our story there are great tragedies and great adventures, great romances and great heartbreaks. The beauty of the story is that there is no right or wrong. A friend listens to let the story unfold, that they may understand. A friend listens that they may ask the right questions, the questions that no one may have dared to ask before.

Tell me, where does it hurt the most?

Tell me, why do you feel this way?

Tell me all the words you never said to him but you wish you could

And the most important questions a friend can ask:

What do you need from me right now?

What did I do today that made you feel appreciated?

What did I say that made you feel unnoticed?

But without listening out for the pauses in the story, the place where one chapter ends and the other chapter begins, the sentences that were just too hard to complete, we will never learn how to ask. When friends forfeit the task of asking, as if the answer we will hear is the next world wonder, then we forfeit the gift we could give each other, a gift we all need. The gift of knowing there is no answer I must carry alone.

Friendships begin only when we choose to invest, only when we choose to listen. It is only when we listen do we learn to ask, to search, to dig to find the diamond in the rough hiding in each others unknown caverns. Friends are the ones who remind us how to shine once again after years of burying it deep.

When we approach friendships as a means to appease our boredom, as a quick fix of temporary excitement and pleasure, we fail to establish deep, meaningful connections. And we are made for more than isolation, we are made for connection.

What stories do our friendships tell of us?

Are we fabricating tales of hearts experienced in the art of walking away when the knowledge of another gets tough?

Do our lives tell the tale of humans who merely co-exist in each other’s space, humans too self-focused to listen?

“Friendships create a beautiful tapestry of love.”
– Henri Nouwen

Or are we creating beautiful tapestries of love?

If I were to ask you, who is your closest friend? Would you answer me, “no one”?

Why?

“For, in good truth, a friend is more to be longed for than the light; I speak of a genuine one. And wonder not: for it were better for us that the sun should be extinguished, than that we should be deprived of friends; better to live in darkness, than to be without friends. And I will tell you why. Because many who see the sun are in darkness, but they can never be in tribulation, who abound in friends. I speak of spiritual friends, who prefer nothing to friendship. Such was Paul, who would willingly have given his own soul, even though not asked, nay would have plunged into hell for them. With so ardent a disposition ought we to love.”

– St. John Chyrsostom

Dear Future Wife,

This is my love letter to you. I don’t know who you are or whether I’ve met you or not. I haven’t yet stared into your glistening eyes or ran my hands through your beautiful hair. I don’t know what type of music you’re into or what you like to do in your spare time. I don’t even know if you like Nando’s (oh God, please like Nando’s) or if you’re as obsessed with animals as I am. There’s so much I don’t know about you, and I look forward to that season of discovery, but there is one thing I’m sure of about you.

I know you love Jesus. I know that you love Him deeply. So many people may think I’m crazy for being so sure about that, but haters gone hate and potatoes gone potate, right?! When I read this to you one day; maybe on our tenth date, when I’m down on one knee, or on our wedding day, I know that you’ll hear these words and it’ll all make complete sense to you.

When I turned twenty-one, a friend of mine jokingly told me “it’s time to start praying for a wife now”, and though I could hear the room echo with joyous laughter, the loudest sound I heard that evening was the Holy Spirit’s whisper, piercing my heart, convicting me to pray for you from that moment on until the day we wed. So open your ears and listen as I utter a prayer for you my beloved;

Lord,

I pray for my beautiful wife-to-be. As I approach you I’m very aware that it is your precious daughter that I’m talking about here, and I know that no-one will ever begin to love her and protect her as you do, not even I Lord, and I thank you for that. I pray for her walk with you Lord; that you would continue to reveal yourself to her in this moment as you’ve done in the past. When she falls, stretch out your hand and lift her from the depths of Sheol onto your holy mountain. For you delight in showing mercy O Lord, and mercy triumphs over judgement. When she thirsts for you in a dry and barren land, quench her with droplets of your living water Lord. When her heart is overwhelmed and filled with despair I pray that you O Holy Spirit, who reminds us of all that you have said, would remind her of the promises that you so gracefully gifted her with through your holy Word. Bring to her remembrance O Lord that for as long as she hopes in you, she will never be put to shame.
I pray for the purity of her heart Lord; guard her, shield her and encamp her with your holy angels, that she may meet with you face to face all the days of her life. When the enemy viciously attacks her, desiring to tear her to shreds, may the earth be shaken and may it tremble as you, O Lord, thunder from heaven and draw her out of many waters. Deliver her from her strong enemy. I pray that just as you’re guiding me through a spiritual journey of self discovery and awareness, that you would hold her hand tightly today and walk beside her on the road to liberty, where healing and renewal collide. Finally O Lord, I pray from the depths of my heart that you would make known to her your deep, unfiltered, raw love for her. Because you O beautiful Father don’t give your heart in pieces. You don’t hide yourself to tease us.

Amen

Beloved, though I  know not who you are, today I proclaim my everlasting love for you. I believe that Love is an active choice, and from today til we dance to the melodies sung by the cherubim and the seraphim for all eternity in the presence of our Creator, I actively choose to love you. I speak not of trivial ‘hollywood-style’ love where our eyes meet and we fall head-over-heels ‘in love’ with one another. No, my love. I pray that I can love you with the true love of the Trinity. A wild love that isn’t shy, but is proud to be seen with you. A love that is uncontrolled and uncontained; a fire burning bright for you. I want to love you with a love that is not fractured, not anxious and not passive. For true love keeps its promises, it keeps its word. It honors what’s sacred because its vows are good. I desire to love you with a love that is not broken, not insecure. Not selfish, but pure.

Yes, that is how I desire to love you. I want to be able to give you every part of me whenever, wherever, however you desire. But I’d be a liar if I promised you that. Though I desire to gift you with the perfection you deserve, I fall short. I cannot promise to be your Prince Charming or Knight in Shining Armour. I cannot promise to possess all the incredible qualities that you see in your earthly father or heavenly Father. I cannot promise to lead you on smooth paths all the days of your life. I cannot even promise that I’ll be a husband you’re proud of in every season. The thing is my love, I’m an imperfect, broken man, in dirty rags, leaning on his Saviour. There is an old man within me, tirelessly waging war against me, daily.

You see, I can’t be all that you desire for yourself, but there is One who is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose; and He is worthy of your love and affection. One who rejoices over you with singing, who remains faithful even in your unfaithfulness, who is willing to give up everything to gain your love and who is secure enough to remain unchanged from the beginning til the end. The Lord God Almighty, the Lord is His name. El-Elyon (God Creator and Possessor of All Things), Jehovah-Mekoddishkem (The Lord Who Makes You Holy), Jehovah-Rophe (The Lord Who Heals You). You see, as a man I will always fail to love you the way you deserve to be loved. But, praise God! For “the Holy Spirit stands in the same relation to my soul as air stands in relation to my body” St. John of Kronstadt. For as long as the Holy Spirit dwells within me, I am able to love you through Him; and His love is perfect. Therefore seek Him and not I. Seek Him wholeheartedly. So that even when I stand before you as a shattered mirror, in a thousand pieces, your reflection is not distorted. Lay your identity, your whole being, in Him, for He alone is whole forever and ever. I will strive with all my being to be present for you spiritually, emotionally and physically but I will fall short. However kingdoms come and kingdoms fade, but He remains. Ages pass and seasons change, but always He remains the same.

Dear Future Wife, I pray that we would learn to accept each other, striving not to alter one another to fit into the boxes we constructed for ourselves long ago, with our skewed visions of an ideal spouse. I pray that the Lord would work within us from now to teach us what it means to love each other unconditionally, despite our shortcomings and weaknesses; to live out 1 Corinthians 13 daily. I pray that as we grow old and wrinkly I may remain madly in love with My Lord within you, and that you may love Your Saviour within me.

Til we meet.

Joyfully yours,

Michael

Beyond race, culture and religion, we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We all possess frail hearts, we all desire to love and be loved. We all long to find safety and belonging in the world. We all hurt and we fear, we stumble into awkward moments, into our own chaos and anger. We are the same beneath these beautiful layers of skin and confusion. We are all the same kind of broken. And in our broken, common humanity, redemption desires to tell the tale of us all, because there is no one beyond grace.

Yet how many people have we deemed unworthy of grace? How many souls have we too easily condemned?

“Enemy” is a strong word. Strong enough to make us distance ourselves from it and deny that it plays a part in our lives. But when Christ spoke of enemies, he spoke simply; an enemy is someone who stands in the way of our freedom, dignity, our capacity to grow and love, someone who attacks us or our country. An enemy most commonly exists within the person whom we are avoiding.

When the lawyer spoke to Jesus asking how he was to enter the kingdom of heaven, He answered him simply; “love your neighbour as yourself.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:29). Though the words of the Bible are clear and simple, just like the lawyer, we seek justification. Love my enemy? Who is my enemy? Surely Jesus didn’t mean ISIS, surely He didn’t mean the human responsible for my deepest hurts?

But what if the ones we name offenders can be freed to love?

‘They are people who, if loved, helped, and trusted, can in some small way recognize their faults and their brokenness and can grow in humanity and in inner freedom.” -Jean Vanier

What if humanity rose up to forgive? Like the sacred hearts of Katja Rosenberg, Antoine Leiris and Arturo Martinez. What if we extended forgiveness regardless of our hurts and our rights, and followed the sacred Word that brings all healing. For us to forgive, we must yearn for unity and peace, yearn for the oneness to be united in mind, in heart and in spirit. If we love and desire for all to be free to bear fruit, we will be a people heavy for forgiveness. We will live full and whole that we are no longer driven by our desire to be filled and prove ourselves worthy but we will yearn for the growth of all people in peace and in unity. To be a peacemaker, we must make peace with ourselves and we must make peace with those around us. We must believe that we are all a part of the suffering. We have all hurt and been hurt. When we point out darkness, we must remember to point back at our own souls. It is not easy to see beyond our own suffering, sometimes it is blinding. It is not easy to accept forgiveness or to forgive; it is a struggle.

‘ When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too.’ -Henri Nouwen

The truth is our enemies can often tell us a lot more about us than our friends can. The way we respond to our enemies will tell us the true state of our hearts; if we are hearts walking in forgiveness or if we walk in resentment.

Prayer for my Enemies

“Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.

Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a fly.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

So that my fleeing will have no return; So that all my hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;

So that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;

So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.”

–Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic