Since I first learned about the Church’s Season of Creation after it had started last year, I’ve been looking forward to being ready to celebrate it this year! While it officially starts today on September 1, our Coracle Community in northern Virginia marked its beginning together this past Sunday night. It was a lot of fun putting together the pieces of our community gathering and liturgy, and here’s just a few for you to use as well…

• Recalling the history of this church season (see below)

• Reading Psalm 104 from “Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness”

• Watching a gorgeous 6 minutes of “The Beauty of Earth” together

• Reading and reflecting on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “God’s World”, including that line “Lord, I do fear Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year”!

• Discussing together, “What is a meaningful experience of God you’ve had in creation?” (There were many shared!!)

• Reading from the Gospel from Matthew 6.25-33 in the NRSV and the First Nations Version

• I read a chapter on ‘The Gaze of Jesus” from Elizabeth A. Johnson’s Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth (click below to listen). The spiritual life and deepening spiritual life I’m continuing to learn is all about seeing and learning to see.

• Singing “This Is My Father’s World” together, with assistance from A New Liturgy. “This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears all nature sings…”

• And then of course we finished with the Eucharist, using the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer (1979), Eucharistic Prayer C: “At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets

  in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home. By your will they were created and have their being.” We ate the bread and drank the wine that had become for us the body and blood of the One who made the wheat and grapes for it them both!

Consider joining the Coracle Community as we read together Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements by Christine Valters Paintner. Week 1 for the introduction, and then pray with one element a week until the Season of Creation ends on October 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi.

Read on for more about the Season of Creation!!

About the Season of Creation (from last year’s post)

Most of us are familiar with the traditional seasons of the church year like Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. There is also a season within Ordinary Time that gives us the opportunity to celebrate our Creator God’s gift of all creation, and worship our Creator God by caring for all creation.

In 2015 Pope Francis released his groundbreaking encyclical “Laudato Si” (“Praise Be To You”). On the heels of this he announced a new way to highlight the gift of creation and highlight our human vocation to steward creation well on God’s behalf by formally recognizing September 1 for the Catholic Church as worldwide day of prayer for creation. The Season of Creation spreads out over the five weeks between the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (September 1) and the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi (October 4) which has long recognized by most of the church.

The Orthodox Church started moving the whole church in this direction when in 1989 the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Patriarch Dimitrios I, proclaimed that September 1 would be a day of prayer for the environment, marking the beginning of the liturgical year for that Christian tradition. In the 2000s more churches across various Protestant traditions (including the Anglicans) joined the Orthodox and started marking September 1 as a day of prayer for the created world.

In 2015, Pope Francis formalized the Roman Catholic church’s observance of September 1, writing his letter announcing this recognition.

The annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will offer individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.

Soon after the church started marking these five weeks as a season, formally endorsing it and promoting even while it is not par with the traditional seasons in terms of obligations and observation.

This means right now the Church is in the Season of Creation and we all get to mark it, not only for its implicit value but also as an expression of Christian unity! This season “is now a global and ecumenical movement.”

Less than a week ago, Pope Leo of course highlighted the day that opens the season . From here:

"Now is the time to follow words with deeds…

“‘Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience' (Laudato Si’ 217). By working with love and perseverance, we can sow many seeds of justice and thus contribute to the growth of peace and the renewal of hope. It may well take years for this plant to bear its first fruits, years that, for their part, involve an entire ecosystem made up of continuity, fidelity, cooperation and love, especially if that love mirrors the Lord’s own self-sacrificing Love.

“Environmental justice – implicitly proclaimed by the prophets – can no longer be regarded as an abstract concept or a distant goal. It is an urgent need that involves much more than simply protecting the environment. For it is a matter of justice – social, economic and human. For believers it is also a duty born of faith, since the universe reflects the face of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and redeemed. In a world where the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters are the first to suffer the devastating effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution, care for creation becomes an expression of our faith and humanity.”

A few weeks ago, I posted about understanding our understandings of God, prompted by a quote from Elizabeth A. Johnson’s Come, Have Breakfast. Buried in a long quote there is an imagining worth highlighting here on this the 7th day of the Season of Creation.

Imagine a continuous, public understanding of the living God as passionate Lover and Savior of the Earth and all its creatures, including human beings, in the community of life. Imagine we understood that we are part of something bigger than our basically good, sometimes dreadful, always fascinating selves, something that has value of its own in God’s eyes. Imagine our hearts growing to include the whole community of creation in our love of neighbor, so that action on behalf of social justice and ecojustice flow organically rather than being add-ons to faithful living. Imagine churches praying, preaching, teaching, repenting, lamenting, praising, and acting so as to do justice to the heart of the living God who pours out love on all human beings as well as on the soil, the waters, the air, and every little bird that falls to the ground, as Jesus taught.

When it comes to the earth and all that is in it, indeed Laudato Si—”Praise be to you, my Lord!”

Hey Substack friends, I know it’s been a little while since I’ve posted. There’s been a lot to think about and work on in these past weeks, I’m sure some of that will show up in these pages as we enter the fall season.

But what has prompted me tonight to break my Substack silence is the terrible tragedy of the flash flooding and mudslides in Nepal earlier this week.

I’ve been to Nepal five times since 1995, including to the region directly impacted by the floods.

Below I’ve offered a reflection from one those trips in 2016, exactly a year after almost 9,000 people lost their lives in an earthquake, more than 200,000 were injured, and the Anglican Church in Nepal lost 30 of its 58 church buildings. I was there in my capacity as a then board member of the Anglican Relief and Development Fund, which is where I would point you to if you’d like to send financial support to the local church’s relief efforts in Nepal right now after the flat flooding and devastating mudslides. You can do that by clicking here finding out more, and donating. Tara and I will be supporting the relief work of the church through ARDF.

Keep reading for a beautiful picture of what God was doing in and through the Anglican church in 2016, and still is. And after you read it, join me in praying a prayer prepared by one of my ministry acquaintances in Asia familiar with the church in Nepal.

“The Book of Acts in the Himalayas” (April 2016)

It didn’t take long to realize it. It was after witnessing the prayer and fasting, and hearing story after story of the same. And then hearing testimonies of people who had come to believe in Jesus because they saw a loved one healed after prayers in his name. And then realizing just how threatening Christianity is to the social order and caste system of Nepal. And hearing more stories of people being rejected by their families after believing Jesus. And meeting several older Christians who have spent many years walking from village to village preaching the Gospel and planting churches

It dawned on me, “Oh my gosh, this church is living the book of Acts, in real time!”

And it makes sense. It is a very, very young church. Christianity arrived via Tibet through Roman Catholic missionaries coming from China in the mid-1600s, and made many converts over the decades. But then in 1760 the King of Nepal banished any Christian from the land, imprisoned others, and martyred the priests and pastors, any remaining Christians fled, and Nepal become a closed kingdom to most foreigners and any missionaries. There wasn’t a known Christian in Nepal from that time until 1952. 1952! That was the year the first modern Nepali convert is recorded.

By the mid-1970s there were only 100 or so known Christians, amidst great persecution, and in the early ‘80s there were three small churches, and in 1989 six pastors were jailed or deported. Meanwhile there were several Nepali Christians walking from village to village, preaching the gospel, healing, praying, and planting churches. Democracy came in 1999, and with it greater religious freedom, especially after the tumults of the Maoist uprisings and abolition of the Nepal’s monarchy, and since the early 2000s the church has been growing rapidly, in part because of new constitution making Nepal officially a secular state versus a Hindu one. It is new and fertile soil for the spread of the Gospel here

We visited the Anglican church in the Jaguar slum community in Kathmandu. The slum was created in 2006, Pastor Daniel came in 2007, and now more than 40% of the households there are Christian.

Rev. Rinzi Lama is one of the founding fathers of the church of Nepal, having planted over 50 churches across the country, and several in Kathmandu. It was he and another, Rev. Shyam Nepali, who discerned in 1999 that the Anglican tradition would be a good one to bring some order to their network of churches, and the Anglican Diocese of Singapore of the Province of Southeast Asia took them on in a response to their desire. In the one year since the earthquake in April 2015, the membership of this little Nepali Anglican community across the country has grown from 9,000 to 12,000 people! You usually just don’t see growth like that…again it is reminiscent of the book of Acts.

The church in Nepal is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to Acts in real life. Remembering that Acts covers a period of time of about 30 years, about the time that church in Nepal has begun to grow. And laced through Acts we read stories of…

• a deeply praying church

• healing and exorcisms

• people believing in Jesus because of witnessing his power through miracles

• walking evangelists and ‘apostles’

• confrontations with demons

• Christianity breaking the class and caste system

• the systems of power being threatened by the Christian message

• imprisoned leaders and Christians being forced from their cities

• God using earthquakes for god

• church planting empowered by the Holy Spirt

• small faithful communities of believers living a different way of life together

• and God raising up untrained leaders to lead his church through holiness and faith

That’s Acts, but in just three days here on this trip I have heard at least one in each of those categories if not many that have happened in the last 30 years in Nepal, and continue to happen, right now in real time. It’s breathtaking.

A Prayer for Nepal (from here)

Heavenly Father, we are saddened and grieved by the loss of lives and property as a result of sudden flooding in Bidur, Nepal.

We pray for your mercy upon all the families affected by injury, death and loss.

We pray for reprieve from difficult weather conditions so that rescue, relief and recovery can take place.

We pray for strength, wisdom, providence and miracles for those working hard to save lives from the wreckage and in the hospitals.

Strengthen the faith of your people at this difficult time with your abiding presence. Give courage, strength and faith insights to your lay leaders, pastors and clergy, especially Dean Prem Tamang, that they may minister as Christ would do. Let your church bear witness to your faithfulness in times of hardship, and be a channel of your compassion in practical ways to all affected families regardless of faith.

By the power of your resurrection, enable these precious lives and communities to be rebuilt on new foundations of your faith and love.

In Christ’s name we pray; Amen.

Over the past 9 months you’ve seen a lot more in Coracle that is gently informed by the Benedictine tradition. Some of us are practicing A Common Way together—making the wisdom and practices of the monastic tradition accessible to normal people in the modern world—which draws heavily from this tradition and spirituality. Our new semi-residential community at Corhaven seeks to live into that powerful Benedictine/human balance of work, study, and prayer corresponding to body, mind, and soul. This past March we offered a retreat, “Ancient Paths In a World Gone Made: Wisdom from the Monastic Tradition” and we’ll offer that one again at our Center of Formation for Action in Arlington. I wrote about it recently in “Does St. Benedict still speak?”. The answer is absolutely, a lot, and it’s timely.

Brian Taylor’s book is a great and accessible introduction to the Benedictine tradition, and I commend it if you’re looking for deeper life in God and wanting a bit more sanity in a time of great noise and distraction.

What I appreciate about it is that it’s a married guy with kids and a mortgage living a regular life with all its non-monastic challenges and constraints trying to apply 1,500 year old wisdom in his concrete circumstances. For most of us reading this, that describes our lives too…normal people living our lives outside of a monastery who are still wanting the deeper life in God in the midst of the lives we are actually living.

I appreciate this from Taylor:

…ordering one’s life according to a form of spirituality that thousands of people have lived with and found freedom in for 1,500 years [gives] one has a better chance of growing in grace than through any lifestyle one could dream up on one’s own.

In other words, there’s deep wisdom in the old wisdom.

The Benedictine tradition is not about rules…it’s actually about God.

To live according to a tradition and under a rule of life, whether Benedict’s or someone else’s, is to enter consciously into a process of growth in grace and to undertake a specific discipline used in that process. However, a rule of life is not undertaken for its own sake, so that one can “become disciplined,” as if that were a primary virtue... The discipline of a rule of life is undertaken as a means to freedom in God.

Amen. Don’t we all want that, ‘freedom in God’?

Benedictine spirituality is not lived in isolation from others or immune from the needs of the world. It is a spirituality focused on community and hospitality. Famously, one of the rules (#53: “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ, for He is going to say, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed Me’”) from the Rule of St. Benedict is to always see Christ in the face of the other.

This is why it has become so common for Benedictines to enter into issues of peace and justice in our world. They have grown used to seeing their fellow humans as brothers and sisters in Christ. A person, like Thomas Merton, who lived under Benedict’s Rule, therefore gets involved in questions about civil rights and the war in Vietnam. Many Christians see their faith as separate from their concerns about the wider world. For Benedictines, life is more integrated. All of life falls under the gospel, and therefore equality and justice in personal relationships must be sought out in political relationships as well.

Taylor sums up the essence of the Benedictine tradition and spirituality well:

To seek God in work, cooking, prayer, community, greeting strangers, and dealing with possessions is to enter into the mystery of the incarnation. Benedict did not add to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He simply provided a way of seeing Christ’s continual incarnation in this world.

As we at Coracle continue our journey exploring how to live this ancient wisdom in our modern lives together, ‘seeing Christ’s continual incarnation in this world’, I invite you to come along with us.

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Thank you all for coming to help me mark the 20th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ. Thank you for bearing witness to my public reaffirmation of the vows that I took 20 years ago on June 27, 2006.

On that day I was asked by a bishop who would soon lay his hands on me with a prayer of consecration, “My brother, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood?”

“I believe I am so called”, I replied, following the liturgy.

“Do you now in the presence of the Church commit yourself to this trust and responsibility?”

“I do.”

Twenty years later I still do.

Thank you for being witnesses today, in the sight and presence of YHWH, and hearing me recommit by affirming “I still do.” I offer myself again as consecrated for Christ’s service and service to his Church.

Before I go any farther, let me also say that this particular occasion gives me the great joy to remind each of you that you also are Christ’s priests in the world. As was read from 1 Peter 2, we Christians are a “a holy priesthood”, each of us are in a “a royal priesthood”. Our fundamental vocation, each of our capital “V” Vocations, as humans and as Christians is to be a priest and to do what a priest does.

What does a priest do? A priest takes something ordinary that is given by God, offers thanks, consecrates it (that is sets it apart for God’s use), and then gives it back to God. That’s what’s going on every time bread and wine are consecrated in the Eucharist. Something very ordinary becomes very extraordinary and is used for God’s purposes. As priests, we all get to do that with everything that is given to us.

This is the fundamental vocation, the capital “V” Vocation for all of us, to be the priests that we are, and the expression of this takes a myriad of forms, our “small ‘v’ vocations”. Our small “v” vocations are many: a lawyer, janitor, government worker, farmer, priest and pastor, mother, grandmother, teacher, builder, father, architect, nurse, artist, writer, aid worker, and so on. We each have different things that are ours to do, and to do them for God’s sake. In whatever vocation that is given to us, we’re to take what God has given us, offer thanks, and give it back to God. In this way we are all priests.

The Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann puts it this way,

“If there are to be priests in the church…it is precisely in order to reveal to each vocation its priestly essence, to make the whole life of all people the liturgy of the Kingdom, to reveal the church as the royal priesthood of the redeemed world.”

Ever since I was ordained and started wearing a collar I’ve loved asking people, “Do you know why I wear this collar?” I get a lot of different responses, none of them about fashion. And then I’ll say, “To remind you that you are a priest”. Tonight I will, and we all will, have a chance to consecrate ourselves again for Christ’s service and his service to the world as we approach the Eucharist.

After seminary 30 years ago when I first entered full time Christian ministry in 1996, if you knew me then you’ll know I resisted this calling to be a priest. I was a Baptist, I knew the priesthood of all believers. I already was a priest, thank you. And a bishop? Come on, who needs one of those? Beware of small men in funny hats. And robes? No thanks.

Four reasons I said Yes 20 years ago

But some years later when unsought that vocation sharpened and it came to me and it deepened in my soul, I said a sober and happy “Yes” to it for four reasons.

• First, I wanted to dive as deeply into the sacraments as I could, and lead others to them, especially the Eucharist.

• Second, it seemed fitting that I take up my small place in the long line of ordained ministers going all the way back 2000 years to the early church.

• Third, I thought back then that it’d be good for me for me to have one person on the planet that had actual authority over me, in other words, a way to express the value of submission, especially for a guy like me at that time.

• And fourth and most importantly, I sincerely felt called, and this call was roundly affirmed by my elders around me.

I said yes.

For these past 20 years I would exercise my “small ‘v’ vocation” as a priest as best as I’ve known how to faithfully administer the sacraments, to teach the Scriptures, to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God and of the Risen Living Christ, to pray, to be a pastor of people, and to seek to model my life on Jesus’ who was both priest and prophet. Tara made this stole for me out of Indian cloth that accompanied me across that subcontinent when I served with Missionaries of Charity, and gave it to me on that day June 27, 2006 to remind me that I was to be a priest for the poor.

Some moments exercising this vocation are an unforgettable privilege—

• celebrating the Eucharist in a refugee camp in Sudan,

• at the border wall between Mexico and the United States,

• in Israel at the place where Jesus wept on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and where he fed the 5,000 in Galilee,

• in Palestine in a cave with oppressed people in Bethlehem,

• for pilgrims in Nepal at the foothills of the Himalayas,

• so many times for workers of Christian relief and development organizations

• so many times at Central Union Mission in inner-city DC for the unhoused and with St. Brendan’s,

• so many times with our Coracle Community now, most Sundays and Wednesdays.

• I’ve had the privilege of doing first communion for beloved kids,

• and done their baptisms,

• and then the weddings,

• and funerals,

• and hearing confession and announcing absolution.

• Some of my favorite moments of Eucharist have been in a spiritual direction session, with just one other person, when it was clear that it was the needful medicine.

Twenty years later the Eucharist keeps getting bigger, deeper, richer, More.

Twenty years later Jesus keeps getting bigger, deeper, richer, More…and nearer and more beautiful and more Total.

Thanks

I’d like to thank these especially for being with me on this journey: you Tara, and Rich Dean, and Bill Deiss, and Wade Ballou, and so many of you.

I’m grateful and want to offer homage to those men who have taught me what a priest is. If the Church allowed for women to be priests as long as it has men, I’m sure there would be more women on this list.

The first one is Father James, my long-time spiritual director. He gave me the chalice and paten that we’re using for communion tonight. It was given to him by his mother for his ordination to the priesthood.

And Walter Ciszek, and Stanley Rother, and Christophe Lebreton, and Teilhard de Chardin, and Maximillian Kolbe, and Oscar Romero. “Brothers, pray for me.”

Jesus, our Eternal High Priest

And of course on that list of who has shown me what a priest is and does is Jesus the Christ, our eternal high priest.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is scared and weeping because of what he is about to endure for his own people and for the sins and suffering of the whole world.

Jesus is both “the Lamb of God” (Jn 1.29) and “the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.” (Rev. 13.8) Before the world began Jesus knew he’d face this moment. And he willingly chose it, for Love’s sake, for the sake of Union…union with us, union with you…that we might be one with him, and through him be swept into the dance of the Holy Trinity. He desires us that much.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, he is about to entrust himself completely to his Father, and will feel abandoned along the way. He is about to mightily suffer, and in doing so put on vivid display the Paschal Mystery.

The Paschal Mystery—the mystery at the center of the universe—is that Divine Love is humble and self-giving and sacrificial, that death is the path to resurrection, and that suffering can be redemptive and lead to new life. This Paschal Mystery is on display every time we see the host and receive communion. This is what Jesus does, and dear friends, as his dear friends the Paschal Mystery is what he invites us into.

At the cross, Jesus is both priest and victim. He offers himself as “the bread of God that comes down from heaven for the life of the world.” (Jn 6.33) He is willing to die for his own people and suffer at their own hands. Jesus, the priest and victim.

I remember right before I went off to my priestly ordination service 20 years ago, Father James said to me, “You know, Bill, some people treat their ordinations like a party. It’s more like a funeral. You’re dying to yourself so that Christ can live in you.”

In my service as a priest, I’ve known some searing pain because of it, and some disappointments. It’s ironic, the only real suffering I’ve really actually experienced because I’m a Christian has been at the hands of leaders of the Church. Last century, Josef Zvěřina was a Czech priest and theologian who spent thirteen months in Nazi concentration camps in1942 and then in the 1950’s spent thirteen years in communist prisons and labor camps for his loyalty to Christ and the Church. “He described his relationship to the Church during the communist era with the words: ‘The Church—my love and my cross.”1

That’s part of the reason I wanted to meaningfully and publicly mark this occasion of my ordination to serve Christ’s Church, at this point with 20 years of joy and pain in the rearview, to be able to say again publicly with witnesses, “I do.” I still do.

Would I do it again? Yes. My life is not my own.

“Because it’s True…”

Many many years ago, I listed to him all the deprivations that Father James experienced for decades as a Trappist monk. And Father James listed back to me all of the ways I hadn’t mentioned, including the doubts, uncertainties, and darkness.

And I said with confusion and exasperation, “Well, then, why do you do it?!?!?”

And he said softly with that now familiar twinkle in his eye, “Because it’s True, and I get to give him my life in this way.”

Just over three years ago I caught just a glimpse of the God Who Is, and it took my breath away. The next day I wrote in my journal, “My ordination is a gift from God! It is a grace given! Wow. And I get to serve him in this way, and his Church. I get to love and serve his Church. He has offered to me to do this. And I get to love and serve him by serving his Church. I love him by loving his Church. I love Jesus by loving his Bride.” (April 20, 2023)

Feed my sheep

Jesus said to Peter, “Do you love me?”

Peter said, “Yes”.

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

I love that I get to love Jesus by loving you, and that I get to love Jesus by celebrating the Eucharist and offering it to you that we sheep might all be fed. On an occasion like this it’s the one thing a “small ‘v’ vocation’ priest wants to do with you, all of us, the capital ‘V’ vocation” priests.

I’m not sure where my attempts to faithful to this vocation will take me. “It doesn’t really matter to me now” as long as I can bear witness to the God Who Is Love and the Risen Living Jesus Christ, our eternal high priest, the Lamb of God, the priest and victim, the Paschal Mystery.

I would invite you, as one priest to you priests, to once again consecrate your own lives even as I do the same, once again. Let us, in the witness of all here and in the sight of God, give God our “Yes” again, willing to be set apart for the service of the Holy One who is Love and bear witness to that. Together, we’ll say, “I still do.”

A prayer exercise to consecrate yourself again

Take a few moments, get in touch with the God who is present to you right now, loving you. Become aware of the loving presence of God with you, or has been said, ‘Gaze at the one gazing back at you’.

When you have that sense, call to mind some things in your life that you’ve been given. Thank God for them. How can you set them apart for God’s service? How can you consecrate them? You may want to briefly jot these down.

Call to mind God’s gift to you of your very breath and life? Thank God for this. How can you give your whole life to God’s service?

Then take a few minutes, and write a prayer to God, honestly, with your desire. Put in your prayer things you want to offer to God, things in your life you want to consecrate.

Offer them to God with prayer, then burn them. Or the next time you’re at a Eucharist service, ask the priest/pastor if you can put it on the altar to be consecrated.

This series has been about the Colosseum vs. the Catacombs, the first post had the subtitle ‘and American Christianity at America 250’. Now at the end of the series, what are we American Christians to do in the moment we live in?

I told in the very first post of this series that when in Rome three years ago I began seeing much more clearly this stark choice between the Colosseum and the Catacombs. Since then more reading and reflection continues to clarify the contrast, especially Scot McKnight’s Revelation for the Rest of Us on the ultimate meta-narrative of earth’s history being the reality of Babylon/Empire and its conflict with Jerusalem/the Kingdom of God.1

But it wasn’t until just over a month ago that I tried to put any of this into words when speaking to a group of dear people at the launch of Coracle’s chapter in Baltimore.

I said Coracle Baltimore is doing in its own unique form what Coracle has been about for almost 15 years—helping others (and ourselves) go deeper into God in order to go deeper into the brokenness of the world with God’s redemptive love. And then I offered four things that we get to do, against the backdrop of the choice between the Colosseum and the Catacombs. I offer them here, this is what we all get to do.

As American Christians at America’s 250th anniversary:

1. We get to know the love of God and share the love of God!

2. We get to live and offer an alternative to the way the world works…we get to live and offer the Kingdom!

3. We get to love each other and all those who God leads to us!

4. We get to incarnate the God-Who-Is-Love revealed in Jesus Christ, we get to be Jesus’ actual body!

Amen. These are all true and timeless, stunning and truly inviting. They are a catch-all for all the things the early Christians in Rome were doing which I wrote about in the second post of this series. The lives the Catacomb Christians lived created stark contrast to Colosseum.

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And as I wrote about in the third post of this series, they were doing that because they had seen something, seen Someone.

Karl Rahner famously wrote in the early 1980s, “The devout Christian of the future will either be a mystic—one who has experienced ‘something’—or will cease to be anything at all.”

If we’re wanting to take lessons from the Christians of the Catacombs, the right place to start is not simply to try to do what they did (though of course this is worthwhile in our contextualized forms).

Rather we start by seeking to see Whom they had seen, to experience God in a life-altering way. When we catch even one glimpse of the God-Who-Is and the Risen, Living Christ, we can’t but want to bear witness to him, and love like the One who is Love. We’ll be more willing to bear whatever the cost may be to bear witness to Divine Love. Our witness will be like lights in darkness. We need more transforming encounters with the Divine.2

The Catch Though…

Here’s the catch though: we can’t make those encounters happen or manufacture such experiences. We cannot dictate to God what kind of experience of God we want to have expecting him to show up in that precise way on demand. Thankfully, God is so much bigger and more mysterious than a divine show pony or benevolent genie. God is so much more active and present even when we may think God is absent, silent, or not responding. God is never absent, and as has been said, “Silence is God’s first language.”3

If we can’t make God knock the scales off our eyes or give us new ones, we can however adopt practices and disciplines that make such encounters more likely. We can create spaces to be found by the One we seek.

Rahner wrote something else, an anthology called “The Mystical Way in Everyday Life”. Carl McColman riffs off this title in Answering the Contemplative Call: First Steps on the Mystical Path:

…the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have really become the age of “the mystical way in everyday life”—the spirituality of those who are drawn toward a deep, profound, transformational life in silence, meditation, prayer, and contemplation, even while having to integrate that call into all the other demands of a secular life and career, relationships with friends and families, and other self-directed pursuits.

…these core mystical practices, available to anyone, are one way to open our hearts to receive the fulness of Divine blessing. Notice that I didn’t say ‘the core mystical practices will make us have mystical experiences.’ Mystical practices dispose us to receive the blessing of intimacy with God, which can take an infinite variety of forms. We must always remember that mystical prayer, consciousness, and union are always freely given gifts given from God. We cannot earn, or presume to deserve such grace.

Thankfully, God is most generous and loves to give us the gift of God’s self when we want to receive him! If we desire intimacy with God, it’s a sure sign that God, who desires us more than we do God, is acting on us already and moving us. If we’re feeling drawn to God, it’s because we’re being drawn.

What can Christians do now?

So in our American moment of the Colosseum vs. the Catacombs, wondering what a Christian can be doing, my first and primary suggestion is that we create spaces and practices that invite God, the Visitor, to visit, knowing that those encounters are transforming and trusting that God knows what to do with our transforming lives. My observation through others’ experiences and my own is that such encounters come when we are least expecting them.

You might be saying, “Really, Bill, that’s all you’ve got to wrap up a six part series? Become a better mystic? See the Unseen? Chase God hoping you’ll be found? Hope for some sort of encounter that you have no control over?”

Kind of, yeah. At least to conclude this particular series on this particular day.

“But how is that going to impact culture and lead to the renewal of American society?”

Challenging what we’ve been told

Contrary to the assumptions I was raised with and swam in for a long time, I would say that American cultural renewal is not the point, that’s not our goal. Our goal is not to convert Babylon into Christendom but to be bright shining witnesses of God’s love, heralds of God’s Kingdom, pointers to Jesus while we live in Babylon even/especially when Babylon presents itself as Christian.

It’s ironic. What has made it so evident that America is indeed another Babylon with a new version of Caesar happened because of American Christians who believe that America needs to be a Christian nation in order to achieve God’s purposes! I would suggest that those who consider themselves Christian who put their hope in some sort of version of a Christian America don’t yet know God.

There are many precedents for this tendency. As God said through the prophet Jeremiah of God’s own, religiously observant people, “My people are foolish, they do not know me.” (Jer 4.22). I’ve written elsewhere that this deception is not the fault of Christians in the pews, it is the fault of their religious leaders that have enabled this dynamic in its formation and perpetuation. When Jesus saw crowds like this, ‘he had compassion for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd’ (Mt 9.36).

To encourage creating space for God and asking for a new vision of God is not to say there aren’t many things Christians can be doing to be salt and light within this culture.4 There are many, like loving others and especially the other and the enemy, or standing up and working for justice in the face of injustice, pursuing personal holiness, caring for the hurting and marginalized, cultivating Christian communities within Empire that serve as an alternative to Empire, sharing the good news of the Risen, Living Christ and the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and so on.5

But here’s the thing…when we’ve become captivated by the actual beauty of the God-Who-Is, those sorts of actions begin to happen naturally, like water flows downhill. When we see the beauty of Jesus and deepen in friendship with him, actions like these become our desire. The more we become like Christ, it is natural that our desires would become more like his too.

When we see clearly the God-Who-Is-Love, Love becomes our orientation, our natural purpose, our goal.

So if pressed on “Bill, what does an American Christian need to be actually doing at America 250?” Beyond create space for encounter with God I’d say, we need to be about Love.6 It’s deeply simple.

Shine like lights…

If we are people of love, inspired by our vision of the God-Who-Is-Love in this sort of country at this sort of time of darkness, we will shine like lights amidst that darkness, like stars in a clear night sky.

Writing to Catacomb Christians living in Philippi early in the era of Colosseum, Paul exhorts the children of God to live differently than the Empire around them, “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.” (Phil 2.15). He could write that at any time to any Christian living in whatever form Empire is taking, including America at 250.

It’s worth reflecting on those early Christians, pondering their lives, witness and words. What did they know? What had they seen?

Richard Niebuhr famously observed, “The great Christian revolutions came not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when someone takes radically something that was always there.”

[In October of 2020, Coracle published my piece “How Can a Christian Think About This Election?”. It was the first time in 25 years of ministry that I’d weighed in on big-picture political issues. While the response I got to it then was overwhelmingly positive, it proved personally to be deeply consequential for me institutionally. There’s little I’d change in the piece (though surely I could have written more as an ‘equal opportunity offender’!), and a lot I still stand by especially in light of January 6 and some aspects of the last 18 months. Just a little of the below is drawn from that piece since I still believe now much of what I wrote then, I’d be blessed if you read the whole thing here at some point after you’re done with this one.]

For the New Testament writers and the Church through it’s first many centuries, the thought of actually participating in the political process by having a vote would have never occurred to the vast majority of them.

This may explain why there is such little guidance given by the New Testament (and even less in the Gospels) about how Christians are to be a citizen of one’s own country. There are a few verses in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 and some guidance we can glean by implication elsewhere.

Meanwhile, there is an immense amount about how Christians are to pursue personal holiness, how we are to treat fellow believers and people generally, how we are to serve with love and pray, and how external distinctions are quite shallow compared to the unity we have by sharing the spirit of Jesus. Jesus was consistent in telling us to care for those on the margins and dramatic in how he modeled it.

It is as if New Testament believers had very little concern about political and national affairs. Their attention seemed to be significantly elsewhere, notably in spreading the good news about the Risen Jesus and the Kingdom of God, living in the fellowship of believers, worshipping God and praying, and serving the needy in their midst. Simply, from the biblical record anyway, early Christians didn’t seem too bothered or distracted by national or political events. They had a different orientation.

In this way we are not like them

Unlike the early Christians, we Christians in America don’t have the luxury of not caring about voting because it is a privilege we have as citizens of a democracy, and this is a very good thing.1

And in 2024, many American Christians voted. From here, “According to the 2024 PRRI Post-Election American Values Survey, White Christians, including Latter-day Saints, comprised 41% of all voters, who voted 72% in favor of Donald Trump. This vote was largely bolstered by evangelical and Pentecostal voters, who chose Trump by 81%.” And from here, “White evangelicals—27 percent of the electorate in 2024—were central to Trump’s reelection victory.” How Christian witness and Kingdom witness at least in this particular expression of Christianity is meaningfully restored after this I’m not sure, or how long it will take. This confusion between Christianity and political party has caused great damage to a clear witness to the Jesus of history by obscuring the teachings he told and the life he actually lived, not to speak of the loving reality of the Risen, Living Christ.

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While there are arguably legitimate reasons some voted in 2024 for our current president, it is clear that many white Christians voted for him to “Make America Great Again”. Whether or not folks who voted that way knew what would follow is a real question, and it seems that at least some white evangelicals are second guessing. From one poll earlier this year, in just three months there has been a 10 point drop in the president’s approval ratings in the white evangelical population that helped elect him.

A person votes the way they do for many different reasons, in the case of the 2024 election there’s no one reason that dominates. A good and Christian person could have voted for the Republican candidate in that election for some understandable reasons.

But if one of those reasons was because of the thought that somehow God needs America to be a Christian nation and the fate of the world depends on it, that person would be sorely misguided.

The Primacy of the Kingdom of God

America as a country has not always existed, and as an empire it will not last forever, nor will it last as a country forever either. God’s Kingdom came before it, transcends it, is here (Luke 10.9), will come in its fullness, and will last forever. (Rev 11.15) God’s hope for the world is not America, it is Christ’s body in humility demonstrating other-centered, self-sacrificial love (ie, being like Christ) in all its various expressions around the world, working on God’s behalf while longing for the day when the Christ will return as King. At his return, all national borders will fade, including ours. This is a vision to be welcomed.

Thus as Christians our fundamental hope and orientation cannot be on the preservation of America as a country or as an idealized nation but rather our focus must be living as a citizen of heaven first (Phil. 3.20) while we are citizens of this or any country.

Maybe our individual experience to live enfleshed on earth will be about 80 years? In the scheme of things, this is such a short time. Our opportunity to bear witness to God’s Kingdom is actually so brief. It is so much more important then, and long-lasting, to be a good Christian than a good American. America in any form is not where our fundamental hope lies, now or for the future. Marginalized people in America have always known this.

It may be that the damaged witness of the church in America in this time will be a cause for deeper soul-searching and reflection at some point by the Christian leaders who have misled so many to have misplaced their hope. Maybe what is being so clearly displayed now will will lead to Spirit-breathed repentance, reform, and actual Christ-like Christianity.

America’s own David Bentley Hart, the prolific and esteemed (and provocative) Orthodox philosopher, theologian, and a bunch of other things, said it pretty bluntly recently in a podcast.

Q: What do you hope for the future of Christianity as a whole?

DBH: I’m hoping for vast historical failure, which has already happened. I mean, as long as we love the temptation of power, the discourse of rescuing civilization, and the preeminence of the throne and altar accommodations of the great age of Christendom more than we love the humility and compassion of Christ. I mean look, we have people in the American “Christo-sphere”, I don’t know what to call it, colluding with a government that is, you know, torturing, abusing, killing the stranger in our midst.

I mean what was Matthew chapter 25, what does Christ say? ‘It is precisely these persons where you’ll find me, as much as whatever you do to them you’ve done to me.’ If you want to love Christ according to Matthew 25 you had better love the little five year-old boy in the bunny hat who was taken away to a hellish prison. You should love all these people whom ICE and the DHS are abusing and arresting and tormenting and making, you know, the objects of hatred. I want to see the whole project of “Christian-ism”, of Christendom, collapse under its own weight in an absolute abject historical failure so vast that the very words “Christian civilization” will have to be nothing other than soup kitchens.

Q: Those are some mighty words, and then out of that collapse out of the ashes, rises the Phoenix of what?

DBH: Maybe an actual attention to God as love, you know, the love of God and the love of neighbor as being the whole of the Law and the Prophets.

Earlier in this post I described what the New Testament talks a lot about:

• there is an immense amount about how Christians are to pursue personal holiness,

• how we are to treat fellow believers and people generally,

• how we are to serve with love and pray,

• and how external distinctions are quite shallow compared to the unity we have by sharing the spirit of Jesus.

• Jesus was consistent in telling us to care for those on the margins and modeling it.

In part 2 of this series on “The Colosseum vs. the Catacombs”, I listed what Christians were known for that dramatically contrasted the Empire they were living in:

• women were significantly valued, immensely more than the surrounding society

• there was no distinction between slave and free or rich and poor, male and female

• unlike the cultural norms of their day, undesirable babies (especially girls) were not left out to die and those which had been by others were even rescued and cared for,

• the poor were given primary concern and cared for,

• they held their property loosely and gave generously, sometimes surrendering it entirely for the community,

• they cared for the sick generally and also in times of plague,

• they only had one spouse and limited sexual engagement to that one person, they met regularly (religiously) in each other’s homes for shared meals,

• they didn’t kill people and practiced non-violence,

• they forgave their enemies and even their persecutors,

• they were willing to forego social advancement for the sake of their faith,

• they did not participate even as spectators at the Colosseum,

• they didn’t offer fealty or sacrifice to the emperor, and the list goes on…

In fidelity to the Risen, Living Christ and as students of the Scriptures they had, well-led by leaders who had no illusions about whichever emperor was on the throne of their Babylon, they figured out how to live differently in the Empire they were a part of. And we’re still talking about them, still taking cues.

To be continued… “They sustained their faith, how can we sustain ours?”

Last August I wrote at length about Rev. Scot McKnight’s excellent book Revelation for the Rest of Us in a post titled “America (also) Is Babylon”. What we in America are living in right now at America’s 250th in 2026 just brings that piece more sharply into focus, and makes that book crucial reading for Christians living in the US now.

What we’re seeing in Revelation is that there are two powers in the universe, Darkness and Light, and they war with each other, and in the end, Light wins, Good triumphs.

McKnight writes,

“Revelation records a timeless battle between two cities: Babylon and new Jerusalem. It’s a battle between two lords: the Lord of lords, Jesus, and the lord of the empire, the emperors of Rome”.

Just Two Kingdoms

Let’s keep going with the stark contrasts: Revelation is showing that there really are only two powers, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Darkness, the City of God and the City of Man to borrow Augustine’s terms. St. Ignatius of Loyola writes of having to choose between battle flags: The Standard of Christ or the Standard of Satan. Jesus said bluntly to us “You cannot serve God and mammon” and he said to Pilate “My Kingdom is not of this world”.

The Kingdom of God is entirely Other, it doesn’t work the way the world (Babylon) works and the world (Babylon) does not work the way the Kingdom of God works. Period. McKnight notes, “Babylon is timeless” and the Colosseum is but one icon of it and before and since then.

Babylon merely morphs and takes different forms like the empires of Assyria, Rome, yes Babylon, the Mayan, Aztec, Mongol, Incan, Chinese, Spanish, British, Russian, and so on. All of these manifest according to McKnight “the earmarks of empire of exceptionalism, nationalism, colonialism, and militarism.” They all operate in the spirit of Babylon, the way the world works, the way of the Colosseum.

America

And America (also) is Babylon. The American Empire carries all those earmarks too—exceptionalism, nationalism, colonialism, and militarism. With some tempering up to this point that we can be grateful for, America has and does work the way the world works. In chapter 20 of his book, McKnight identifies four distinguishing marks of Babylon that are easy to see in America in our history and very much still today—Arrogance, Economic Exploitation, Militarism, and Oppression.

All these Babylonian empires come with different iterations and the same character of leaders who have different times, cultures, contexts, and names. Some of those leaders are emperors, some are kings, others are dictators, some are prime ministers, chancellors, dear leaders, or presidents, or other titles. While no two leaders are the same, they have many similarities in their unique cultural and temporal landscapes.

Last year when I wrote the piece, I’d not yet conclusively made or wanted to make the connection between the emperors of Rome and a sitting US president.

But now we have been given another icon.1 I find it nearly impossible not to see this connection against the backdrop of Empires of “Babylon” vs. the Kingdom of God.

Nero

The first Roman emperor to begin the persecution of Christians famously was Nero who reigned for 13 years between 54 and 68 AD. We would call him today a classic narcissist, in any age he was clearly a megalomaniac.

Nero built for himself a huge and fabulous golden house, the “Domus Aurea”, along with other gilded dwellings. Nero ruthlessly eliminated political rivals. He had built a 100 foot tall glittering statue of himself (the “Colossus Neronis”) and smaller statues. He proclaimed himself the greatest in whatever competition he entered, be it athletic or artistic. He followed the practice of imprinting his own face on Roman coinage, distributed throughout the empire. He named building after building after himself, and wanted to leave a lasting imprint on Rome by changing its name to one that reflected his own (“Neropolis”). He was a big fan of blood sport in amphitheaters and also in the Circus Maximus in his own front yard.

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Long Sigh…

Friends, thanks for reading this far. I barely have the energy to say what seems so obviously clear and to elucidate it, but to move us forward let’s do it.

As of this writing, June 13, 2026, the current president of the United States is exhibiting behaviors that have been seen for thousands of years in many leaders of whatever iteration of Babylon in whatever time, and certainly in the Roman Empire and even specifically in the emperor Nero.

I don’t even want to name this current president by name because it’s actually not about him. He’s but another recent player in the way the world works. He is a pawn playing in much more, even cosmic, battle between good and evil, light and darkness, destruction and Shalom, Babylon and Jerusalem, the city of man vs. the city of God, the Colosseum vs. the Catacombs.

There are many emotions one can legitimately be feeling about this man, but in this way this specific actual individual is to be pitied and prayed for. He is unconsciously a pawn while willing to be one. What’s going on at his guidance and under his leadership is just another iteration of a larger struggle that has gone on for thousands upon thousands of years and will keep going on until the Jesus Christ, Lord of Heaven, finishes it at whatever time and fully brings the Kingdom of God to reign and to bear for the benefit of all people and creation at “the universal restoration.” (Acts 3.21)

But we need to highlight just a few parallels between this current US leader and the Roman emperor Nero, we’d have to note the same thing if a president of either party was doing this. This leader has broken so many American governmental norms and set precedents as a living president of either party by:

• renaming federal buildings after himself

• putting his signature and image ubiquitously on commemorative gold coins and active American currency

• putting his image on passports, National Park cards, visas and so on

• plastering images of himself across America’s capitol city

• naming so many things after himself, be it health care plans, investment accounts, airports, and at least one military destroyer

• applauding his own golden statue of himself

• and hosting a blood sport event on his own front lawn as a birthday gift to himself, a new icon.

After Nero died, the Roman Senate sought to remove any trace of his legacy, from destroying his statues, melting down his currency, not allowing a public funeral, all the way down to chiseling out the marble inscriptions that bore Nero’s name or image across the whole empire. This program was called the ‘damnatio memoriae’, literally ‘the damnation of memory”. While I was writing this, it happened for the first time that the current US president’s name was taken down from one of the public buildings that he had renamed after himself.

The man currently sitting in the White House is one to be pitied. He is to be prayed for.2 He is filling a role played by many other such men around the world throughout history, all the way back to Nero and before his time too. Such men are pawns of Babylon. What is much more pitiable and lamentable and worthy of righteous anger and sorrow is how much suffering these types of leaders, including this current one in America, inflict on so many people in their own country and on the whole globe.

Of course there are differences between a leader of 2,000 years ago and one today, it is never a one-to-one parallel. Babylon and “Caesar” don’t repeat themselves, they just bear similarities and change titles and clothes. One major difference is that while Nero persecuted Christians, this president was elected while promising to protect Christians and identifying as one himself.

This begs a question…

“What about Christianity Then and Now?”…to be continued

What drove and sustained the faith of these so many Christians spread out way beyond the Mediterranean for over almost 300 years? What enabled them to be not just faithful unto death but also in the sufferings they encountered during life for their claiming Jesus as their king and God?

What Enabled This Kind of Faith?

There are likely many factors that sustained the faith of the early Christians, including some familial, communal, and sociological motivations that enabled one to maintain one’s religion in the face of great persecution. Some would have likely been so welcomed and ministered to by the Christian community that it compellingly demonstrated for them the truth of the message about Christ.

For some I’m convinced there was a deeper reason.

At least some of the martyrs and those who had suffered much had had encounters with God and visions of Jesus that were utterly transforming and compelling. They were happy to give their lives in witness to the beauty of the Risen Jesus and the Love of God if that was the best way they could bear witness. From the recorded stories of the martyrs, many counted it as a privilege and honor to be asked to give this offering to bear witness to God, literally becoming like Christ through their suffering and death and literally putting Jesus on display.

In other words, the Risen, Living Christ? They had seen him. Paul on the road to Damascus was an early example of this. Jesus showed up to him unexpectedly on the a road to Damascus with a great light and Paul’s life would never be the same, and he’d undergo a lifetime of suffering to beat witness to the one who suffered for us and for him. In light of his encounters with God he would write, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” (Phil 3.10)

Others had seen and experienced the Holy Spirit of the Living Christ. Peter, the Apostles and the rest of the 120 gathered together on Pentecost was an early example of this.

There are numerous accounts throughout the first three centuries of other encounters with God, visitations by Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and various saints, as well as many accounts of visions of Jesus and saints at the exact point of death of a martyr, like Stephen.

From Some Authentic Acts of the Early Martyrs here’s just one testimony from Pergamum (modern day western Turkey) of the martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonica while under the reign of either emperor Marcus Aurelius or Decius.

“When the proconsul saw their outstanding steadfastness, he ordered them to be burned alive. They descended into the amphitheater with brisk steps, that they might be freed from this world as quickly as possible. Papylus was the first to be nailed to the stake. When the flames leaped up, he prayed quietly and gave up his soul. Carpus was nailed on after him. He was full of joy…When he had spoken and the fire was burning, he prayed, “Praise be to you O Lord, Jesus Christ, son of God, that you would deem me the sinner also worthy of this part in you!” After these words he gave up his soul.”

People who are able to do this had seen something, rather, had seen Someone. They had been given eyes to see that there truly is another world beyond the one we see with our physical eyes. They viscerally knew the reality of God, Jesus, and God’s Kingdom that is real, beautiful, everlasting, and full of love. They knew the God of Love and the Risen, Living Christ who reigns. They lived on a different timeline, and well understood the brevity of our enfleshed human experience.

Agathonica, having just witnessed the death of Carpus and Papylus,

“threw off her clothes, and jubilantly allowed herself to be nailed to the stake…standing erect and caught by the fire, she cried out three times, ‘Lord, Lord, Lord, help me, for I flee to you!’ Then she gave up her soul and was perfected with the saints.”

On his way to martyrdom in the actual Colosseum in Rome in 107, Ignatius the bishop of Antioch wrote his famous letter to Roman Christians asking them not to intervene for the release of his sentence.

Now I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing visible or invisible rob me of my prize, which is Jesus Christ! The fire, the cross, packs of wild beasts, lacerations, rendings, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of the whole body, the horrible tortures of the devil—let all these things come upon me, if only I may gain Jesus Christ!

Let me be the food of beasts that I may come to God. I am his wheat, and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become Christ’s pure bread.

A person who can say this on the way to that has seen Someone and knows something deeply beyond intellectual assent. Ignatius’ joyful courage came from knowing who Jesus is/was, what God is all about and what Christianity is all about, what the Eucharist is, what is the deepest invitation of the Eucharist (Christophe Lebreton calls it it to be ‘eucharisticized’1), and that the Christian life is most deeply about bearing witness to the God who is Love and the reality of the Risen, Living Christ. Some receive the unique privilege of martyrdom, the early church understood it to be an honor.

That summer three years ago, about two months before I found myself walking the streets of Rome and touring the Colosseum, the Visitor visited and granted me an Encounter. Having been given that sight of God by God, it slipped out of my mouth unthought with a quiet air of the first dawning of an understanding, “Oh, now I know how the martyrs did it. You are so Beautiful. They wanted to bear witness to your Beauty because you are so Beautiful. That’s why they were happy to do it, it felt like a grace to be asked.”

to be continued… “Babylon, Rome, and America”

Christianity vs. the Colosseum

Christianity was radically different. In the Roman Empire, followers of the teachings of Jesus and those belonging to his church held completely opposite values, held a totally different world-view, brought an entirely different message, and had a whole other way of being and behaving. Christians would have been completely other, and utterly weird, non-conformists1 in every sense of the word.

The ways Christians would have stood out in their Roman crowd are almost too many to list, but here’s a short one:

• women were equally valued,

• there was no distinction between slave and free or rich and poor,

• undesirable babies (especially girls) were not left out to die and were even collected,

• the poor were given primary concern and cared for,

• they held their property loosely and gave generously, sometimes surrendering it entirely for the community,

• they cared for the sick generally and also in times of plague,

• they only had one spouse and limited sexual engagement to that one person, they met regularly (religiously) in each other’s homes for shared meals,

• they didn’t kill people and practiced non-violence,

• they forgave their enemies and even their persecutors,

• they were willing to forego social advancement for the sake of their faith,

• they did not participate even as spectators at the Colosseum,

• they didn’t offer fealty or sacrifice to the emperor, and the list goes on…

It was that last one that proved most problematic. Whichever emperor was on the throne at the time was considered to be a god. Worshipping a man named Jesus as God would flown directly in the face of “emperor-as-god”, a profound threat to the established political and social order and a serious affront to whoever sat on the throne. To be a Christian was to commit treason against the one who held every earthly power without restraint or boundary. To stand against it was bold to say the least.

I don’t share the above list to make the point that we should do all these things to approximate as closely what the early church did (some solid Christian traditions make that case well and strongly), I share it to point out just how radically different the Christian community and practice was from the dominant Roman, imperial culture around them.

In the context of Empire, the way of the Kingdom of God was strikingly different. It was and would have been perceived to be completely novel, foreign, as if from another planet. If it seemed alien at that time, it’s precisely because it was. As Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” (Jn 18.36)

In the context of many temples and offerings to many gods, the One God of Christianity was so drastically different.

And Jesus? The One God become a Jewish human hailing from nowhere important? The creator God become flesh and crucified as a criminal? Other gods around the Roman Empire demanded sacrifices, this strange God sacrifices himself. Again, totally different, wow.

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I know the points I’m making are neither new nor novel, many have made them and better than I am here. But while walking around the streets of Rome and touring the Colosseum three summers ago considering the ways, worldviews, and lived realities of the Empire versus the Kingdom, the contrast glowed fluorescent.

Walking around the city underscored how tremendously important it is to recognize that while Christianity was forming for its first 300 years there were no earthly or material perks for being a Christian. In fact, the ‘anti-perks’ were huge, often including little social advancement or guaranteeing that advancement wouldn’t happen at all, always with the possibility of the Colosseum and beasts and blades and fire. All that but with a certain piety and morality that meant less money and less comforts, less relief from the indulgence of the flesh. To be Christian those first three centuries was often costly, dangerous, or both.

Then there was little to no earthly reason to follow Jesus and join, serve, or lead the forming church except because of the good news of the Kingdom of God and the reality of the Risen, Living Jesus Christ. The early Christians did what they did and endured what they endured because of Jesus resurrected and alive and the good news of his Kingdom.

The iconic Catacombs are their witness and glory, and their choice challenges us.

The Colosseum is how the world works. The Catacombs is how Jesus works.

Then as now, we have a choice of which god and which Kingdom we will serve, which way we will choose.

The Choice

• It is the Colosseum versus the Catacombs.

• It is Empire versus Kingdom.

• It is Caesar versus Christ (in Caesar’s various iterations),

• It is Power versus Love.

• It is America versus the Way, to explore later….

  ….but first I want to explore a curiosity.

What Sustained Their Faith?…to be continued in the next post…

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There are many reasons to be overwhelmed by the city of Rome and the Roman Empire of history. When I toured there for a week in the summer of 2023, I took a lot of notes and feverishly. A few themes struck me deeply, lodged in the soul, and ever since I’ve looked forward to getting them out of me. Little did I know then how even more relevant these lessons would feel now around the 250th anniversary of my own country of the United States of America.

ROME AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The city of Rome was founded in 753 BC, eventually becoming a kingdom before becoming a republic before becoming the Roman Empire in 27 BC when Augustus Caesar declared himself to be the first Emperor. And thus it was until the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 AD, severely diminishing Rome’s power and influence until it’s last emperor was deposed in 476 AD, marking the end the the Western Roman Empire. From its first emperor to its capital city being ravaged, this empire in its strength lasted a span of 437 years.1

And the Roman Empire was stunning in its reach, 2,500 miles from North Africa to Germania and 3,500 miles from Britannia to Mesopotamia.

It was stunning in its power, affluence, opulence, inequalities, and brutality.

It was was built by conquest, violence, injustices, and slavery. It’s estimated that by the end of the first century enslaved people made up 30-40% of the population of Italy.

THE COLOSSEUM

If you were to choose one image as an icon for Rome and the empire, it would be hard to beat the Colosseum. Seating up to 80,000 people it’s massive, a marvel of architecture and engineering, and an unfortunate tribute to the real reality of slave labor and its enduring legacy in many and contemporary forms.

Building began on the Colosseum under the emperor Titus soon after he destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. Titus razed the temple and took much Jewish treasure which helped fund the building of the Colosseum, while many of the Jews he enslaved were forced to help build it. It took 9 years to complete, using the labor of an estimated 90-100 thousand enslaved people, a significant portion of them Jews.

The Colosseum opened in 81 and its last gladiatorial battle happened in 435. For 350 years it was the venue for the constant brutal death of thousands and thousands of people (estimates are as many as 400,000) and countless animals for spectacle, for entertainment. For 350 years.

A normal day followed a general schedule: In the morning gladiators and those being executed fought with animals. Entertainment was provided over lunch. In the afternoons the battles were all human, gladiators vs. men and women or people simply set against each in a fight to the death. During the breaks, various sorts of people were executed. Day after day after day…for 350 years. The floor of the Colosseum was covered in sand to soak up the blood.

Ten major periods of the persecutions of Christians happened from 64 AD under the emperor Nero to the last one that began in 303 under Diocletian, in colosseums around the empire and certainly in the largest one in Rome. That last persecution lasted eight years, and it was the most brutal and systematic of them all, ending only just before Constantine became the sole emperor and gave legal protections to Christians in 313 with the Edict of Milan.

The Colosseum is but one symbol for Rome’s reach and power, affluence and opulence, inequalities and brutality. But it is an iconic one, a great image of Empire, Caesar, and Power.

The Colosseum is an icon of how the world works.

THE CATACOMBS

The Catacombs is a great image and another icon of something else—the Way of Jesus and Christianity. The contrast between the Kingdom of the World and the Kingdom of God is stark. During those ten persecutions many of the victims at the Colosseum would have been Christians. Some would have been buried in underground caves and in carved out tunnels under the city, including Peter the Apostle and many other martyrs.

The thousands upon of thousands of Christians buried in the sprawling catacombs underneath and outside the city of Rome had said a clear “No” to Empire, Caesar, and Power. Doing that is what got some of them killed in the most gruesome of ways. In life and death they chose God’s Kingdom and not Empire, and they were utterly different than the culture that surrounded them. Christianity was radically different than anything the Roman world had on offer!

That summer three years ago, it wasn’t just Rome and the Empire that overwhelmed me, it was also the Christianity itself lived out in that specific context and culture.

to be continued in the next post….”The Contrast of Christianity”….

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For Our Three Year Anniversary—April 19, 2026

Three years ago the chimes from the chapel over there
	tolled our wedding bells
And the service went forward as we walked

Flowers growing from the ground needed no further arrangement
The choir over here began their unending songs—
	the great crested flycatcher
	the blue-grey gnatcatcher
	the brown thrasher
	the red cardinal
	while the mockingbird mimicked all the parts

A dragonfly priest presided—nothing common about this pondhawk—
robed in her finest emerald, she dazzled with her black and white belt

Whether it was sunlight or breeze or the fragrance of wildflowers
the same sacraments embraced us both

When we said “I do”, one to another,
those great grasses stood taller to wave their arms with wild applause

Three years ago…in this place…

Coming back is to return to the place you came to me, proposed
and we got married, and made love
You made the first move and I swooned

That time came in fire
This time comes more gently with warm breezes, neither needs to say too much

That fire is not diminished, like love it matures
	like those tall live oaks, dressed up in their best Spanish moss
	those wisened witnesses to our wedding
	still here standing, witnessing still

This time—three years later—comes with 
	knowing glances
	contented smiles
	and held hands

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Today Pope Leo will bless the Basílica de la Sagrada Família and celebrate Mass there, 100 years to the day after the death of its architect Antoni Gaudi, and some weeks after the cross was placed on the Tower of Jesus Christ making it the tallest church building in the world.

I was there last October, I wish I could be there on this day. Instead, so we all can be there, let me offer a guided reflection from Space for God. Click the link below the image to join me for “The Bible in Stone: La Sagrada Família & El Camino”.

John 6.51 I am the bread of divine life that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will have divine life forever, and the bread that I will give for the divine life of the world is my flesh.” 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no divine life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have divine life forever, and I will raise them up on the last day, 55 for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. 57 Just as the divine Father sent me and I have divine life because of the Father, so whoever eats me will have divine life because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will has divine life forever.” (NRSV/BHV (translating life (zoe) most literally where zoe is used))

If you’ve heard the story of the killing of the seven Trappist monks of Tibhirine in Algeria in the spring of 1996, you may have heard of “The Testament” of the Abbot, Fr. Christian de Cherge, a letter written prior to his death. In it he expresses many beautiful things, including preemptively forgiving his executioner, whom he calls, “the friend of my final moment, in whom I see the face of God.” Their story is told in the powerful film Of Gods and Men.

Over the years I’ve pondered what sort of formation enables a man or woman freely to go the distance to martyrdom even with gratitude1, and what enables a man like Fr. Christian to do so with a heart full of love, peace, and forgiveness. What is that journey like? What is life with God like under that sort of uncertainty and travail, what is prayer like?

Turns out you can find out.

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Born From the Gaze of God

Three years ago while on sabbatical, I stumbled across (I believe providentially) the journal of Fr. Christophe Lebreton.

Christophe was the youngest in that company of Tibhirine martyrs, born in France in 1950. His journal from the last three years at Tibihirine before being killed at the age of 45 is titled Born From the Gaze of God. Reading it I knew would help me understand what’s underneath a life that is so given to God that to give one’s life for this love feels like a privilege and a homecoming. I read it slowly over that summer, prayerfully, reading as a learner, and Christophe became my friend.

Of many things I could offer from the diary, here is one of Christophe’s thoughts he would never have expected us to read:

“If one understands the Eucharist, one understands everything.”

Today the church celebrates with joy the Feast of Corpus Christi (Corpus=Body and Christi=Christ), or it’s formal title, The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, or in the Anglican tradition, The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion. It’s one of my favorite feast days in the whole year. “If one understands the Eucharist, one understands everything.”

From the very first days of the church, throughout its 2,000 year history up to today, and still in the church around the world right now the overwhelming majority of Christians believe that somehow, Jesus is really present in the sacrament of his body and blood, in the Eucharist. There’s disagreement on the how, but there’s not disagreement about the what it is—the bread and wine really become by his Spirit Jesus’s body and blood for us, his Real Presence, real food.

As an aspiring writer from the South, Flannery O’Connor was at a party in New York City when the conversation turned toward the Eucharist. Another writer said to her that they believed it was a symbol, albeit a pretty good one. Flannery replied, “Well, if it’s a symbol to hell with it.”2

At the heart of the English Reformation, Thomas Cranmer said “Christ is by faith spiritually present with us, and is our spiritual food and nourishment, and sits in the midst of all those gathered in his name [in the Eucharist]…there is a true presence and a real feeding indeed, and not in figure only or not at all.”

Aquinas called the Eucharist Sanctissimum Sacramentum, the “Most Holy Sacrament”, the sacrament that all the others are directed towards.

Quoting Lumen Gentium (Light of the Nations) from Vatican II… John Paul II often referred to the Eucharist as “the source and summit of the Christian life”.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said, “The Eucharist demonstrates that material reality can become charged with Jesus’ life, and so proclaimed hope for the whole world of matter.” He says elsewhere, “At the same time we are set free to invite Jesus into our lives and literally to receive him into our bodies in the Eucharist.”

“If one understands the Eucharist, one understands everything.”

What is the everything that is being understood?

We can’t ever fully plumb the limitless depths of this mystery, let alone in 5 minutes, but here’s a start.

• This is the creator of the universe who became part of creation in the Incarnation becoming part of creation again through the Spirit.

• This is Christ who in the incarnation became matter becoming matter again.

• This is ongoing real-time humility of God, who continues to condescend to us in the sacrament. Mother Teresa said, “Jesus became small, fragile and defenseless for us. Bits of bread can be so small that even a baby can chew it, even a dying person can eat it.”

• This is the love of Jesus again being poured out for us, on us, in us, and to use his own words in John 6.51, “for the life of the world”.

• The Eucharist is Jesus saying again to each one of us, “I love you, I love you, I LOVE you!”. When we come to this table we hear him singing love over us! Ronald Rolheiser calls it “God’s kiss.”

• In it Jesus feeds his sheep.

• We are receiving the Body of Christ to be fortified to be the Body of Christ. This is spiritual food for our souls and sustenance for our fundamental Christian vocation. Let me put it as bluntly as I can: We eat the Body of Christ to BE the Body of Christ in the world.

• The Eucharist reminds us just how much Jesus loved and loves us. Look at the suffering of the cross and the shedding of blood and the tearing of flesh that he was willing to go through because he wants us, he desires us, he desires you that much. Jesus is desperate for you.

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• At this table are reminded that we are sinners indeed, and yet not even our sin can separate us from the love of God, for by the blood of Jesus we are forgiven and made clean and made whole. Hallelujah!

• The Eucharist puts on full display not just the love of God—the force behind the creation of the whole universe and our world too—but the nature of that love: self-giving, self-sacrificial, kenotic, humble, never stopping, always coming. The Eucharist puts on the display the fierce love of God for you, for us and for all people and for all of creation.

• Jesus in the Eucharist comforts us, strengthens us, grounds us in the Ground, embraces us.

• Receiving Jesus in the Eucharist nourishes our divine life with him and his divine life in us. Friends, when we receive him in the consecrated and transformed bread and wine, we literally take him into our bodies. We eat him, we metabolize him. His flesh and blood become literally part of our own flesh and blood. Eucharist is intimate.

• The Eucharist reminds us that we are part of one big big family, the whole family of God through Christ now and throughout all time. We are part of a family, we have many brothers and sisters.

• The Eucharist challenges us to remember that those Christians who most different than us and whom we find to be the hardest to tolerate are kin.

• At this table everyone is equal, we are all hungry beggars looking for bread, and equally valuable and welcome.

• This table, this sacrament, is our glad shout of faith and hope, that our Jesus will come again and with his kingdom in fullness, that one day earth and heaven will indeed be one! In this feast we proclaim the resurrection of Jesus until he comes again.

• Speaking of a feast, the Eucharist sings to us and all people that we are welcome at God’s table, and it’s a big table! The Eucharist is the hospitality of God, and God wants more people at it. God wants YOU at it. Jesus died for this….why? Of course because he loves you, he loves us.

O friends, I could go on, we could go on and on and on. I know I’m going to spend the next week say, “Oh shoot Bill you forgot that one!…and you should have added that one!…oh man how could you have left that one out?!”

“The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.”

“If one understands the Eucharist, one understands everything.”

So two encouragements, one from me and one from Mother Teresa.

Let’s keep trying to understand that which is beyond our comprehension.

And from Mama T, “If I can give you any advice, I beg you to get closer to the Eucharist.”

Tonight we come to the table together as individuals and as the Coracle community, as just a very small part of the universal body of Christ.

For us it will be my great joy to hold up the cup and say, “Behold the Love of God for you!”

It will be my great joy to hold up the host and repeat those words of St. Augustine, “Behold who you are—Become what you receive.”

I love it in the Bible when the characters show up with all their honesty, angers, wants, passion, desire, vulnerability, blood, sweat, tears, and screamed longings. Think Jesus in John 17 or the Garden of Gethsemane, Jeremiah in Jeremiah 20, Jacob’s “I won’t let you go ‘til you bless me”, Martha and Mary to Jesus “If you were here Lazarus wouldn’t have died”, Peter’s “Where else would we go?”, Job’s challenge to YHWH, so many of David’s Psalms, and so many more examples.

This is what Paul, a guy like us to who got Grabbed, is doing in a long loved passage— Philippians 3.4-14.

Countless times I’ve taught on this passage, about how here we are seeing Paul (again) lose himself in his writing and he just lets it go. The power of Paul’s passionate focus has come back to me in force in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about it a lot and praying with it, wondering what it is saying to me.

Paul’s not writing here with his head, he’s writing from his heart. He’s not writing ideas, he’s spilling blood.

Paul is writing nakedly and vulnerably to his Christian family in Phillipi (and us) about what drives him, what motivates him, what gets him up in the morning, what he’s striving for, what he most deeply wants and is willing to suffer for, and what he’s willing to give up for it. This is not a guy preaching, this is a guy testifying, a guy singing a love song.

After a litany of his former life and listing a quite impressive religious pedigree like a resume (v4-6), he says he’s happy to give all that crap (the literal Greek, skubalon) up for something far better, “for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ” (v8), “that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” (v8 and 9)

And then Paul launches in verses 10 and 11:

• “I want to know him”

• “and the power of his resurrection”

• “and share in his sufferings”

• “and become like him in his death”

• “so that I may attain the resurrection of the dead”

I want to know him

It all hinges on what “know him” means.

Paul’s not talking about mental assent or intellectual knowledge or believing a set of propositional truths about Jesus. No, he’s using “know” here in the biblical sense (ie, Gen 4.1) , an intimate experience of another, or in this case, intimacy with the Other who incarnated as Jesus the Christ.

JI Packer famously puts it, “Knowing God is more than knowing about God.”

AW Tozer said, “The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed person is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.”

As Dallas Willard would put it, “The knowledge of God of which the Bible speaks is never a mere intellectual awareness of facts about God. It is an interactive relationship. It is a life shared.”

My beloved wife’s name is Tara. I don’t want to know about Tara, I want to know Tara.

That’s what Paul is saying here about his own desire, he wants to know Jesus, an intimate relationship of mutual exchange and reciprocity, of union. So yeah, that union and exchange for Paul (and us) means knowing the power of Jesus’ resurrection, joining Jesus in his sufferings by going through his own sufferings, and being willing to go all the way to death like Jesus went all the way to death. In Paul’s case, he got all of his wishes. His desires to know Christ such that he got to re-live Christ’s life and example were granted, all in the interest of Paul’s putting on display Divine Love, like Jesus did.

So Paul wants this and knows he’s not there yet, but he leans in harder because Jesus has already claimed him. (v12 and 13)

So then this (v13-14)…."But one thing I do:

• “forgetting what lies behind” [that is, his whole religious background and pedigree and those relationships and all the gains from a successful religious career (v4-7)]

• “and straining forward to what lies ahead…”

• “I press on…to the higher life in Christ Jesus.”

What exactly is that ‘higher life in Christ Jesus’ he’s talking about? This goal, this prize, this call of God is union with Christ, it’s intimacy with Jesus, it’s knowing Jesus, it’s re-living the very life of Jesus in Paul’s own unique expression so that Jesus might be seen and known….sorry, known by many many others down through all the centuries that came after Paul and the centuries to come.

Ya wanna ask some of my current questions with me?

So I’ll invite you into a couple of questions I’ve been asking this past little while. You don’t have to join me, but you may want to also pray with:

• What do I need to do to ‘forget that lies behind’?

• What does ‘straining forward to what lies ahead’ mean for me?

• How can I ‘press on’ to ‘the higher life in Christ’ in my own life and circumstances? What exactly do I need to be doing to pursue deeper union with Jesus? What do I need to do and keep on doing to deepen my union with God?

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  Thoughts Along the Way is a reader-supported publication. To get new posts and to support the ministry of the Coracle Center of Formation For Action consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Even better, to support my voice consider making a tax-deductible donation to Coracle. Truly, thank you. You give me courage.

Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen, OCD, is a deeply trusted guide for the deeper spiritual life. He takes certain topics that may often feel murky to us and makes them very accessible with great wisdom.

His book, The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love, is fabulous. I find the title itself thrilling. More importantly, the Holy Spirit is fabulous!!

The goal of the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection is Pentecost. If God has become man, if he has suffered and died for us and risen from the dead, it is in order finally to fill us with the Holy Spirit. Jesus says it with crystal clear words: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” (Lk I2:49).1

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Even his2 name reveals that the Holy Spirit is mysterious. The Hebrew ruah, the Greek pneuma, and the Latin spiritus mean both wind and breath. Jesus likens him to the wind: “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (Jn 3:8). One cannot catch the wind or control it. There is something unpredictable about it. And the one who lets himself be captured by the Spirit (the wind) receives something of his mystery and unpredictability: “So it is with every one who is born of the Spirit” (ibid).

Even the other two great symbols of the Holy Spirit point to his mysterious character. Jesus speaks of living water. “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water? Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive” (Jn 7:37-39). Living water is spring water, bubbling water, water that is moving, that gushes forth without restraint, and its quantity or power cannot be determined.

The Spirit is also fire. He descends as fire on the disciples at Pentecost. It is true that one can put out a fire in the beginning (cf. I Thess 5:19), but if it is left to itself, one loses all control over it. It sets everything.

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Just as we have no power over spring water or fire, so likewise, we have no power over the Spirit. We cannot describe him accurately or define him; we cannot lock him into a concept or analyze him. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). No one can catch the Spirit, but the one who wishes can let himself be caught.

May you find yourself filled afresh with the Spirit on this day of Pentecost! May we all find ourselves newly empowered by the Spirit to do what God has given us to do.

St. Brendan (484-577) was one of the most famous of the Celtic pilgrims, renowned not only for the piety of his life and for founding several monasteries in Ireland, but also for his amazing voyages west over the open seas in one of these small boats which were (and still are) called coracles. Want more about coracles? I’m glad you asked! There’s a reason we named our ministry with this image 14 years ago, and that 20 years ago we planted a church called St. Brendan’s in the City.

It is certain that on St. Brendan’s longest voyage he and his fellow monks made it as far west as Newfoundland, and there is some reason to believe that he even made it farther south on the North American continent. The written account of his journey, “The Voyage of St. Brendan”, became a ‘best-seller’ for a thousand years as sort of a combination of adventure story and devotional writing.

Today you may want to take some time with an album based on his life by the band Iona, “Beyond These Shores”. I’ve prayed with it many times.

Or you may want to say this prayer yourself on this May 16th, St. Brendan’s Feast Day:

A PRAYER OF ST. BRENDAN

“Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways

and break fresh ground with You.

Christ of the mysteries, I trust You

to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know

that my times, even now, are in Your hand.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for You.”

AMEN.

It’s happened before, when something is going on that so deeply disturbs me that it takes time to figure out how to write about it. It’s not because I don’t care, it’s because I’m praying, paying attention, and figuring out what, if anything, to say.

Last year around this time I referenced us living in a time in the United States of “the biggest rollback of civil rights since Reconstruction”. That was a year ago and much has happened since, and then more stuff happened two weeks ago and it’s taken a bit of time to know how to respond.

On April 29, 2026 the US Supreme Court announced its 6-3 decision in the case of Louisiana v. Callais, effectively ending the landmark Voting Rights Act which has been in place for over 60 years. It’s been two weeks of sadness around that I’m still figuring out what to do with it. I guess writing this piece is one thing, mostly citing words from others while I’m finding my own.

I was deeply grateful when the historian Dr. Jemar Tisby flagged on his Substack he’d be writing a piece with the title, “This Is the Civil Rights Movement of Our Day”. Jemar is a brother in Christ and the author of the important work The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, Please read the whole article.

Sometimes people don’t realize the historical moment they’re living through. This is not one of those moments.

We are living through the Civil Rights movement of our day.

I’ve been saying this for about the past decade since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Too many people ignored the warning signs.

But if you couldn’t see the parallels 10 years ago, you can’t get a clearer connection than literally tearing apart Black voting rights.

What Happened to Voting Rights?

You may feel lost in all the headlines about the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act a couple weeks ago.

Let me make it plain: The Voting Rights Act is dead.

If not on paper, then in practice.

The crowning achievement of the 1950s-1960s Civil Rights movement was the Voting Rights Act. Now that progress has been erased in an effort to Make America (even more) Racist Again.

The law is still on the books, but it is effectively useless to protect the right to vote, especially for Black people.

The radical right “justices” on the Court basically said racism is mostly a problem of the past, so there is no longer a need for the protections outlined in the Voting Rights Act.

Dr. Tisby goes on to unpack why this is and how it works, and then challenges us to think about what we are doing right now. It’s pretty bracing and hard to read, yet it’s important to read.

So many people today say,

“If I was there during the Civil Rights movement, I would have marched with Dr. King. I would have boycotted. I would have protested.”

Well, we are living through the 21st century Civil Rights movement.

What you are doing now is exactly what you would have done then.

Are you avoiding the news, going about your daily life, and ignoring what’s happening? That’s what you would have done when Black people were being turned away from the polls in the 50s and 60s.

Are you hiding behind ‘both sides’ language instead of taking a stand? You would have been part of the “moderates” that MLK wrote about in the Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Are you more upset by protest tactics that disrupt your sense of civility than by the injustices that made those protests necessary? Then you would have been among those calling for patience, gradualism, and “order” instead of demanding immediate justice.

Are you organizing, donating, showing up, and helping people take action? Then you would be among the number who were on the right side of justice and who we look to for today.

And then Dr. Eddie Glaude

I appreciate the writing and voice of Dr. Eddie Glaude, especially his book Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. This whole 8 minutes is worth watching (including Rev. Raphael Warnock’s (also a Senator) opening comments) but if you only have 4 minutes start watching at 3.45.

“Racism still occupies the throne of this country. There’s nothing about our current days that should lead us to believe that we are in a post-racial world. And once we admit that, and admit of our sins, then perhaps we open up a future for us to be otherwise.”

In 2015 and with others, Coracle started the Repentance Project, to help us do precisely that, to admit of our sins for the sake of a better future for all Americans and bear witness to the great reconciler Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, and work towards “the Beloved Community” that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was presciently calling us to. We developed and promulgated (and still do) the 50 day devotional journey An American Lament as a tool for spiritual formation leading to right grief, true healing, and ultimately justice and reconciliation. We are delighted to continue to deepen our long partnership with the Racial Reconciliation Group (listen about that here) and continue with them to co-sponsor not just transforming events but even more importantly to create space for transforming relationships. To respond to what is happening in America right now, we invite you to join us. Drop me an email if you’d like to connect, or subscribe to this Substack and make a comment.

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What else does one do?

Among other actions Tisby recommends (like vote) in his article, here’s one. Be sure to look at the others.

Start using this language in public: This is the Civil Rights movement of our day.

If people still don’t understand this moment, we need to tell the truth louder.

My mentor, Martin Luther King, and Selma

I was providentially privileged to be mentored by Gordon Cosby, who along with his wife Mary founded the Church of the Savior in Washington DC in the late 1940s. It speaks highly of him that, when after marchers for freedom were beaten on the Edmund Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday of March 1965, Gordon was one of the white pastors MLK Jr. called to join him. From here:

After the nationally televised assault on protesters, also known as Bloody Sunday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. summoned White clergy nationwide to walk arm and arm with him across that bridge courageously; to march for justice.

Rev. Cosby received the call inviting him to join 40 other Washington-area ministers on a chartered plane to Selma. On Sunday, March 21st, Rev. Cosby marched with 3,200 people.

Rev. Cosby returned to Washington, DC, with a spirit on fire.

“To be in the midst of the freedom movement…is to touch a spirit and come away changed,” he told his congregation. He brought a burning question to his members: “What is our Selma?”.

I don’t know the answer to that question yet, but as a white clergy I’m paying attention. Let’s pay attention together.

What about the “God is Love” stuff you’ve recently been writing about, Bill?

Great question…yes, my last posts have mostly been about the deeper spiritual life and the glorious God who is love. Amen! As over the past three years, I continue to be taken with this beauty, truth, invitation, and message.

And so I pay careful attention when the God who is love who I love says, “For I, YHWH, love justice”. (Is. 61.8). I want to love what the God who is love loves. For me (and us) to love Jesus, who is God, is to love what God loves.

Why God hates injustice is because it leads to the suffering and diminishment of men and women who suffer it, all those who are both image bearers and God’s own sons and daughters, which is every single human being alive. Why God loves justice is because God’s image bearers and children benefit from it and can flourish into who the God who gives their life made them to be.

I want to love what the God who is love loves.

The United States, from our very beginnings, has caused too much suffering over too many decades for too many of our brothers and sisters based on something as literally superficial as the color of skin. So, if we are a Christian living in this particular country at this particular time, we work not only to right this wrong of racism and white supremacy in its historical and sadly contemporary expressions, but even more so to live “the good news of the Kingdom of God” (Mt 9.35 and elsewhere), and create a wide variety of sorts of ‘beloved communities’ together as witness to the God-Who-Is-Love and who loves justice, the God who rose from the dead and who is alive and active and gorgeous.

Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” (John 14.15-21)

As you all know, I spent the better part of this past week on spiritual retreat at Mepkin Abbey. I went down with little agenda except to enjoy God, and I did! I went down with no expectations except that God would meet me as I needed to be met, and God did!! I’m very grateful, “Thank you, You-Who-Are”.

Driving back and thinking about you, thinking about us and our Coracle Community, my heart was flooded with a deep longing for you. Driving 75 miles an hour on some highway in South Carolina I _felt_ it, and it is the same feeling as Paul’s longing for his own people back in the day, in fact he gives me the words and concept of it.

On this Mother’s Day it feels appropriate to highlight a man using the metaphor of the pains of labor to describe his own pain, something that I know mothers always appreciate. It helps a woman feel seen, for a man to really empathize with the process of childbirth.1 But I digress…

Foolish or wise, Paul uses that profound image to try to get at something he feels deeply in Galatians 4.19. To his people in Galatia, he’s concerned for them and wants something for them, and he describes it “My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…”. That’s what makes Paul desire something very deeply and what drove his ministry, that Christ would be formed in those early Christians.

Yes, that’s what I desire deeply for you too and each of you, and what drives me in Coracle and our community. I want Christ to be formed in you. It really is that simple, when I think about us. I want Christ to be formed in you, and in me too, and I have and will labor at it. I know what it means, and that’s why I want it for us.

For Christ to be formed in us means that we have become

People who are marked

• by radical love,

• by radical hope,

• by radical trust in God our Father,

• by increased freedom and interior freedom

• by less self-confidence and more God-confidence,

• by strange peace when there’s no reason to be peaceful.

For Christ to be formed in us means that we have become people who are able

• to see the invisible behind the visible,

• to forgive others even those who deeply wound us,

• to be spoken poorly of and even humiliated,

• to be agents of healing for the brokenness we encounter.

For Christ to be formed in us means that we have become people

• who have eyes for those the world tends not to see,

• who love God more than religion,

• who mediate Divine Love to those around them,

• who love justice,

• who are able to respond to interruptions with wisdom and grace,

• who know who we are because we know who God is and who our Jesus is and Who lives inside of us,

• who are willing to suffer and even die to bear witness to the love of God,

• who put their trust in God for our resurrection.

I long for this for each of us and for those who will join us. This is what I desire, what I feel ache about, what I feel fire for and what I’m focused on: that “Christ would be formed in you.” I don’t need to you be a particular type of Christian or believe a certain set of beliefs exactly like do or behave a particular way or vote for one political party or the other.

No, I want “Christ to be formed in you.” The rest will take care of itself. I want him to live in you in your unique expression in the world, and for you to feel the attendant joy, freedom, and fire.

So some bad news and some good news.

The bad news is, I can’t do this, I can’t make it happen. All I can do is walk alongside like a coach and cheerleader while that spiritual formation, well, forms.

The good news is that there is someone who can and does and wants to, it’s Jesus himself by his very own self living inside of you.

From our Gospel reading today, John 14.16 and 18 “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever…I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” That connection right there tells us that the Holy Spirit is Jesus’s own spirit.

“I am coming to you” which he did on the day of Pentecost, with the coming of his own Spirit to his followers then.

Paul makes the identity of the Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus explicit when in Romans 8.9 he refers to “the Spirit of Christ” and in Philippians 1.19 “the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

The v20 “On that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you”…by the Spirit of Jesus in us which makes us in him too and by virtue of him being in the Father then we are in the Father, and then because of the Holy Spirit of Jesus in us, we are in the life of the Trinity. Whether you believe it or not, if you’ve been baptized and believe in Jesus, the Trinity lives inside you and you live in the Trinity. We’ve been swept up into something!

John 14.17, “The Holy Spirit abides with you (makes his home in you), and the Spirit will be in you.” This is a Trinitarian affair, just a few verses later v23, “Those who love me keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home in them.”

Y’all, this talking about us. The Trinity wants to make its home in us, in every follower of Jesus, and does! What does it take to wake us up to this reality and let it form and transform us? Why do so many sermons have such shallow purposes and short-sighted vision? The Divine wants to and does live in us Christians, so that we can share in Divine Life and be Divine Love.

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Next week the Church marks the Ascension of Jesus, 40 days after his resurrection. Bummer, wouldn’t it have been better if he’d stuck around? Not according to Jesus, John 16.7 “It is good, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not got away, the Spirit will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

If Jesus stayed in his human flesh on earth and was around even to our day, that means that to interact with him we’ve have to go visit him wherever he happened to be, which I’m guessing would mean most people would have to travel to get there and I’m guessing he’d be thronged with so many people it’d be hard to get a minute to talk to him.

But it’s good that Jesus went away, because then by sending his Spirit to the earth, he can be not only be in us but everywhere. John Stott put it well, “The Holy Spirit internalizes and universalizes the presence of Jesus.”

I love this from Martin Luther, “Christ ascended so that he might come nearer to us.”

One writer puts it so well,

“The Ascension is not the story of Jesus departing and leaving behind a forwarding address. It is the story of Jesus going away in order to be present differently— more intimately, more pervasively, more inwardly than the bodily proximity he shared with the apostles on the roads of Galilee could ever achieve. The sheer astonishing claim of the scriptures, in fact, is that we enjoy a greater presence and intimacy with Jesus now than those disciples who knew his scent or whether he laughed at their jokes.”

So for today by way of application, I’d like to encourage you to feel a few things, and to breathe.

How might we respond to this tremendous desire of Jesus to be one with us so that we can be one with the Trinity, and that he leaves us so he can be nearer to us with his own Spirit inside us?

Let us feel gratitude, awe and wonder, and curiosity. Here’s the corresponding prayer, “Thank you, Wow, and What does it mean and what does it mean for me?”

And I encourage you to breathe. Specifically, here’s a breath prayer you might try throughout the week: On the inhale, “I am in you…” and on the exhale, “You are in me…”.

Let’s do that together even right now….

“Whatever we can read in all the world is contained in that sentence of boundless meaning, "God is Love" [1 John 4:8].

This is the sum and substance of all that the sunshine utters, and all that is spoken by calms and storms of the mountains, and by what we call terrible earthquakes and furious torrents, and wild beating tones of the ocean.

All these manifestations are but forms of that one utterance: "God is love."—John Muir

After 57 years of life, 30 something years of pastoral ministry with 20 of those as a priest, and more than 20 years now of offering spiritual direction, this is one of the more troubling realities I’ve encountered often and still do. It’s we Christians (even those who appear quite mature) who are able say with great sincerity, “God loves me”, but this head knowledge doesn’t translate into heart knowledge. This “functional belief” contradicting one’s held theological belief manifests itself in a vast myriad of forms, for example in the sentiment, “I know God loves me, I’m just not sure if God likes me”. Or holding the unspoken maybe subconscious sense that God is waiting for me to get my act together to really love me. This disconnect between the head and the heart can manifest itself in a variety of certain behaviors, or the articulated and specific sharp question itself, or in the midst of deep crisis, a dark confusion, or very unsettling disorientation.

What to do?1

An Irish Jesuit, William Johnston (1925-2010), spent 50 years living as a priest in Japan and gives us a place to begin. And it’s only three words. It just so happens those three words contain everything, recalling John Muir’s words above, “Whatever we can read in all the world is contained in that sentence of boundless meaning.” As Johnston concludes below, “This is the mystery of mysteries, the mystery that lies at the heart of our Christian faith.”

From Being in Love:

Take the biblical phrase: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Repeat it again and again in your heart. As you do so, savour it, relish it and you will find that it is sweet as honey in your mouth. “God is love . . . God is love . . . God is love.” Repeat it at your own pace and rhythm. After some time you may wish to stop repeating it and to be silent, without words and without thought. This is a rich silence, a sacred silence, a precious silence, a mystical silence. This is indeed the threshold of mystical prayer. So treasure that silence lovingly until after some time (perhaps after one minute or perhaps after ten minutes) you get all distracted, and then you return to your biblical words: “God is love . . . God is love . . . God is love.”

If you continue this solving practice for several weeks or months you may find that “God is love” keeps rising in your heart as you sit in the bus or stand on the train. It may fit into the rhythm of your body as you walk: your very footsteps and your breathing may be saying: “God is love . . . God is love . . . Gos is love.” The refrain may continue even when you are busily engaged in some apparently absorbing occupation. it will be as though there were two levels in the mind. At one level you are absorbed in washing dishes or sweeping the floor or teaching mathematics or whatever; and at another level the refrain goes on: “God is love . . . God is love . . . God is love.”

And then one day you may exclaim with a surge of ecstatic joy: “God is love! I never understood it before! For the first time in my life I know it is true; my whole being knows it and shouts out to the universe: God is love. Now my being is transformed and possesses the unshakable conviction that God is love. How could anyone deny it? if only the world knew! . . . God is love . . . God is love . . . God is love.”

But that is not the end. After a few months or years of repeating and savouring and relishing these words you may again cry out with sudden joy: “God is love! . . . I thought I understood it before, but I didn’t. My former enlightenment was only the beginning. Now I know that God is love.” And so you will go on and on and on, living this extraordinary message about the love of God. It can never be exhausted; you will never reach the end. For this is the mystery of mysteries, the mystery that lies at the heart of our Christian faith.

Alleluia and Thanks Be!!