theeffect Podcasts: Recent Episodes
David Brisbin
Audio podcasts delivered at theeffect church in San Clemente, CA. theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way. See more at theeffect.org.
Dave Brisbin 8.2.26 We have always been taught that Jesus came to save us from our sins. Not true. Not sins plural as in all the harmful choices we make or actions we commit. God understands those, loves right through those. In John’s gospel, Jesus came to take away the sin of the world. Singular. Not choices or actions, but a state of being…separate. The universal sin of the world—the pervading illusion of separation, of ourselves as separate from, in competition with everyone and everything else—the state from which every harmful choice and action proceeds.The price of human self-awareness is to experience ourselves as separate beings, a sensation so physically pervasive, it overwhelms the unseen truth of ultimate connection. As infants, we swim in undifferentiated oneness until old enough to conceive of ourselves with distinct edges. Then the hurts and traumas of childhood pile up creating a narrative of unworthiness indoctrinating us to believe we’re not worthy of the connection we more and more dimly remember.Between Mark 1 and 2, Jesus heals a leper, forgives a paralytic, and calls a tax collector to community back to back to back. Which means we’re supposed to see these encounters as connected. All three are outcasts. They know it, have accepted the narrative of unworthiness laid upon them. But Jesus touches the leper before healing, forgives the paralytic before restitution, calls the tax collector before repentance. He declares his connection with them even as their narratives stare in disbelief.This was Jesus’ plan all along. Not to save us from sins, but to touch, forgive, call with the warmth of a smile that erased all doubt of connection. Only when we have felt completely unworthy and yet completely accepted at the same time, can we see shame for what it is—a narrative, a fear of disconnection that keeps us disconnected. Shame is the only thing standing between us and the Good News that our original connection remains, waiting patiently beneath old stories of original sin. It’s the long way home, but Jesus came to save us from the separation that is sin. But to do that he first had to save us from shame.
Dave Brisbin 7.26.26 Played high school football my first two years. Bookish kid trying to fit in, never got off the bench in league play. But I could learn that playbook. Knew it cover to cover better than the starters. Took some nerdy pride in that. Small and fast, they put me at tight end and during a training scrimmage, quarterback called an end around. I knew that play cold: two steps off the line, planted, spun around across the backfield, quarterback fading into view, ball suspended in my path, slapped against my chest. Clamped down and turned back toward the line. Perfectly executed. But in my mind, the play was over. No more lines on the page. Holding the ball with absolutely no idea what to do next. A big linebacker showed me.I had focused on what I could understand, but everything it means to be a football player starts where the playbook ends. The parts we can read and memorize are not why we go to football games. What we do when nothing is telling us what to do…that’s worth a ticket. In real life, though, excitement turns to panic when we can’t see the path ahead. It’s an honest mistake. We see the path snaking behind, choices and events like stones in a lawn, and we imagine the future laid out in front of us as well… destiny, fate, God ordained…if we could just get a glimpse. But wise man say the path is made by walking on it. Life is not a worn path in the woods, stretching out behind and before. It’s an adventure, a masted ship at sea. You see the wake behind, ahead only trackless ocean. A cloud of possible futures, constantly shifting with each choice/event.We look to religion, its scripture, laws, beliefs, rituals—playbook and promise. If we follow the book, we’ll be safe. Saved. It may actually seem to work for awhile, until we suddenly find ourselves holding the ball with no idea what to do next.Religion puts the play in motion. Jesus shows us how to exceed the playbook and run downfield with the ball. Life begins where the playbook ends. Why we buy the ticket. The way ahead is trackless ocean, a field of linebackers. Frightening. We could get in trouble. But that’s how you know it’s an adventure.
Dave Brisbin 7.19.26 A contemporary theologian and semiotician—how meaning is communicated—saw that our youngest generations process information differently than older Westerners in the modern era. He called it EPIC: experiential, participatory, image-based, and communal. Pretty much the exact opposite of our modern method: propositional, representational, word-based, individualistic.We propose abstract concepts rather than experience a process; passively receive information rather than participate in an exchange; view the world through words as an individual rather than images within community. The hallmark of the modern West is to remain intellectually detached, observing life and attempting control from a safe distance. But the youngest among us jump right in, experiencing and participating in a communal world awash in image.Absorbing this decades ago, the light went on when I realized that ancient cultures, especially the Hebrews who wrote our scriptures, were EPIC too. Here we are, modern Westerners, reading ancient EPIC texts in a diametrically opposed, non-EPIC way. Explains a lot. Jesus called himself the Way. Not as propositional truth to use as a litmus test for orthodoxy, but as the invitation to participate and experience relational truth that could promise liberation no other way. Jesus’ earliest followers called themselves Followers of the Way. Not followers of Jesus in a representational, passive attempt to ride his coattails, but in the discipline of living lovingly in community. The Way, urha in Aramaic, means not just the path, but the light that reveals the path and opens possibility. When we view Jesus’ sayings of way, truth, life; ask, seek, knock; the five lines of the Lord’s prayer through an EPIC lens, they become sequences in a process of participatory experience, not words agreed upon for personal salvation.We want to see the path that leads us to God. But when Jesus says the only Way to God is through him-as-Way, he is EPICly saying an unseen God can only be found on an unseen path…experienced in participation with each step, conveyed through image, and realized in identity with community.
Dave Brisbin 7.12.26 If God were sitting next to you right now and you could ask one question, what would it be?Puts a pretty fine point on it, yes? To stop the ever-running assembly line of questions forming in your mind and pick just one… For adults, the questions were predictable: Why do you allow suffering? Don’t all religions lead to you? How can I trust the bible? If you’re really there, why don’t you prove it? Children’s responses were predictably less heady: How are you doing? Are you happy? And… If God was sitting next to me, I’d just like to give him a hug. Gotta love kids. That last one really points in the right direction. Adults have to face the fact that the most important questions in life don’t have answers. Only the experience of asking. Life isn’t answered and resolved rationally. Only lived. We can keep asking questions, but using our minds to navigate a spiritual journey is like bringing a knife to a gunfight…the mind is not the vehicle for such a journey.Even so, there is one question Jesus is asked that rises above the rest. What must I do to obtain eternal life? Two thousand years ago, yesterday, today, isn’t that the question? Is what we see around us all there is to life or is there more? All other questions are just variants of this one, but Jesus doesn’t answer except to say, if you’ve done all you can do to be certain and want to fill that place that is still lacking, then sell all you think you know and come give me a hug.We think of eternal life as a long time, life going on forever, an eternal future granted by God in exchange for believing the right things. But all of time is just one moment, eternally. And in Aramaic, eternal life is not life that goes on eternally, but life that is eternally alive—new, fresh, fulfilling, complete, abundant. Not then. Now. Not there. Here. Life only becomes eternal the moment we become present to the life that is now.We are not saved by the mind. By thinking, our minds separate us from this moment, from eternal life. To obtain that life is to stop thinking and start hugging. The hugging, embracing now as just enough is the eternal aliveness we seek.
Dave Brisbin 7.5.26 Truth is messy. We like the beginning of things, especially big things like nations, to be neat and tidy events, so looking back, we compress them into just such neat narratives. Our histories and memories rely much more on poems we write about our heroes than actual happenings. True beginnings are most often a messy process that scatters and diffuses the points we want to remember. The points remain, just not wrapped in a bow.July 4th, 2026, we celebrated the 250th anniversary of what? Our nation’s birth? Beginning of revolution? Signing of the Declaration of Independence? None of those happened on July 4th, 1776. The war started a year before, and the Declaration wasn’t first signed until August 2nd with signatures dribbling in through early 1777. The colonies simply adopted Jefferson’s rough draft on the 4th of July.Truth is messy, but the point of the document remains…Jefferson speaks of political bands as existing only to serve the people—at their own consent—and when they no longer do, can and should be abolished. That all mankind are created equal with unalienable rights—rights that cannot be estranged. But that humans will suffer injustices infringing those rights as long as they are sufferable, knowing the path of revolution will make things much worse before ever better.Jewish scripture often depicts Israel as one person, God’s son, moving through the shape of his journey to freedom. Those ancients believed “as above, so below,” that the movement of stars and nations mirrored our movement as individuals. What relational bands are keeping us in place? Do they serve all parties? Are they helping to secure our unalienable rights to love that can’t be estranged? Or are we suffering what is sufferable until our fears bottom out?Jesus is a micro revolutionary calling us to fight an interior revolution for spiritual liberation. Jefferson mirrors that call with a Declaration stated as boldly as it gets. All in. Nothing left on the table. The moment our longing for freedom exceeds the fear of claiming our right to unalienable love, we can be as bold as that. As messy. All in. Our 4th of July.
Dave Brisbin 6.28.26 Eucharist—usually called communion—is the essential Christian sacrament, the centerpiece of Christian worship. When a sacrament persists for millennia as a defining ritual, it’s telling us something about how earliest followers understood their journey. It can also tell us what we’ve forgotten about ours.Eucharist means thanksgiving…because Jesus gave thanks over bread and wine at that last supper…because we should gratefully remember Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the means by which sins are forgiven, and we are saved. Jesus said that the bread was his body and wine a new covenant in his blood, but how we understand the word covenant has everything to do with how we understand communion.In the West, we’ve understood covenant as a legal contract obligating both parties as contracts do. If we keep the terms of the contract, God is obligated to accept us, save us. But through the lens of original sin, there is nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy, so contractually, Jesus must do the heavy lifting. By believing in him theologically and not breaking the law, we are covered by his blood, but our side of the contract remains passive and vicarious. Salvation without transformation.In Hebrews 9, the same word Jesus used for covenant is described as a last will and testament, its primary meaning. Jesus is the mediator, we would say devisor, of a will that leaves his estate to his heirs. Such a testament only comes into effect with the death of the devisor, not while he lives. Jesus said it was to our advantage that he go--only then could we receive our inheritance. The new covenant is not a contract as was the old one. It is a handoff of the estate of Kingdom. We are heirs to all Jesus had, not passive legal obligation, the opportunity to actively engage the experience, the awakening of Pentecost, full authority to live and love as Jesus did.The earliest followers of Jesus called communion anamnesis, which means unforgetting. We would say remembrance. Unforgetting is better. To realize that Jesus willed Kingdom to us, that his Way of life has always been ours, is to unforget who we really are.
Dave Brisbin 6.21.26 At the extremes, physical reality is utterly different than the world we perceive each day. Unlike our solar system with distinct planets neatly orbiting the sun, inside an atom, an electron doesn’t orbit a nucleus, but has a form that can only be described as a cloud of probability. It doesn’t orbit. It surrounds the nucleus like a fog. Quantumly speaking, electrons are in superposition. In this state, subatomic particles don’t exist in any one place. There is only a certain probability of being here as opposed to there…until we interact with them, measure them. Then superposition collapses, and from our point of view, the particle is forced to “choose” a position. Before we interact, all positions and energy states are possible. Within the atom, the particle is everywhere and nowhere and yet always right herenow. Ancient Hebrews described God hovering over the moment of creation, a conscious interaction that collapsed the void into the positions of space, time, and matter—a version of reality we can observe and measure. They imagined God’s presence as a pillar of cloud, right herenow among them, but without form that could be pinpointed or represented. And they were forbidden to try.They knew God is always in the cloud. We could add, in superposition, the probability of everywhere and nowhere. When we interact with an electron, force it out of the cloud, we imagine we can measure and understand it. But we are not seeing the electron in its natural state, as it is when no one is looking. When we interact with God, force God out of the cloud, we imagine a version of God we can measure, but it’s no longer God we see, just a representation we can imagine.The extremes of the physical universe sit closer to eternity, showing us if we want to experience ultimate reality, God, as they really are, we can’t force them out of the cloud. We enter the cloud ourselves. Raise our frequency till we inhabit the everywhere and nowhere of unwatched electrons. This is prayer as Jesus prayed—his only Way to the Father that we can also travel once we accept there is no form to measure, only the cloud to breathe.
Dave Brisbin 6.14.26 God is love. That’s not just a statement, it’s a principle. Attributes we experience as the infinite Source of everything go far beyond qualities we use to describe. They point at essence, a table of indivisible elements, commodities that comprise the whole. If God is love, then God is also everything else that supports the oneness that love is: restoration, reconciliation, salvation, forgiveness. God doesn’t perform them as verbs. God is them as nouns. Even grammar can’t keep up.If God is forgiveness, then God doesn’t forgive. Forgiveness is the essence of the field of God’s presence. Enter the field, enter forgiveness. There is no prerequisite for forgiveness. No contrition, confession, penance required. No precondition beyond what it takes any of us to enter the field. Entering the field, being fully present, means being fully aware, vulnerable, humble, willing to submit to something greater than self. Which happen to be the same qualities that forgive—free us from guilt or victimhood.Jesus never says, I forgive you. He says, your sins are forgiven or your faith has made you whole. Not an action, a recognition of having entered the field. This is not a distinction without a difference. It makes all the difference in how we understand our relationship with God. Jesus tells the story of laborers who go to the field to work early in the morning and all through the day, some only working an hour before quitting time. They are all paid the same. The early workers are outraged. So are we. But the point is, the pay is entering the field, not a reward for time served. They were paid the moment they entered the experience.To believe God does or doesn’t forgive based on performance is to fear God may withhold the love and acceptance of forgiveness. But God can’t withhold what God is. God is one, oneness is love, love is forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t absolution bestowed. It’s the field we inhabit. Forgiveness is the journey we take to become present to the field. Like the stages of grief, the healing is the journey. No one can take it for us or heal apart from it. We’re as forgiven as we want to be.
Dave Brisbin 6.7.26 Man on his roof as flood waters rise. A boat paddles by—jump in, and we’ll save you. No, God will save me. Another boat—jump in, we’ll save you. No, God will save me. A helicopter hovers extending a rope ladder—climb up, and we’ll save you. No, God will save me. Flood comes up, and the man drowns. Face to face with God, he asks, why didn’t you save me? I sent two boats and a helicopter, what more did you want?How much time and angst do we spend asking for things we already possess? That are already here?We’ve been taught a zero-sum model of spirituality that enshrines scarcity over abundance. We’ve been taught a legal model of spiritual relationship that embeds a reward and punishment mindset. We’ve been taught an anthropomorphic God, operating out of human emotion with anger, resentment, retribution much more immediate than love and compassion. We’ve been taught to fear. Fear that God withholds until conditions are met. That contrition, confession, and penance are the legal means to forgiveness—a commodity for acceptance. But in the original language of the gospels, forgiveness and freedom are the same word, and those same scriptures tell us God is love. If God is love, and forgiveness is freedom, then the fear, scarcity, reward and punishment we were taught are wildly off point.If God is love, God doesn’t choose to love or withhold; God exists as the indivisible oneness we call love. When we are hurt or hurt others, all that stands between our alienation and a reclaimed awareness of that love is forgiveness. Which means, God doesn’t forgive; God exists as indivisible restoration to the oneness we call forgiveness. We aren’t forgiven as an act God performs or not, we simply walk into the freedom from victimization that is God’s presence. Or not.We seek forgiveness as a legal transaction, but forgiveness is a person. A person completely free from anything that would stop the flow of forgiveness. To step into the presence of that person is to experience all that person is.God has always and forever sent two boats and a helicopter. All we have to do is climb in.We’re as forgiven as we want to be.
Dave Brisbin 5.31.26 Sin is central to Western Christianity. From original sin—understood as a genetic state of depravity, a separation from God unbridgeable by human effort—to our own personal sins—understood as unlawful behavior—all we can do is wait to be saved by an outside power—understood as an event, a granting of approval triggered by ritual practice or mental assent to doctrinal beliefs.I know…putting it that way is a bit hyperbolic. But only a bit. Especially in contrast to Eastern Christianity, which understands salvation as a process of theosis—a life of becoming more and more God-like in awareness, intent, daily presence and practice.By default, we’re all legalists, believing we must earn everything we get. That’s the physical reality of life around us, and human authority always uses reward/punishment to control behavior through fear. By the third century, the church had codified Jesus’ message into more law, ironically missing the fact that Jesus constantly battled the religious legal system of his day that kept the people from their theosis, from direct experience of God.Sin is not behavior at all. Sin is the state of being separated. John sees Jesus as the one who takes away the sin of the world. Sin singular. Not endless acts of unlawful behavior, but the human condition, the egoic perception of separateness. Sin, hataha, is missing the mark of the fullness and oneness of God. The “sin” of becoming aware of self as a separate entity, represented in the Garden by eating of the tree, creates the fear that drives unlawful behavior.We say sin leads to separation, but sin is separation itself. Any act that leads to separation is sinful, but to focus on behavior, on symptom, is to lose sight of the cause—our separation anxiety. The Good News is that God’s love is not legal, conditional, but the bedrock reality that any sense of separation is illusion. Pure egoic projection.To wake us from our illusion of separation, take away our sin, is Jesus’ mission. For if we believe everything must be earned, nothing is freely received. We’re either guilty or entitled. Never grateful. Never free to pursue our theosis.
Dave Brisbin 5.24.26 When Jesus says, do not judge, for in the way that you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you, he is saying something immense. But we don’t get it.Squeezed through our default perspective, which is always legal, we see life through a performance-based, reward and punishment paradigm that peels off just one of the possible meanings of Jesus’ saying: that if we consciously judge/condemn others, we will be judged back. And through our legal lens, God is the one doing the retaliatory judging in some karma-like way. But the Aramaic language itself and Jesus as a Jewish mystic point to much more.Our minds are judging machines. That’s all they do. Compare, contrast, calculate odds for advantage and survival, dualistically judging each moment and everything in it as good or bad for our needs and agenda. Good and evil appear mutually exclusive and morally opposed against the standards we have absorbed since childhood. And those standards objectify all of life around us, create heroes and villains, preferences and aversions, and a sense of separation from everything we encounter. Like an exhausting game of chess, every move we make is calculated toward a never-ending series of outcomes always present in our minds but never the moment.In Aramaic, taba and bisha, good and evil, are not legal terms, they are relational. Literally meaning ripe and unripe, the highest good and evil for an ancient, agrarian society, they form a continuum from immaturity to maturity—the ability to nourish, preserve life and relationship. To begin to see good and evil as a continuum of functionality is a first step into the flow of life and away from constant judging, objectifying, separating. The full reach of Jesus’ statement is to master the automatic, unconscious working of our minds that takes us out of the flow of every moment, out of connection with everything we encounter. Until we can use our minds as the tools they are, tempered with the ability to stop judging, seeing life as pairs of opposites, we remain stalled along our Way from bisha to taba…and our own sweet ripeness.
Dave Brisbin 5.17.26 Jesus never told his friends to worship him. He told them to follow him…not conceptually or theologically or even physically, but to follow his Way of living and seeing. To worship Jesus as savior is a passive waiting for transformation to be gifted from outside in, a static bestowal for which we conform, not transform. But Jesus insists that the awakening that is Kingdom is not out there somewhere to be entered from outside in. To follow Jesus is to actively emulate his Way of becoming attuned to an experience of God’s presence directly, from inside out.Following Jesus’ Way develops the one skill that changes everything, or better, opens the door to everything: awareness—the ability to notice thought itself. To be able to step back from the torrent of our minds’ activity, to observe it without identifying with it any longer. To realize that our thoughts aren’t us, just the by-product of what minds do. Without this one skill nothing else along Jesus’ Way is available because, carried along by thoughts and their attendant emotions, we can’t be present, see what is really sharing the moment with us, give what love requires. Cognitively fused with unconscious beliefs and fears, we’re trapped inside a bubble that extends only as far as the inside of our eyelids. When Jesus says from the cross, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing, he is speaking to this unaware state. When he urges to sell all we possess, he’s showing us how to strip down to naked awareness of a truth that makes us free.He starts with the law. As long as unquestioned thoughts believe blind obedience is enough, will contractually gain God’s favor, we’re not free, not aware that passive conformance doesn’t even scratch the active surface of transformation. Yet Jesus isn’t abolishing. He deconstructs only what is necessary to reclaim awareness. That’s the lesson. Not deconstruction for its own sake, but to graduate from blind obedience to thoughts that rule like law, to develop that one skill…to notice our thoughts, not as mandates to obey, but a threshold to cross on the Way to reclaim our awareness and remember who we are.
Dave Brisbin 5.10.26 God is love. What does that even mean? If we define love as nondual presence, consummate oneness, then the scriptures are trying to tell us that God is fully identified with each and every speck of creation. That God, us, everything are ultimately of one and the same substance. Love is the experience of that oneness, awareness of that identity. To be in love is to be relieved of any sense of self, the generator and container of the illusion of separateness.Judeo-Christian tradition demands this oneness of God, but God as one creates no end of conceptual problems for us living in a dualistic world of endless paradox. To explain the existence of evil, we split God into many gods, some good, some bad, or we post Satan to oppose God’s goodness. We split God into three to explain God experienced also in human form and unseen spirit. We split God in two by calling him Father, implying a glaring feminine space left unoccupied.Does scripture imply any such unbalanced rift in God?Though God is always referred to linguistically as masculine, God is not always portrayed that way. God’s wisdom, hockhmah, is a feminine word, and wisdom is portrayed as female throughout Hebrew scripture. Ruach, God’s spirit, shekinah, presence, and malkutha, kingdom are also feminine words…making spirit, she, and kingdom, queendom. God is often anthropomorphized as female, both human and animal, offering nurturing affection in contrast to the impartial justice of the king.The Hebrew mind couldn’t conceive of father without mother. Hebrew words for father and mother mean one who brings strength to the house and the glue that holds the family together—the blending of accomplishment, performance, structure with relationship, compassion, affection. Both necessary, complementary, a paradox that must never be resolved. God is the eternal oscillation between father and mother, and only in the oscillation do we find the perfect parent.Resolution is a return to duality, separation. God is nondual presence, the blurring of all attributes into one. To experience that oneness, the loss of all sense of separateness is to bathe in all of God.
Dave Brisbin 5.3.26We think we understand the scriptures because we can read them in plain English. But just as we never want to see our sausage being made, we have no idea the interpretive choices being made to translate ancient Eastern texts for modern Western minds. A word for word translation between any two languages is not possible. We’re not just translating words, but an Agreement of meaning between cultures and worldviews. Until we understand the Agreement, we won’t understand the words.When literally translated into English, Jesus’ sayings make no sense, create wrong impressions, even seem immoral. We either pretend we understand or file them on a back shelf until we’re ready to dig deeper. Jesus says that just an angry thought makes us guilty before the court, that we should not resist an evil person—if slapped on the right cheek, offer the other as well; if sued for our coat, give our shirt as well; if forced to go one mile, go two. He says we will always have the poor with us—uncompassionate, to accept oppressive taxation—unjust, tells a man to sell everything he has earned and to give whatever anyone asks of you—irresponsible.What’s going on?Part of the Agreement is context, the context of a saying. We live in two contexts simultaneously: the micro and macro. Our daily interactions are micro—one on one—but always couched in the larger macro context of the group. In the macro, love looks like justice, because without equality, the integrity of the group is lost. But in the micro, love looks like mercy and compassion. Without that, there is no relationship.Jesus always points to perfect love. His mission is to convey that love. So Jesus’ sayings are always code switching between micro and macro, mercy and justice, bringing what love requires to each moment in whatever context. Confusion arises when we are reading through the wrong context. We’re geared toward justice, the macro law we’ve learned to obey, but God loves us always in the micro, mercifully spirit to spirit. God’s love is not just. Its mercy unbalances the scales of justice in favor of each of us.Seems irresponsible…the price of perfection.
Dave Brisbin 4.26.26What’s worse than not knowing something really important, the trauma of uncertainty? Not knowing that you don’t know is worse. Complete unawareness of a really important thing is a step back from, a block to the ability to even begin seeking. And what’s worse than that? Thinking that you do know when you don’t. Thinking you already know closes your mind, creates resistance when presented with anything new.This is how it is with Kingdom—the most important thing Jesus is trying to convey. His entire message hangs on the experience of what he calls the Kingdom of God, and arguably, his entire ministry is an extended definition of what he means by that phrase. His friends thought they knew Kingdom. For centuries they’d been taught it was a physical kingdom to be created by a warrior messiah who would reestablish a sovereign Israel, fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham.We think we know kingdom too. That it’s heaven, a reward after death we await if we’ve kept the contract implied by Law and church doctrine. After all, Matthew calls it the Kingdom of Heaven, but we don’t know that heaven/shemaya, was a euphemism Jews used to avoid saying the name of God. The irony is, technically we’re right…but we think we know heaven too. And even though Kingdom, heaven, God are equivalent in Jewish thought, we don’t know what we don’t know. Without understanding what Jesus means by heaven or Kingdom, we’ll never understand how he’s leading us to God.Kingdom/malkutha is not a place or territory, but the experience of king and people in symbiosis, resonating together. The people don’t obey, they share the king’s vision and values. What are those? God/Alaha means unity, oneness, identification with all. Heaven/shemaya is immersion in that unity right herenow. If we’re waiting for heaven, we’re not in kingdom. Or God.Kingdom-heaven-God, is herenow, embedded in the field through which we walk. If we’re waiting for something, we won’t see it. Jesus is trying to show us it’s not what you think it is. It’s not what you think at all. Until you let go of everything you think you know, you can’t see what is already here.
Dave Brisbin 4.19.26When we beg Jesus to save us, we’re missing the point of salvation. Salvation is not given to us. Can’t be. Salvation is experiencing, remembering, the primal truth that we already have everything there is from a God who is love, withholds nothing. And what is that everything? Heaven? Understood as God’s acceptance, identification with us, yes, heaven. Right now? Here? Doesn’t look like heaven… And it won’t until we’ve experienced that heaven isn’t a place we’re sent, it’s remembering who we are in God’s presence. Which raises another question.What if heaven is not the end of our journey, but the beginning? We think of heaven as the reward for a life of obedience, the ultimate paycheck. But at every turn, Jesus pounds against obedience as the basis of relationship with God. Obedience is motivated by fear of punishment, and fear can only breed more fear, never love. Jesus’ Way is the process of casting out the need for fear by experiencing a perfect love we already possess. And truth is, we can’t begin a process that requires stripping off everything to which we’ve clung for security our entire lives, until we’re convinced we’re already accepted—at least enough to overcome the fear of the first step.This is the Good News. That there is no bad news. Jesus leads with it, with acceptance. Always. Touches lepers before healing, reconciles with the unlawful before instructing, serves anyone in his path, whether woman, child, wealthy, poor, gentile, Roman. Acceptance first. Heaven first. It has to be.We can never obey our way to heaven. Reinforcing fear of punishment blocks the experience of love. But if the acceptance of heaven is experienced, and for even a moment we remember we are God’s beloved, obedience transforms into an expression of love, the joy of our identification with God-as-love. It has the same effect as obedience, but we have graduated far beyond it.The means we use must match the ends we seek. We’ll never end with heaven if we don’t start with it first. It’s all herenow: all God has to give and all we are to receive. This is the Good News. It costs us everything to comprehend. Good trade.
In baseball, you count absolutely everything. Gets pretty obsessive, but if you love baseball, you learn to love counting too. Who knew it’s the same with religion?The “people of the book,” the ancient Hebrews who wrote the scriptures Christians cherish as well, counted everything. But their numbers didn’t have to be accurate to be true. Literal accuracy was not the point. Hebrew numbers, like their letters, carried meaning, and Hebrew letters were also numbered, so words had numbers that had meaning, and counts of time, people, things, had meaning too. It was a complex system for conveying meaning encoded into our scripture, and if we are to understand original intent, we need to pay attention to the counting.We just finished counting the forty days of Lent—meaning a time of trial and testing into rebirth. Now with Easter passed, Jesus risen, seems we should be done counting. But Easter Sunday started a new count, one built on the Hebrew counting between their ancient barley and wheat harvests, Passover and Shavu’ot, Exodus and giving of the Law—meaning a gradual graduation from physical liberation to spiritual freedom. Meaning built into the Christian counting between Easter and Pentecost.Both traditions count seven weeks of seven, 49 plus one day, 50. The Christian tradition breaks this down to forty plus ten: forty days with the risen Jesus on earth, ten more to integrate Jesus’ unseen spirit before Pentecost. Symbolic, not literal.We think of salvation as an event, a moment when God bestows acceptance, but scriptures show the experience of Jesus’ followers as gradually becoming ready to see that salvation is not given at all. It is experienced, realized, remembered... No one recognizes the risen Jesus until intimacy is re-experienced in a period of adjustment to altered states of awareness, from physical presence to unseen spirit—until we can remember the Pentecost moment, full awareness, is possible.All God has is already here, within. The shape of our journey is a counting until we’re ready to see. The counting gives structure, symbolic meaning, and the reminder that we’re all in the count.
Dave Brisbin 4.5.26There’s not a single tenet of Christian doctrine that’s not contested. Even within Christianity. The Resurrection is no exception. Christians agree that Jesus lives, but not how…physically, spiritually, collectively, some way we can’t imagine? Ultimately, it’s a matter of faith shaped by how literally we read scripture, but where can we go for guidance to meaning? Of course, the gospels show us just where to look. We focus on the supernatural miracle, debating veracity and mechanics, but the gospels focus on the effect of the miracle, not the event itself. The Resurrection happens offstage, no details, the story picking up afterward. The question the gospels are implying is not whether we believe the Resurrection, but what difference it makes that we believe. And that difference is not realized in mental assent to an offstage event, but a process that stretches from Easter Sunday to Pentecost.A fascinating detail the gospels do preserve is that no one recognizes the risen Jesus. We wonder whether he looked different, but that misses the gospels’ point: that seeing the risen Jesus is a process of becoming ready to see the impossible, a process grounded in intimacy. Mary hears her name called in tones she’d heard a thousand times; Clopas sees Jesus break bread as he had a thousand more; for Peter, he’s cooking breakfast. The gospels show the process of re-experiencing intimacy—always the proof of identity for any human. The meaning of Resurrection is not out there in history or doctrine, but within us, in every intimate detail of our lives.Gospels ask: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Life is motion. No motion, no life. Set beliefs are static, dead. If we look for the risen Jesus in books and beliefs, he is not there, any more than he was in the tomb. The gospels are showing us where to look—in the heart of every day life. If we can’t find Jesus in the moving miracle of life herenow, we’ve missed the meaning of Resurrection.Jesus saw his Father in every intimate detail of his life. His friends couldn’t see he had risen until they saw him in every detail of theirs. And neither will we.
Dave Brisbin 3.29.26Gospels show Jesus riding into Jerusalem not on a horse, as would a conquering king, not on a donkey, which would have meant peace, but on the colt of a donkey…even more unassuming. The people cheer, beg him to save them, lay their cloaks along his path, wave palm branches—greetings for a savior king—while Roman and Jewish authorities see threat of sedition and plan accordingly. No one is paying attention, seeing reflections of their own agendas, not the person and scene playing out in the streets.What the church has called a triumphal entry, Jesus called a tragedy. He wept over the city saying the people had no idea of the things that make for peace, that they missed the hour of their visitation. The writers of the gospels, who had come to see where Jesus was pointing, wanted us not to miss our own opportunity to see something radically different, to crack the first stronghold blocking our way to the truth behind Jesus’ message. This is the significance of Palm Sunday. Seeing around our own egoic identity, past the desires, expectations, and compulsions such identity creates, seeing through our ego-filter to the truth of things as they really are, the truth of ourselves, who we really are is the first step, without which we can go no further along Jesus’ Way. Jesus is showing who he really is in action, word, symbol, every tool at hand, revealing an unassuming presence, the stance of a servant, the opposite of a powerful savior come to fix our circumstances by force. Begging Jesus to save us misses the whole point of salvation. Salvation isn’t passive, isn’t given or bestowed. It is experienced…or not. Jesus’ person and message is an invitation to follow the Way of experiencing the truth, the liberation that salvation is. Mother Teresa put it this way: I have an opportunity to be with Jesus 24 hours a day. Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, his hand in every happening…especially in the lowly appearance of the poor. Each of them is Jesus in disguise.Jesus is always riding into our lives. Every moment is Palm Sunday. Everything we need is all around us disguised as life.
Dave Brisbin 3.22.26I’ve been on the whole of Lent about how the holy grail of all spiritual work, of Jesus’ teaching, even our most ancient liturgical rites is…awareness. Waking up inside waking life. Until we can poke our heads above the waterline of our egoic selves, we’re only ever seeing the inside of our eyelids, nothing of the real that is not only all around us, but within as well. We can’t see the air; fish can’t see the water. Hopefully our odds are better than theirs.But what happens when we do wake up? Blissful sweetness and light? Jesus sounds an alarm. He didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword that would cut within our own families first. To help decode, the word for peace Jesus uses here is not shalom—he’s the prince of that—but shayna, calm, tranquility. The immediate context is the rift that inevitably stresses our closest relationships after radical transformation, but more deeply, there is an interior rift that opens when we’re no longer experiencing life the way we once did.Some authors put it this way: There's a peculiar suffering that comes with awareness. A kind of exile that happens not when you leave the world, but when you begin to truly see it. Conversations that once felt normal feel empty. Environments that once felt safe start to feel small. Awakening stretches your awareness until the old version of your life no longer fits the same way. This creates a profound loneliness—not of being physically alone, but of being awake in a world that's sleeping.If this is true, why would we ever take the red pill and wake up?Pulling off a blindfold in sunlight is painful, but as eyes adjust, would we ever opt for blindness? Becoming aware is transitionally painful, and if the awareness is merely conceptual, cognitive, it can harden into a jaded sense of separation, even condescension with life. But if we carry our awareness into momentary experience, we fall back in love with life, now with the deeper knowing we’re not above anything. We’re part of that whole.Awareness is waking up to remember who we are. Insignificant parts of an infinite whole that considers each part the center of its universe.
Dave Brisbin 3.15.26The earliest followers of Jesus understood that his Way of spiritual formation was about subtraction not addition—that there is nothing to acquire, no kingdom out there to make us whole. That everything there is, is already within, herenow, if we will only relinquish everything in our minds that blocks us from experiencing that reality. Our uniquely human egoic consciousness is all that separates us from everything else.Jesus’ Way offers the experience of stepping outside the torrent of thoughts our minds constantly create and into the stillness where there is no separation. How could Eric Liddel train so hard to win the 1924 Olympic 400M race, yet be so relaxed before the race he could smile and wish each competitor luck? Even at age 22, he realized all that mattered was that he felt God’s pleasure as he ran.When we’ve let go of outcomes to the point we can feel God’s pleasure as we run, what do we know we didn’t before? We know what has been called perennial wisdom, the universal truth that stands beneath all philosophy and theology, language and logic. This is the deep truth Jesus says will make us free. It can’t be put into words, but maybe we could point by saying: We are all one, and because we’re all one, nothing can exist outside of God—all that is seen and unseen is God. We emanated from and return to God, our source, and because of that, everything is truly good no matter how it appears.From that worldview, Richard Rohr extracts five more truths: Life is hard, we are not that important, our lives are not about us, we are not in control, and we are going to die. Sound brutal, but once couched in the oneness and non-separation of everything, they become consoling extensions of universal goodness: We are all parts of larger whole. Any identity apart from that whole is illusion. We are fulfilled only in the hard work of staying connected to and aware of that whole. We emanated from it and will return, but our minds actively block this reality. To experience it is to relinquish our minds’ hold, surrender self to that larger whole.Knowing this truth is feeling God’s pleasure as we run.
By all accounts, Eric Liddel, immortalized in the movie Chariots of Fire, was the embodiment of an old soul. At age 22, he won a gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the 400m race for Britain, and after over twenty years as a missionary to China, died there at age 43 in a Japanese internment camp at the end of WWII. But the real story lies beneath such events.The movie turns on the contrast between Liddel and his Olympic teammate Harold Abrahams and sister Jenny. Abrahams is obsessed with running, determined to win at any cost as revenge for antisemitic prejudice and proof of his superiority. Jenny is obsessed with religious duty and chastises her brother when he misses a prayer meeting, frivolously training for the Olympics. He tells her: I believe God made me for a purpose—for China. But he also made me fast, and I feel his pleasure when I run.Minutes before the start of his Olympic race, while the other runners are stretching and digging starting blocks, brows furrowed, intent on maintaining focus, Liddel, with a sport coat over his running shorts, is smiling and casually walking among them, shaking hands and wishing each one luck. Years later in the Japanese camp, fellow internees wrote of him: I never heard him say a bad word about anybody…he was overflowing with good humor and love for life, with enthusiasm and charm...his last words were, It’s complete surrender…Abrahams and Jenny are the same person with different agendas. Driven, anxious, identified only with what they could do. Liddel’s genius was to find within every physical task an eternal task always pointing to connection. That true meaning and purpose is found in that connection and nowhere else, and addressing that connection is to never let the hard work of change eclipse the radical acceptance of right now. That to celebrate the connections around us now is to accept ourselves and everything just as we are. Even as we train and strain toward not yet.Everything we do is meaningless… Until the moment duty is no longer obligation and running is no longer winning. Just the feeling of God’s pleasure in the breeze of our passage.
Dave Brisbin 3.1.26A few years ago, a billion painted lady butterflies fluttered over our heads migrating from inland deserts to the Pac Northwest. Was a very wet winter, and the high desert that usually get three inches of rain in a year, got that in a weekend. All the dormant seeds waiting in the cracked soil burst open, blanketing the desert floor in a spectacular bloom. Started the cycle of life that sent a billion butterflies north.Can’t miss a billion butterflies.But we can miss one. Or two. We mostly take nature for granted in our concrete cities—only dimly aware of it turning in the background behind the urgency of our tasks and thoughts. But when nature becomes intense enough, it calls attention to itself, forcing us to see again and fall back into the wonder of the child. Should we have to be called? Wait for circumstance intense enough to break us open like desert seeds waiting for spectacular rains? Are we so husked over that we can’t just get up and go find water?Desert seeds have no choice but to wait for rain. But there is water all around us, and we can bloom whenever we want. The question Lent is asking is how do we find the water? It has to do with deprivation, not as penance, but as a quieting. It has to do with prayer, not as words, but the awareness we need to be awed again by a single butterfly. Paul tells us to rejoice always, pray continuously, and in everything give thanks. Three directives that define prayer as falling into a constant state of gratitude, which always feels joyful by definition, present and aware by necessity.Unceasing prayer is engaging our entire experience in any given moment. Full presence and participation, seeing everything with all our senses without naming them in our head, aware of the connection that is God flowing beneath the level of thought. It’s letting the smile spread across our face without permission, pulling the car over to take it all in.What makes us smile, makes us pray.It really is that simple. Our way out of the desert tomb. If we’re waiting for rain, we’re not blooming. But the waiting is over, kingdom is here. We can bloom any time we want.
Many of us who grew up with Lent hold dark memories of being forced to give up favorite things as penance for our sinfulness—even before we could really sin—with the implied punishment of self-deprivation as preparation for Easter, but more deeply as appeasing an angry God. Whatever the doctrinal intent, without further teaching, this is what we kids absorbed: a cementing of the reward/punishment paradigm that negates Jesus’ concept of a love that self-exists as the oneness at the heart of everything.Lent, the forty days of fasting and prayer before Easter, was originally the rite of passage for those approaching baptism, the transition into new life requiring a complete change of values and perception. Meant to mirror Jesus’ forty days of exhausting deprivation in the wilderness, the church and its people gradually lost the meaning behind Jesus’ suffering, letting it fall into superstition as an end in itself, the penance needed to regain God’s favor.What was Jesus really doing out there? He certainly suffered, but it was a means to an end, a self-imposed sensory deprivation to quiet the noise, remove all distraction to reveal what was true about himself, God, reality. His three symbolic temptations embrace the totality of human ego dissolution, effectively putting down the ego’s need to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular in advance of its own agenda.What Jesus discovered in the fortyness of his wilderness was an agendaless love, indiscriminate and degreeless; that he was identified with that love; that he and that love, the Father, were one.This is what Lent is really about. Deprivation, yes. Discomfort, disturbance of familiar routines, sure. Suffering, maybe. But not as penance in search of reward…as the only means by which we can realize the Father’s agendaless love already full-blown within ourselves. We don’t ascend to this love, perform for it or suffer for it. As William Butler Yeats wrote, we wither into the truth.Lent is the ritual process of intentionally withering our noisy egoic minds to the point we can see what is really true. A process Jesus says is the only Way to the Father.
Dave Brisbin 2.15.26The number of people in South America who say they no longer affiliate with a religion has doubled over the past decade, but unlike the US and Europe, the number of atheists and agnostics has not grown from a small part of the population. With no loss of faith, Latin people continue to pray, meditate, and participate in rituals drawing from Christian, Indigenous, African, and Eastern traditions, redefining what constitutes a religion. More religiously unaffiliated people in Latin America say they believe in God, pray daily, and consider religion very important than do those who identify as Christian in European countries.What is going on?Scholars say Europe represents religion grounded in doctrinal belief and formal religious practice, while Latin Americans have an effervescence of religious experiences that go far beyond the purely rational. Latin American culture emphasizes believing in something beyond the material world, an enchanted reality, a dimension of life that we can’t explain only by what we can see. Their trend toward religious disaffiliation is not secularization, but a change in how they approach belief itself—an enchanted view of the modern world, creating a vibrant spiritual and religious society doing things to engage with the unseen world.When Jesus says unless you become like children, you will never know the kingdom; when he always makes time to play with children, merge back into their enchanted reality, saying that such as these are kingdom itself, his is telling us that kingdom is not a place into which we are admitted if we believe or act correctly. It is the herenow experience of life when we merge back into the enchantment of the un-self-aware experience we once knew as children and forgot as adults.We don’t need to practice a mixture of traditions as Latin Americans may, but we do need to unforget the enchanted reality of our children. Sixty years ago, a famous theologian said that the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all. Rational belief will not sustain us. Only the personal experience of the enchanted reality of God’s presence can do that.
Dave Brisbin 2.9.26There seem to be two Jesuses in the gospels. The first is the unconditional-love-Jesus who accepts and sits with anyone who will sit with him, regardless of moral or social standing. This is the Jesus who says: Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Then there’s another Jesus, a turn-or-burn-Jesus who sets performance criteria between us and God’s love. He’s the one saying: Unless your righteousness exceeds that of your religious lawyers, there is no way you will enter the kingdom of heaven.Will the real Jesus please stand up? Is God’s love unconditionally free or a reward for acceptable behavior? Seems it can’t be both, yet the contradiction stands. And therein lies the source of our religious dissociative identity disorder, the reason it is so hard for us to shake our existential fears of condemnation. But a contradiction is only impassable within a certain context. Change the context, evaporate the contradiction.Jesus presents all his teaching within the context of the kingdom of heaven. If we misunderstand kingdom’s context, we misunderstand Jesus, and the contradiction stands. As Jesus tirelessly illustrates, the kingdom of heaven, malkhuta d’ashmaya, is not a future politically sovereign Israel, as his first followers believed, or future heaven of the afterlife, as we typically believe today. It’s the quality of life right herenow, reflecting a person’s experience of the connection of all life to God and each other. The context of a future kingdom, creates a permanent if/then contingency, as if our performance determines God’s decision to admit us. But in the herenow context of Jesus’ kingdom, everything resolves, yet both Jesuses stand. God loves and accepts unconditionally, but our “sinful” beliefs and behavior are those that create separation, not from God, but from the experience of oneness herenow, the only context in which kingdom exists. Kingdom is never closed, never withheld—always now, always available. God doesn’t admit us or not. God is eternally open. God’s presence is kingdom itself. We admit ourselves whenever we’re ready to experience it.
Dave Brisbin 2.1.26Asked by email: Do you believe the Bible? That the plagues of Moses, long day of Joshua, fiery furnace of Daniel really happened? Just the way the question was posed mirrored our view of scripture. In other words, if I don’t believe that each event literally happened, I’m not believing the bible. For the past five hundred years in the West, we’ve been equating accuracy and truth. For us, something is true if it’s accurate and accurate if it’s true, but to the ancients who wrote and interpreted scripture, truth and accuracy were not the same. Something could be true even if not accurate.The ancients knew that spiritual truth existed beyond thought and words, that the infinite could only be experienced and pointed toward, never defined or rationally explained. So, with the experience of God ringing inside them, they pointed to that experience in every way they could—allegory, simile, hyperbole, metaphor. They played with numbers, using them symbolically to convey meaning rather than as literal renderings of factors and sums. And yes, sometimes they told stories exactly as they happened. Both Hebrew and early Christian theologians saw layers of meaning, from the literal to the mystical, that they understood to be simultaneously true, a pool of meaning creating the fullest possible pointing to truth.The holy grail here is original intent. Believing the bible means believing the original intent of the authors, which means swimming in their pool of meaning, not just scraping off one layer, imagining it matches our cultural definition of truth. But as important as knowing how to read what the authors wrote, is knowing what they didn’t write. They wrote for each other, not for us. So if something was culturally understood by all, it didn’t need to be stated, however critical to meaning. We do the same. Context tells us where to put the missing pieces. Original intent means learning to read the silence too.I believe the bible. That it is fully true. I also believe that much of it was never meant to be accurate…just the best humans can do to point to truth always residing a bit beyond what words can convey.
Dave Brisbin 1.25.26Ever heard a line so impactful you thought, I wish I’d said that? Few days ago, I ran across a line attributed to the one-time road manager of the band ACDC…of all people. To be fair, he did become a pastor and a kind of pop theologian:God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape.Oh yeah, I wish I’d said that. The invisible man is standing in front of you. You sense him, but can’t see a thing. Throw a blanket over empty space, and drape a shape. No detail, but at least a shape, a spatial relationship. I’ve been saying forever that every theology is wrong. How could it be anything else? How could finite language ever define the infinite? Much as we crave that sort of certainty, theology was only ever meant to give shape to a relationship. To limit error and create a paradigm that allows us to navigate—accept life on life’s terms while holding a sense of hope and gratitude. He said all that…just much pithier.We think we know God because we’ve read the book—words with edges that limit and restrict. But the word God is just a placeholder for infinite mystery, to which words can point but never describe. And if Jesus and the Father are one, then Jesus is mysterious too. We think we know Jesus because he had a shape and seems to be saying something we read as concrete and certain in a language that wouldn’t exist for a thousand years. Jesus is the word we give to a man who was named Yehoshua, shortened to Yeshua in Hebrew. But to his friends, in Aramaic, the language of the street, he was Eesho. Eesho. Just the sound of it shatters our familiarity.To look at Jesus from an Aramaic perch, to exhale all we think we know and see the shape that emerges as we throw our blanket out over empty space, is to begin to meet Eesho for the first time. A man who speaks in words without edges, in poetry and stories that invite us to confront all we’ve managed to avoid.If your Jesus is familiar, comfortable, he is not Eesho. Eesho is always beckoning farther up and further in, never resolving mystery, but giving just enough shape that we can experience with him what words can never contain.
Dave Brisbin 1.18.26Before Scott Adams—the creator of the Dilbert cartoon and pundit/podcaster—died recently after a long bout with cancer, he released a video stating that he “planned to convert” to Christianity. A lifelong religious skeptic, he had Christian friends imploring him to convert before it was too late. He appreciated their sincere concern and said if it turned out that at death he simply ceased to be, he would be no worse off for his belief, but if Christianity were true, he’d have a much better outcome than unbelief would allow.Scott seemed more interested in comforting his friends than genuine conversion, which is Christlike itself, but his reasoning simply restates Pascal’s wager: that the best bet is to convert, since if Christianity is false, you lose nothing, but if true, unbelief means forever hell and paradise lost. Perfectly logical, unassailable even, but depends entirely on a contractual view of Christianity—a reward and punishment paradigm that is tightly focused on personal advantage, reducing faith to contractual terms.It also keeps us word-based, only focused on and aware of what the mind can conceive. Like looking at a ball game through a hole in the fence or trying to capture a big sky on a cell phone, there’s too much to possibly fit in such small containers. Trying to capture spirituality in words is equally impossible. The infinite has no edges, nothing to hold on to, which scares us. But as soon as we put the infinite in words, it’s no longer infinite. Words have edges, defined limits, so the best we can do in words is poetry, which points to meaning without creating edges that limit the experience of all we can’t express.The majority of the bible is poetry or poetic prose that points, never defines. Jesus is a poet. Genesis, Job, all the prophets are poets. They know anything we can think is limited to our hole-in-the-fence minds. The tools of poetry open us to vastness.What kind of belief is a good bet? Not after death…here and now? Only non-contractual, belief-turned-conviction through experiences of awe, expressed in words without edges always pointing back to deeper experience.
Dave Brisbin 1.11.26Back in Catholic grade school, the nuns would walk up and down the aisles drilling us through the Baltimore Catechism. We’d all recite answers from memory in that sing song way kids do. She’d ask, why are we here? We’d answer, to glorify God. Had no idea what that meant. Seemed to include praising God…all the time? I liked praise, assurance I was doing things right, right things, enough, part of the group. Was God that insecure?Also seemed to include doing good works for God…the bigger and more spectacular, the better. But all these years later, I realize those works, however good, are ego-deep, and as mere accomplishments, God is not impressed if in the process, we still haven’t gotten to know him intimately. So, remembering that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, seems glorifying God is really reflecting God’s essence in our lives. Jesus came out of the wilderness saying that he and the Father were one. We glorify God by becoming indistinguishable from God in the way we choose and experience our lives.We’re not here to do the things we do. We’re here to be so connected that we are indistinguishable from, one with, all that is. Does that mean that all our accomplishments are meaningless? Ecclesiastes says yes, all tasks are equally meaningless, unless through them we engage the task within every task: to fall back in love with the moment that contains the task, with the sensation of the work itself, with those and everything sharing it with us. Falling back in love is how we come to know God, is all God is hoping for in us.This doesn’t mean we don’t pursue excellence in what we do. Without taking the task seriously, we won’t seriously engage the task within it. But Jesus is trying to rewire the way we look at the world, give us back our priorities. He said that there was no one born of woman greater than John the Baptist, but the least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than he. Even the least in the kingdom is still one who has fallen back in love with this moment.God’s “greatest in the world” is anyone who realizes they’re nothing great except in their connection to everything else.
Dave Brisbin 1.4.26The hardest thing to comprehend about Jesus’ Way—what I call the Fifth Way—is its utterly stark difference from the first Four Ways we use to get from here to there in life. They are as far apart as east is from west, which never meet or change direction at the poles like north and south. You’re just always going west until you turn and face east. The Fifth Way is like that. If you haven’t stopped and consciously turned to face it, you’re on one of the other Four.We know the Four Ways well. To acquire what we need and want in life, we can yield to, manipulate, exit, or destroy the challenges we face in any combination. In gentler language, we can compromise, influence, set boundaries, or disempower…completely healthy and necessary in life, but always beginning at the point of need, in a world of scarcity in which we scratch out our living.Jesus isn’t denying that this is the way the physical world works. He works within it himself. But if where we ultimately want to go is not of this world, then a completely different vehicle is needed. A jet is the greatest method of travel across the earth, but if where you want to go is even a low orbit, you must get out of the jet and into a rocket capable of escape velocity. The Fifth Way is that rocket, taking everything we know about life and turning it on its head. It’s the only Way to the Father because the Father has nothing to do with scarcity. When we experience abundant presence, that God is all poured out around us, nothing withheld ever, then our Four Ways become not only instantly irrelevant, but a block to the connection, oneness, love that is God.As long as we’re working for what we already have, we’re not living the abundance that already is. The Fifth Way is not another method of acquisition, but a relinquishment of anything, everything that obscures the abundant truth… We’re not here to acquire something to make us whole or acceptable. We’re here to fall in love with love itself, the all-poured-out-ness of in-love-ness. The relinquishment, the letting go of in-love-ness is the difference…no longer aching for what has always been freely given.
Dave Brisbin 12.28.25Before he sails off to the Trojan war, Thetis tells her son Achilles that if he stays home, he will find peace. Will marry a wonderful woman and have children and grandchildren who will love him and remember his name. But when they are all dead, his name will be forgotten. If he goes to Troy, he will find such glory that his name will never be forgotten. But he will not come back, and his mother will never see him again.Obviously, he went or we wouldn’t be talking about him. The world remembers those who do great things, leave a legacy of spectacularly big things. But such legacies always come at a price. Did Achilles make the right choice? Is the building of a legacy that lives beyond the generations we actually touch more important than what happens within them? Such choices are not binary, of course. If we’re consciously careful, we can have at least some elements of both. But where do we find real meaning in life?If all our focus is on not yet, imaginings of a great legacy, Solomon, traditional writer of Ecclesiastes has a Hebrew word for all our efforts: hevel. Vain, futile, meaningless, of no purpose or profit…chasing after the wind. After acquiring and accomplishing everything possible in a human lifetime, he writes, Meaningless! Everything is meaningless. Generations come and generations go…no one remembers the people of old, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. Sounds brutally depressing. Sounds like giving up, but it’s not. It’s redirection.Where do we find real meaning? In a legacy the world remembers even as we, the builders, are forgotten? Something more immediate? The question places us right at the crux of life. Solomon realizes that there is nothing better than for us to be glad and do good while life is in us, take our food and drink and have joy in our work. He’s saying all that matters is contained in this moment and nowhere else. Even if we work to build a lasting legacy, if we’re immersed in the joy of the work itself and those with us, we find meaning. Because in the end, the only legacy that matters is a legacy of little things.
Dave Brisbin 12.14.25Christmas is our biggest cultural holiday, but even among those still celebrating Jesus’ birth, what do we really know about it? Only Matthew and Luke relate any birth narratives, but Matthew tells only of the visit of the Magi, leaving Luke to give all the birth details we have. And there aren’t many.Luke tells us Jesus was wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn. That’s it. In any good story, details are critical, never random, always set with purpose. So what do these details tell us? That Jesus’ birth followed ordinary Hebrew practice—so unremarkable that those in the house where Joseph and Mary were staying, most likely relatives or friends, didn’t even make room for them in their living space. That’s what the word mistranslated as “inn” means. Not a hotel, but the interior living space of every Hebrew home that was separate from the cooking space and that reserved for animals. Luke goes on to say that local shepherds are caught up in spectacular sights, and Matthew tells of astronomer-priests who travel a thousand miles to worship at the feet of a poor child they believe is king. How did those right in the house with the holy family miss all this?Truth is, every one of us can only see what we’re prepared to see. Confirmation bias eats up the rest. The point these few birth details make is that our God is an unassuming God, a humble, vulnerable God who must be believed to be seen. To see significance under an unremarkable exterior is the preparation, the goal of spiritual formation. If you’re already poor and marginalized, it’s easier to disregard facades, but no guarantee. The genius of the Magi is that they were wealthy, powerful, educated, and yet still humble, vulnerable, willing to make fools of themselves on a long, risky journey with no guaranteed outcome.If we’re to understand Christmas, it will be through the Magi’s eyes, because we are wealthy and educated too. To let that go, sell all we have is the only way to see the promise of our star in an unformed child. We will always find our God as a child. Unformed and forming. Are we prepared to see?
Dave Brisbin 12.7.25We all know when we go too far. That can be measured. When we cross a line, feel the negative reaction or outcome, we can evaluate and pull back. But how do we know when we haven’t gone far enough? How do you measure a negative, the absence of something? Can’t do it directly, but there is a way. We can measure our disturbance.Not going far enough, means something inside is resisting, slowing or stopping forward motion. Unfamiliar ideas and landscape challenge the way we believe things should look and feel. That’s disturbing and always seeks relief. Hard to remain in disturbing places. But we can’t grow in comfortable places, smack in the middle of everything we already believe. Something different always creates dissonance, which feels like disturbance; something radically different creates radical disturbance, which feels like anger, outrage, panic. No disturbance, no growth.We need rites of passage, to embrace all three phases: separation, transition, reincorporation. The movement from child to adult, from any perspective to another is always preceded by the painful separation from what is comfortable and familiar, followed by the disorienting transition through a new world of altered concepts and action. Only after such a journey can we reincorporate into our relationships, whitened like Moses by the experience, offering more.Nothing is more radically different than the impossible love, with all its implications, that Jesus is teaching and living in the gospels. But if our reading of it is not disturbing, if our attempts at applying it in our lives is not disorienting, then we haven’t yet separated from the world we imagined for ourselves. We haven’t let love be impossible. Let it take us far enough and not too far at the same time.In a prayer attributed to Sir Francis Drake as he set sail to successfully circumnavigate the globe: Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore…Measure your disturbance. If you can’t find any, you’re too close to the shore.
Dave Brisbin 11.30.25Gratitude and thankfulness are not the same. I see thankfulness as a positive reaction to a specific gift or circumstance, and though gratitude begins there, it journeys on to a non-specific attitude, a view of life that is all-inclusive, sees everything around us as a gift we could never give ourselves. Once we’re aware that life is the free reception of what we could never give ourselves or repay, that repayment is not even required, any sense of entitlement vanishes. Jesus said the highest form of love is loving the enemy: loving—identifying with—someone who had not earned the right to that gift. And the flip side: the highest form of gratitude is being thankful for something we believe we have already earned. We can’t know love until we know gratitude, the opposite of entitlement, the ability to see everything as a gift no matter how hard we work.What blocks this ability? To help us survive, our brains have adapted to focus on anticipating and solving problems, to start from a base of scarcity and fear. This makes us quicker to react to challenges, but jealously entitled to what we can catch and kill. Jesus rejected scarcity, started from a base of abundance, that everything God has and is, is already ours, within us. Even as we struggle for the legal tender, using our minds as survival guides, our job spiritually is to learn the balance of remaining thankful for each gift we earn, let thankfulness incite the journey to gratitude.Gratitude is an umbrella term, covers and includes all positive emotions, excludes the rest. You can’t be grateful and depressed at the same time. Or angry, anxious, envious, entitled, victimized. Literally impossible. So what does gratitude feel like? Like enough. No more or less than just enough. Enoughness is the feeling we call gratitude, which feels like happiness, fulfilment, meaning, purpose.We can’t create gratitude. It’s what happens when we begin to see everything in our moments as gifts we could never give ourselves—let go of the complexity, calculations, judgment upon which our minds insist. Instead of scarcity, see the abundance of each moment as enough.
Dave Brisbin 11.23.25When I’d tell people the title of my book, The Fifth Way, first question was: what are the first four? That made perfect sense, because you can’t understand the fifth way of Jesus until you understand how the first four operate in our lives.There are several systems that try to explain human behavior in terms of personality types, unconscious ways we process experience and approach challenges in life: Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Kiersey…the four ways operate similarly.In Jesus time, four sects dominated Jewish life, and each had a specific way of dealing with threats to their powerbases—specifically the Roman occupation. The Sadducees, yielded to Roman power; the Pharisees tried to influence or manipulate; the Essenes exited to build their own communities; and the Zealots tried to destroy Roman presence through rebellion.To yield, manipulate, exit, and destroy, are the north, south, east, and west of ways we can deal with challenges in life. From dysfunctional marriages to nations and armies, these four ways, with all the combinations in between, are what we have to work with, and each of us has learned to favor one as primary in our personal lives. They aren’t bad or evil; they’re necessary for navigating life. Only when we apply them to spiritual growth do they become limiting, destructive, never taking us where we need to go.The four ways answer physical needs we all have as humans, but until we become aware of them, they strip free will, reducing us to predictable, type-based behavior. When Jesus comes out of the wilderness, having overcome three temptations symbolic of all human need, he begins teaching a fifth way, turning the other four on their heads.Everything Jesus teaches and models is a refutation of our normal, ingrained ways of meeting our needs. Starting within and working outward, from an awareness of inexhaustible presence rather than scarcity, we realize that all we really need is not gained through acquisition but in giving away all we have. In the giving, we learn what we really possess is inexhaustible, restoring free will—our ability to choose in love, not just in need.
Dave Brisbin 11.16.25Have you noticed that people fight? Silly wabbit. Of course. Ever stopped to wonder why?Fear. Always fear. Even if it doesn’t feel like afraid-ness, unconscious, overriding concern for personal survival drives us fearward in a zero-sum world where there’s only so much oil in the ground, where the resources absolutely necessary for survival are finite. It’s basic envy and jealousy: fear of not getting what someone else has, fear of not keeping what we already do. Fights are made of this. No fear, no fight.Then why do religious people fight? Spirituality by definition is infinite, yes? Unlimited resource, enough for all. So when Christians fight, debate, defend, excommunicate, and they certainly do, they are saying they don’t really believe in infinite spiritual resources, or at least that the spiritual does not override the finite where we really live. Fighting Christians don’t trust that the perfect love Jesus lived and died to make real for us is enough. There must still be something we need to acquire or perform to gain the acceptance that is our eternal survival.More revealing: how do Christians fight? With scripture. Always with scripture. Any fight among Christians is a fight over the book. We’re the people of the book. Even before the early church had the book, it fought over what should be in the book, and once it had the book, fought to defend and enforce it. Five hundred years ago, Western Reformers went even further, saying the book was the only source of revelation from God, that to literally understand the text was to understand God—or at least the terms of eternal survival.Reducing faith to rational belief has put Westerners on a collision course with an Eastern text that is made of entirely different stuff. The ancients who wrote our book were not even trying to answer literal questions to satisfy our craving for certainty. The bible is the map of a journey to the experience of infinite resource, unlimited love. When we stop defending it, asking it questions it won’t answer, let it ask us who is asking…it can begin pointing us to trust what we can never understand—only experience.
Dave Brisbin 11.9.25The founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, was one of the most driven men of our time. His desire for more, his dissatisfaction with the status quo, created a lifelong willingness to strike out in radically new directions. Raised in the Lutheran church, by his teens he became disillusioned, dissatisfied with Christianity-as-practiced and non-answers to his existential questions. He embraced Zen Buddhism, spending three years in India, returning with shaved head and traditional Indian garb, which translated to bare feet and jeans in the Apple offices as tech innovation became his driving force.Couple decades later, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Fought it with everything he had for seven years but by 2011, had accepted he was dying. Friends and family created a stream of visitors to his home, and conversations slowly morphed from business back to those existential questions he had never answered to his own satisfaction. His sister said at his funeral that after making eye contact with everyone in the room, his gaze refocused beyond them, over their shoulders at something only he could see. His last words were, “Oh wow! Oh wow, oh wow!”To overcome the fear and uncertainty that radical change represents, to persevere through the time it takes to assimilate radical change, we need a tremendous amount of desire. We need to feel a divine dissatisfaction, the blessed unrest such desire creates. But where does all that come from?If you’re reading this, it’s because you desire something more or different. But at a level that motivates? You could say that the entirety of Jesus’ message was a series of shocks to the system, a constant overturning of the tables of our status quo. The shocks are what break through business as usual and present the possibility of something more. Like a beautiful face that promises new relationship or a loss that lays waste to old ones, motivating desire always follows.Death is the ultimate shock to the system. Jesus taught and lived a constant laying down of life-as-practiced to create the shocking space for something more. Something that will make us say, Oh wow!
Dave Brisbin 10.26.25Book of Genesis tells us that God gave Adam permission to name all the animals in the Garden. It’s not a casual detail. For the ancient Hebrews, authority to name something like a child or an animal, was a symbol of dominion over that something. That’s the point. Control. To this day, Jews do not speak the name of God. But the rest of us continue to name everything in sight, including God…and the theology we build around God.God told Moses from the burning bush that his name was hayah asher hayah. That is, I am that I am. How can we get any closer than that? How do we describe raw, ultimate existence any more clearly? How do we, using finite tools such as language and logic or even the mathematics of physics, describe what is by definition infinite? Our limited language, concepts, and equations melt all over the dashboard long before temperatures and velocities ever reach the neighborhood of infinity.But we keep trying. Control is an aphrodisiac.To be fair, the scriptures are always talking about knowing God. Ezekiel uses the phrase over seventy times in his short book. Jesus says that some of us, knocking on the door of kingdom, will be refused because God never knew us. Really? Once again, entering the Hebrew mind helps us square this circle. To know—yada in Hebrew—comes from the root for hand, so to know is not to think, but to handle. Jesus is saying that some of us, for all the religious work we do, have still never been intimate with God. Now God won’t throw us out for that, but God is intimacy personified. If we’re too unripe, immature, traumatized to enter the defenseless vulnerability that intimacy requires, we don’t know God. We can’t know what we’ve never experienced.God occupies space beyond thought and performance. If we can stop naming God, trying to understand and dominate for just a moment, we enter God’s space and experience what we’ll never understand. Relax... Understanding is overrated. For Jesus, a precognitive child is the embodiment of kingdom. Trust beats certainty the way rock beats scissors. Once we experience God, there is no name that can hold or express what we know.
Dave Brisbin 10.19.25As we look farther into the observable universe, dig deeper into subatomic particles, science is coming full circle back to what contemplatives and mystics have always known. One aspect of quantum physics is especially revealing. Called superposition, it’s the mathematical concept that subatomic particles exist in a kind of cloud of probability—a continuous wave—where all states and properties are possible at the same time. But the moment an observer interacts with them, superposition collapses into a single state—a particle.This mind-bending phenomenon mirrors the ancient Hebrew view of human life lived out between heaven and earth, between God’s realm of wavelike unity, of infinite potential and possibility, and earth, the place of individual form and function—particles. Our purpose is to bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven, to merge the oneness and infinite possibility of heaven with the diversity and finitude of daily life, without losing the essence of either.The whole point of spiritual formation is to cultivate moments of superposition, re-experience the oneness of infinite possibility we lost growing up and bring that reality into every aspect of daily life. But our consciousness is superposition resistant. We won’t hold onto paradox, craving straight lines and answers, resolution. Donkey falls into a farmer’s dry well, and when he can’t get it out, decides to just fill in the well. First shovelfuls rain down. The donkey is frantic, braying hysterically, then goes silent. Farmer looks down. As each shovelful hits its back, the donkey shakes it off and steps up until he eventually steps up and out of the well. On earth, with our straight lines and particles, we fear the curved, indirect movement of spirit in superposition. But enlightenment is not a direct lifeline pulling us up into the light; it’s an indirect layering that feels like death at first, scares us until we see the way of it.Quantum physics and Jesus’ parables teach the same message. That some things can’t be known with straight thought lines. Only by living them out, interacting, do they collapse and merge into meaning.
Dave Brisbin 10.12.25Watching a friend of twenty years wind her way through cancer treatment and now hospice care has been a master’s course in radical, serial acceptance. Just yesterday, to abruptly realize that the cause of her new pain was now moot—that no one was looking for causes anymore, only the management of pain—was another level of reality to absorb. I saw it in her eyes, but just for a moment. Then an implied shrug, and the conversation continued.It’s that ability to recover from the shocks of life that shows us who we are. You can call it resilience, but it’s more than that. We’re generally taught that spiritual maturity means moving beyond doubt, despair, anger—being untriggerable. Thank God the gospels show us Jesus wasn’t all that. We see his anger in the temple, his doubt at Gethsemane, his despair on the cross. But then we see his quick recovery back to center, reconnection with his deepest identity: not my will, but yours…forgive them, they don’t know what they do.Life is an oscillation between constantly changing circumstance and neurochemistry. Between pleasure and pain, triggers and recovery. We have no control over emotional onset or the events and circumstances that trigger it. And we’re not responsible for what we can’t control. Spiritual maturity isn’t measured by a lack of triggers or negative emotion we can’t control, but the speed of our recovery. Return to center. Remembrance of who we really are.And who is that? Looking in the eyes of a newborn, whose brain is still formatting like a new hard drive, there are no thoughts or concepts. But there is presence. A presence that can’t be defined in words because it precedes them. It’s this presence that simply accepts what it experiences, absorbs without labels or the weight of prior experience, reminds us of the vastness we’ve lost in adult preoccupation.We can cultivate newborn eyes through spiritual discipline, or we can wait for life to drive us into serial acceptance. Or both. The eyes of a newborn and those of a friend in hospice…they are the same. They see what we’ve forgotten.Death is not the tragedy. It’s not remembering while we live.
After running a 7.5-million-year program, a fictional super computer says the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is…wait for it…42. For the forty-six years since that novel was published, fans have been speculating as to the meaning of 42. Looking so hard for certainty, we miss the point. The author said publicly that the number was completely random, chosen for its insignificance. Making the point that any rational answer to the meaning of life is itself meaningless.My favorite part of a movie is the first third. The setup, bits and clues to new characters, all that is left unsaid, hidden. What is unknown is far more intriguing than any resolution. Can you ever thrill to a magic trick once you’ve seen how it’s done? What would an objective answer to the meaning of life actually give us? What would be the experience of a life to which you already knew the outcome? In our intolerance of uncertainty, we’re looking for an answer to life that would kill the experience of life.Life is not a machine to diagram, a math problem to solve, or a task to complete. When Jesus says that he is the way, truth, and life, he is trying to teach us that meaning is not a thing to be thought, but a person to be experienced. Truth is a person. Life is a person. And the way to both is a person too. Knowing the meaning of life and truth is knowing a person, not a fact. It’s falling in love with the unfolding of personhood. Ours. Everyone’s.“Your marriage begins the day you wake up and realize you married the wrong person.”Once you get over the resistance to such a line, you realize that graduating from infatuation to love only happens after you see how the magic trick is done, that your beloved is not perfect after all. You fell in love with an image of a certain outcome, your resolution to life. But when that image shatters, if willing, you can fall back in love with the unfolding of a real person. When we stop trying to understand or fix, the meaning of life becomes a falling in love with the endless unfolding of life.Better than asking the meaning of life…how do we learn to love the unfolding?
Dave Brisbin 9.28.25If you want to protect and consolidate any institution, church, or state, the most effective one-two punch is to stigmatize doubt and proclaim dogma—belief accepted just because authority says so…which stigmatizes common sense. Then with enough power, you outlaw doubt and common sense altogether. Just about every religion and every political institution has done it. If we’re paying attention, it’s happening all around us. Orwell enshrined it in his novel 1984, though he was just mirroring totalitarian societies eighty years ago.For 300 years after the crucifixion, everyone following Jesus was trying to interpret what he and his teachings meant theologically and personally. No one was in control, so no official dogma, but competing doctrines were everywhere, causing so much division that Emperor Constantine called the first church council in 325 CE. Christian orthodoxy was born, and with Roman power, the church enforced it. Apostle Thomas was marginalized as Doubting Thomas for being honest and courageous enough to demand his own personal experience, that he couldn’t base his faith on second-hand reports.Doubt and common sense are our only footholds against a slide into superstition.Scripture is careful to include the doubt that every hero of faith—from Abram to Moses to Apostles—used to springboard to the action of authentic faith. There is no faith without doubt, just as there is no courage without fear. Jesus had his moments of doubt and used the common sense of love-in-action to guide his people past prevailing dogma and practice to their own personal experience of God.Some say human societies reset every 500 years. Five hundredish years ago, we in the West experienced Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, a time of great doubt and questioning. We are going through just such a time now with science, technology, and politics pulling every existential thread. Jesus also lived in such a time, modeled and gave us permission to question, to use doubt and common sense to build a first-hand faith never dependent on ignorance or capitulation…as essential to us as it is threatening to those in power.
Dave Brisbin 9.21.25When an event has the immense impact Charlie Kirk’s assassination is having on us collectively if not personally, we need to stop and take a look around and inside. I was shocked at the news of his assassination, but even more at the worldwide response—hadn’t realized the depth of his following. The political response was predictable, though, supporters and detractors alike making him a symbol for their respective positions. It was sad to see the real man, the complicated, imperfect human we all are becoming lost.Within Christian circles, one group is becoming militant, vowing to fight to bring the country back into alignment with Christian values. A second appears to be growing despondent, expressing a sense of despair over both the situation and the Christian response, feeling disenfranchised by their church, questioning traditional faith and beliefs.I can understand both camps. If you’re seeing cherished values slipping away, you instinctively want to consolidate, organize, fight. In the 4th century, the Roman Empire finally recognized Christianity, protected it, and ultimately declared it the state religion. Many Christians celebrated, but at the same time, others—the Desert Fathers and Mothers—fled to the deserts of Egypt and Judea to find a faith and church they felt they’d lost in a sea of Roman power. We seem poised at such a moment again.Jesus taught in story and metaphor. Did he give us a primary metaphor for our spiritual lives? We seem to have decided as a church that it’s the image of the warrior that suits us best. But Jesus never uses it. He gives us image after image of the gardener—quietly bent over the soil, flowing with wind and weather—rather than armored opposition. Are we warriors or gardeners? Never either/or, we’ll need to be both over the course of our lives. But when it’s time to fight, are we characterized by anger and anxiety, or are we happy warriors, still capable of compassion and patience, aware that outcomes are not under our direct control? Are we humble warriors with a gardener’s heart, always looking longingly through the conflict to the silent fields of home?
Nothing like a nice existential crisis to dig up questions of identity. Who am I? Of course. But beyond that, who’s asking? And beyond that, what does it mean that I can even ask such a question? To be aware that I don’t know who I am, that I can conceive of myself in such a state?The only word we have is consciousness. What is consciousness? What does it mean to be conscious? Dictionary answers: to be awake and aware of our exterior surroundings and inward psychological and spiritual states. Is that it all it means? All our waking moments we are aware of so many things, but we can only focus on one at a time. And when we do, who is it that is choosing where to focus? Is that us too?Consciousness gets tricky fast. We can dig deeper and deeper through layers of what we call consciousness, but what is its essence? Where is it located? No one knows, of course, but one theory is that our brains are not so much transmitters as receivers. That we’re not transmitting our own consciousness located somewhere in our minds as much as receiving our sense of consciousness from one, great universal consciousness. Like computers without hard drives pulling our programs and memory from the cloud, we’re all individual manifestations of the same consciousness playing through endless personalities and egos.Is this true? I have no idea, but when Jesus says that he and the Father are one, he’s placing his identity in the cloud, disregarding any local identity. When he says he can do nothing on his own initiative, that his actions don’t flow from his own consciousness but that of the Father, he seems to have let go of himself as a separate entity, and in that surrender, realized his true identity. He says if we follow his lead, we can do what he has done, and when he says if we want to find our lives, our consciousness, we need to lose them, he is telling us how.Not in staking out a separate self, but in surrender to the vastness of the spirit, love, consciousness in each concrete act of authentic connection, we become smaller, emptier, simpler—and our identity with all that is conscious becomes unmistakable.
Dave Brisbin 9.7.25How could we have known about the first week of September? My wife’s back pain had grown into numbness down her legs and feet, prompting an MRI, but still waiting for those results Tuesday morning, a feeling in my chest grew to what I could only imagine was a heart attack. Finally told Marian I needed to go to ER, and in the midst of endless cycles of testing and waiting, a text comes in telling her to go immediately to ER for emergency surgery. She didn’t even tell me until after I was discharged, no cause determined.She wanted to wait one more day while I was still shaky—she’d waited this long after all. So Thursday morning, we drove to ER, and soon as the surgeon saw the images, scheduled surgery for that afternoon. If left any longer, she could lose all function below the waist. I waved goodbye, as they strapped her in the ambulance taking her to a surgical hospital, drove to meet her in preop, only to wave goodbye again as they rolled her off to OR. Would I see her again? Would she walk again? She smiled big, I smiled back, went off to wait out expected one-hour surgery. One hour, two hours, no text, no call. Found a nurse.She was just coming out of surgery. Back to waiting area. Phone vibrates, surgeon saying all was good, that she came out of anesthesia with the biggest smile that made his day. That he found a bone spur knifing right into her spine, saw the nerves relax as he pulled it out. If she was doing well enough, could be discharged the next day. I stayed in her room until ten, went home but heart symptoms returned, forced me to drive back to ER. Still dark. Both of us in hospitals at same time. What if they admitted me? Who’d bring her home, care for her?We’re both home now, trying to heal, but those moments remain—a wave goodbye, a smile from a gurney—when a fragile reality appears, a wire frame view of life you can’t unsee. If we don’t turn away too soon, keep looking, there’s something underneath. Solid state, no moving parts, irreducible. The everything behind the nothing. Can’t hold on to such glimpses, but they can hold you. Remind you.Change how you see everything else.
I’ve always known I was adopted. From earliest memory, my adoptive parents so normalized it, it was just what it was. Why think more? Or maybe it was a guy thing. In her twenties, my also-adopted sister searched for her bio parents and found them. Was a brief, unfulfilling encounter, yet when my life imploded in my thirties, I put a waiver in my file at the agency that would release my identity if my bio parents did the same. Was a passive nod to a deeper need I was finally beginning to feel.Three years ago, my oldest daughter did a DNA test. Found she had 19% Indian blood, which could only have come from me—a new ethnic identity beckoning. She asked if I could get more on my/her bio family, so I spent $163 to get all the “non-identifying” information I could. One document, the social worker’s narrative, riveted me.My mother was a 23-year-old Hispanic girl in 1955, oldest of 13 siblings with a stay at home mother and father who was a barber by day and gigging musician at night. He couldn’t fully support his family, so my mother went to work, bringing home what she could. Deeply religious and pregnant, she and her mother kept the secret from her father, telling him she had decided to become a nun, but instead of convent, entered a Catholic home for unwed mothers. The social worker detailed her anguish that December, away from home at Christmas for the first time, how her eyes filled but she didn’t break down when deciding adoption was her only, best option for her baby and a family that couldn’t afford another mouth.It was like a movie playing in my mind. I could see her and for the first time ached to meet her. But for her choice, grown up in a radically different family with a dozen aunts and uncles my own age…who am I really? Not that child...but how much the one I became? I know that who I most deeply am has nothing to do with family of origin, but this story, this unmooring of who I’ve always thought I was, is helping cut a path to identity like a machete in a rain forest. We don’t need a new origin story to begin remembering who we are, but we do need to learn to cling less to the one we have.
Since I’ve been talking about the need to question everything, arrive at a personal theology that we’ve tested in the streets of our lives, become willing to be called heretic for our trouble, one of our members commented that I must have been called a heretic at some point and asked if I saw that as a badge of honor. Called heretic at some point? I’ve lost count. Along with being told I was going to hell and taking anyone along who’d listen to me, I wouldn’t call it a badge of honor. Surprising and painful at first, it now functions more as a grim validation of the process of spiritual formation. Always a cue to reevaluate, but without fear anymore. I know my God will never damn me for a wrong thought in my head, and constant questioning keeps me humbly aware that the quality of my relationships is always more important than abstract positions, just as Jesus taught.Someone once called me a “functional heretic.” Not sure what he meant, but I took it to mean pushing the envelope just short of too far. I love that. Still functioning within the biggest Christian tent, but following Jesus as I’ve come to know him as first priority. With that definition, we should all be functional heretics, willing to question established systems and beliefs—our own or those around us—if they no longer reflect the life to which we are convinced Jesus is calling.Heresy literally means to choose for oneself, even if it means departing from accepted doctrine. It’s only a negative for those invested in status quo, threatened by dissent. So, checking our motives to make sure we’re not chasing egoic desire for attention or gratification, we accept the responsibility of making our own choices. Just following orders, living off received beliefs, is never a mark of spiritual maturity.When conscience bangs against doctrine that no longer makes spiritual or common sense, making our own choice also means accepting any punishment from orthodox power. But what’s the alternative? To never explore this life is not to live at all. Jesus may not have relished disruption, but he never shied from being called heretic. We can do no better.
Dave Brisbin 8.17.25Not long after we started our faith community based on understanding Jesus’ teaching from a first century, Eastern/Aramaic point of view, I received an email from a man on the east coast who told me about debates he was having with his 17-year-old son over Christian doctrine. The boy was increasingly challenging his beliefs, and at one point asked his father: is what you believe really true, or just what you believe? Exasperated, the man asked his son where he was getting all these ideas, and the boy handed him the address to our website. God bless the internet.Is what you believe really true, or just what you believe? What a question. THE question we should all be asking continuously if we’re serious about meaning and purpose. We’ve been taught not to question by those who already have their answers. But any answers merely accepted as received, not the result of a perilous journey of questioning, not subject to the testing of continued life experience, will not be “true” very long. They won’t be able to describe the life and world we’ve lived long enough to see.Aldous Huxley said that all new ideas begin as heresy, advance to orthodoxy, and end in superstition. Orthodox is that of which we believe we’re certain. It’s a perfect duality. This is right and all the rest is wrong. The only way to deal with a new idea is label it heresy. But if a heretical idea persists long enough, it becomes accepted, and if an accepted idea persists long enough without question, all meaning is lost, only the label remains to which we cling like a rabbit’s foot.Our minds operate on two tracks, seeing everything as right or wrong, but if we’re serious about truth, we will move beyond those two tracks, beyond received concepts, to fully experience the moment we’re in, align with its flow to find meaning that may last only long as the moment itself, but gives principles for entering all moments. Real time, one track truth that can make us free. We’ll be called heretics for our trouble. But we’ll only know that what we believe is really true when we’re willing to let go of the rabbit’s foot, question, and embrace heretical.
Dave Brisbin 8.10.25Central jail is a different world. Humorless guards, colorless surfaces, bolted down tables, stools. Time is wherever you are told to wait for as long as it turns out to be. I have plenty of time to take it all in. Unexpected energy, more family reunion than jail visit. Young women dressed up, made up, parents, grandparents, two girls next to me over the low, privacyless divider speaking fast and high, Spanish and English in same sentences. I spin on my stool to face the opposite wall of windows.Young woman leaning into the glass speaking to a young man in his orange jumpsuit. The look in her eye, even from my angle, stops me. She could have been staring across white tablecloth and candlelight. Nothing else exists except the face in the glass. Like the prodigal son in an orange jumpsuit being hugged home, seems that Jesus, God, and the girl are all orange colorblind. No-fault love. So what about justice? God is supposed to be just, right?Well, we’re in a jail, so justice is grinding along, but Jesus understands that humans occupy two contexts at once. We live in macro groups, but our moment by moment encounters are micro, one on one. And though there is only one love, that love looks like justice in the macro and mercy and compassion in the micro. Because justice must rule in the macro—to lose fairness and equality is to lose the cohesion of the group. But justice becomes intolerance in the micro—mercy and compassion must define actual relationships.Jesus and a girl at the jail are showing us how it works. Mercy within justice. Love shape-shifting through all of human experience. Though Jesus is always teaching from within a micro context, he respects the law and the macro justice it represents, but uses it as a guide, instruction—never an absolute instrument, never an excuse to miss the opportunity for mercy, for loving the person behind the glass. The young man will wear his orange jumpsuit however long justice requires, but if he keeps that look in his woman’s eyes, his soul will manage.Isn’t that what we all need? To see love and acceptance through the glass while still in our orange jumpsuits?
Dave Brisbin 8.3.25When we are presented with difficult ethical decisions, looking to the law, rules we are obligated to obey, can be comforting as we imagine that choice has been taken out of our hands. But as followers of Jesus, we also look to him as the ideal human who embodies good ethical choice. So knowing how Jesus looked to law is a primary guide in making our own choices.Jesus says he didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill, that until heaven and earth passes away, not the smallest letter or stroke will pass from the law until all is accomplished (Mt 5). Sounds pretty absolute. But Paul says that Christ is the end of the law to everyone who believes (Rom 10). So, which is it? Is the law continuing or ending? When we look more closely, we find that Jesus and Paul are saying the same thing as they look to the telos—the fulfillment, completion, or as we could say ethically, the consequence of our choices.Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, meaning once we’re transformed in Christ, righteousness no longer comes from obedience to the law but from a different source. Jesus is more explicit: the law will continue until heaven and earth pass away, abar, which means to cross a boundary or go beyond a limit. Jesus is saying that law, namosa—not an absolute code, but instruction and guidance—is needed to direct our choices until the unity and oneness of heaven cross over to merge with the individual form and diversity of earth in our own hearts. To see life in Christ as God sees it…all one thing with which we choose to identify, love.It’s a “disappearing law,” guidance existing only as long as needed. Chuang Tzu said: the purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. Once the fish is caught the trap is forgotten. Purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch a rabbit. Once the rabbit is caught, the snare is forgotten. Purpose of words is to convey ideas. Once the idea is grasped, the words are forgotten. Show me someone who has forgotten words. That is who I want to talk to. The purpose of law is to catch God. Once God is caught, law is forgotten. Show me someone who has forgotten law. That is who I want to obey.
Dave Brisbin 7.27.25Had a conversation with two devout Christians about Gaza. One believed Israel was committing genocide and saw no justification for their military action, nor for killing a human being under any circumstances. The other, heartbroken over civilian deaths, saw more nuance in Israel fighting for survival against an enemy hiding behind its civilians.Two loving, sincere Christians using Jesus and scripture as guides came to very different conclusions. Is there a “right” way to come to ethical decisions? There are three main families of ethical theory: consequentialism looks at the utility of an action—does it create the greatest good for greatest number? Deontology looks at moral duties, “categorical imperatives” that must be followed regardless of consequences. And virtue ethics looks at ideal human character, or a “virtuous agent” to guide ethical choices—WWJD, what would Jesus do?Using Jesus as a virtuous agent, we still need to decide whether to focus on universal rules or the consequences we create. Was Jesus consequence or rule-based? As to scripture, which many Christians consider imperative, Jesus is not tied to literal meaning. He paraphrases, adapts passages to current situations as rabbis did then and still do. He interprets metaphorically, changes context, and only quotes passages that present God as the loving Abba he models with his life—practices many Christian scholars would not allow.Jesus is not tied to the letter of the law, but to its purpose of preserving life and promoting God’s presence. His Sabbath violations are case in point. When he says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, he’s flatly putting consequences over rules. Law and scripture serve to create the greatest good for the greatest number—never an end in themselves.Jesus models his ethical decision-making, but even this is a guide, not a law. He brings full presence to each situation so he can best discern, guided by scripture and his Father’s love, what the greatest good requires in the moment. We can do no better. Yet we’ll often come to different conclusions. It’s how we know we’re doing it “right.”
Dave Brisbin 7.20.25We’ve painfully learned that when something seems too good to be true…be very careful or run.Grace falls into this category. What’s too good to be true more than unmerited favor, unconditional acceptance? Not only too good, but not even fair or ethical. Our theology speaks of grace, but denies it in practice, lost in the glare of reward and punishment. That paradigm, created for us and reinforced by us, is like a box for our minds, describing life and our role so rigidly that even if we do somehow get a glimpse of graceful love, we still can’t believe it really extends to us, unworthy as we are.Unworthy people can’t imagine they qualify for grace. Shame blinds them. Perfect people can’t imagine they need grace. Entitlement blinds them. So hard to fall in between. The only way to experience the first possibility of grace is to fully admit and embrace our imperfections and failings and yet keep showing up to the possibility of relationship—just as we are, with no pretense or expectation—to graduate from shame or entitlement to gratitude. Gratitude is telling. We’re only grateful for gifts we could never give ourselves…best definition of grace.This is Jesus’ whole job: graduating us to the gratitude of grace. He knows he’s got to shock our minds out of the box that defines our lives and denies the existence of grace, and it’s got to be a violent shock, a loss of comforting but limiting beliefs as painful as his own was in the wilderness experience that brought him right to the edge. He knows how we think, that we’re always thinking, and that if we’re thinking it, naming it, trying to control it, we’re missing it.How do you know when you’re in love? Can you explain it? Define it? Control it? Only way to fall in love, experience grace, is to stop thinking, fall out of control. Admit you were never in control and that you don’t exist independently. Isn’t that how it feels? That each breath is not your own, but your beloved’s. Your life only has meaning in theirs? That’s grace, and to move so completely into connection with another is to shock our minds out of the box and graduate to gratitude.
Dave Brisbin 7.13.25How many times have you asked God for a sign? Desperately cried out for any toehold you could get on some certainty…imploring, making bargains. Great scene in the movie Bruce Almighty, begging for a sign but too focused on his pain to see all the signs along the road until he’s finally stopped in his tracks, forced to admit his loss of control. Art imitating life.When religious authorities ask Jesus for a sign, he refuses, calling them an evil generation—bisha in Aramaic—literally unripe, unready, unprepared. He knows as with almighty Bruce, no sign will be enough to convince them of anything until they are prepared to see. Except for the sign of Jonah. We all know Jonah: God asks him to preach to the people of Nineveh but he hates them so much, wants to see them burn, that he runs away aboard a ship only to be swallowed by a great fish. He camps in the fish for three days, until he can finally admit his loss of control.Ironically, Jonah is the only Old Testament prophet who successfully preaches a people to repentance, but when God spares the city, Jonah is not happy. This is why he ran away. He knew his God, the extent of God’s love and compassion. But his own love was still tribal. His God should not be their God. God’s love should not extend to those he hated. The descent of his three days in the belly of the beast brought him to the gates of Nineveh, but he’d need another descent before he could extend his love all the way to the enemy.This is the way of it. No sign will ever be enough to overcome our human fears and need for tribal certainty. But the sign of Jonah, descending deep enough, long enough to implode our narrow view of life and love, is the only way to become free enough to see a greater expanse. Whether through external trauma and loss, or internally through intentional spiritual formation, if we’re willing to surrender to the beast, we still won’t find certainty—that’s impossible. But in stripping off illusion, the reality of love extending everywhere, filling every crack, can convince us our borders are artificial, our tribes too small, and our identity defined only in each other.
Dave Brisbin 7.6.25Leader of a retreat some thirty years ago, Catholic priest, asked the group—who attended same weekend every year—why Jesus came, why was he born. Hands went up to answer right out of the Baltimore Catechism—to die for our sins. Priest was so frustrated he said that after all their years of attending, if they weren’t willing to grow, learn anything new, next year just stay home. Wow.I had also been drilled that Jesus came to save us from our sins, shocked by his intensity.Christian writer and speaker, Brennan Manning, revealed in his memoir just before he died that he’d been an alcoholic since age 18, tried to be the good child stumbling into church every Sunday, ordained a priest, became a famous writer and speaker who fell in love, left the priesthood to marry, relapsed after 15 years sober. From motel to motel on speaking tours, drinking to blackout, all while inspiring so many, like me, with his writing on the radical, furious love of God…on grace. Philip Yancey wrote that we’re tempted to ask what might have been if Brennan had not given in to drink. Wrong question. Real question: what might have been if Brennan had never discovered grace?How did Brennan discover grace? By continuing to show back up after every relapse, every failing, to find that God was still there waiting, completely unfazed, love undimmed. Our failings usher us into the presence of grace, never our successes. Only when we’ve embraced our failings, ourselves as imperfect, yet still bring ourselves back to Presence do we experience God’s love as unchanging, degreeless, graceful. Only when we have felt completely unworthy and yet completely accepted at the same time, can we see our shame for what it is—a fear of disconnection that keeps us disconnected.Jesus didn’t come to save us from our sins. God understands those, loves right through them. But our shame keeps us from seeing the good news of that kind of love. It’s the long way home, but Jesus came to save us from shame. Only love can do that. He came to show us the perfection of God’s love. To experience that is to lose the shame, the fear that causes all we call sinful.
Dave Brisbin 6.29.25A leper approaches Jesus, calls out: If you are willing, you can make me clean. A statement. Not asking anything. No question whether Jesus is able to heal. Only if he’s willing. We’re obsessed with whether we’re worthy or capable of connection, acceptance. It’s our fear talking. But moved with compassion, Jesus reaches out and touches the man saying, saba ana, I am willing. In his language, it’s his deepest desire, pleasure, and purpose that he/we are healed, reconnected. His embrace before healing says it all. There is never a moment when full acceptance is not full reality.Years ago, a woman living on the streets would come on Sundays, usually under the influence. We and the donuts didn’t mind, until one Sunday she was acting out so violently, we had to escort her out. After the service she came back as we were all mingling and made a beeline for me. I stiffened, may have actually taken a step back, but gave her direct eye contact, listening while she speed-talked about things I can’t remember. On full alert, I was ready for anything, but the more she talked, the more it seemed her difficult moment had passed. Then she stopped, and after a beat said, I guess I just need a hug. Didn’t see that coming, hope I had the presence of mind to smile, sure that I hesitated, but moved in for the embrace.You know first hugs…all shoulders and arms. I was thinking through it all, waited what seemed the right number of seconds, then relaxed my grip to back away. She maintained pressure, not letting go. Oh, ok…I re-engaged and waited what again seemed right lapse of time, relaxed, but she still held on, saying in my ear but not necessarily to me: sometimes it’s hard to get a good hug. The human condition in eight words. And as my humanity recognized hers, all the categories in which I’d placed her, all my interior boundaries, my tension, fell to the floor. I reeled her back in and held on until I finally felt her relax.We worry whether we’re worthy or able. But our worthiness and capability are never in question. Only our willingness…to reach out and touch first. Because sometimes a good hug is hard to find.
Dave Brisbin 6.22.25Chances are, if you were raised in a Christian tradition, you learned that doubt was the enemy of faith, the opposite of faith, if you had any doubt at all you had no faith. Such learning goes deep and doesn’t go away without a fight. Makes us so hard on ourselves, feeling the inevitable doubts of uncertain human life only to pile on the condemnation of childhood.Making matters worse, we read the gospels to see the first followers of Jesus drop their nets, their entire lives, to follow him at their very first meeting. These were men with wives and children, livelihoods supporting their households. They left all that at the first meeting with a stranger? Is that the bar for faith?We make a fundamental error in assuming that the first mention of a person meeting Jesus is also their first meeting. In Matthew and Mark’s gospels, Andrew and Peter are first mentioned following Jesus immediately, but was that their first meeting? In Luke, Jesus walks into Peter’s house as if he lives there and heals his mother-in-law a chapter before he calls Peter to follow. And in John, Andrew meets Jesus first, then persuades Peter to come, while other disciples are gathered over time. First mention is not the same as first meeting. The decision to follow Jesus was a gradual process as with the development of any human relationship. They met, got to know one another, sat in each other’s homes with a growing realization of who Jesus was.Luke relates that Jesus gets in Peter’s boat at the end of an unsuccessful day of fishing and asks him to put out a little way from shore so he could address the pressing crowd. After speaking, he tells Peter to put out into deep water where they catch more fish than they can haul. Putting out a little way, little risk, to hear the logos or propositional truth is always the first step. Putting out to deep water to hear the rhema or living call to action is the moment truth becomes more than we can haul. Even then, Peter is still wracked with doubt.Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Faith needs doubt as courage needs fear. Answering the call in spite of our doubts is the best humans do.
Dave Brisbin 6.15.25Past week brought a series of headlines each pre-empting each other’s news cycle. Against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the disruption of a new US administration intent on radical change, protests and riots broke out in LA, then aerial offensives between Israel and Iran, political assassinations in Minnesota, more protests nationwide. Huge issues we can’t ignore, that demand a response, a personal way forward.In the midst of it, I receive an email about a meditative practice of “moving our awareness into our hearts, letting our vision arise from a place of integration rather than analysis, receptivity rather than grasping after things we desire.” Though it stood right at the heart of contemplative practice that I’ve been championing for decades, this week, it read like an anemic retreat from action, naïve, even irresponsible in the face of all that needs doing. Silence is the cornerstone of contemplation, but for many, silence is mere complicity. We all want to feel relevant, do something significant, so what is a responsible response?Opening scene of a movie. Roman general looking over the field of a battle about to be fought. Face hard, eyes slitted, he knows the coming pain, planned it, resigned to it. Something out of frame catches his eye. Cut to a sparrow flitting on a bush. Back to his face as it softens, eyes widening, smile spreading. He follows the bird in flight, then eyes back to battlefield, face back to stone. Without a word, we see the essence of a warrior who can still be captivated by insignificant, fragile beauty, still capable of awe.Awe is an encounter with vastness, even if small, beyond our frame of reference, challenging everything we think we know. What we think we know, no longer awes us, so to be awed is to accept we may be wrong, that we don’t know everything. Awe alone diminishes our sense of self, restores the humility and balance needed to see our connection to everyone and everything, even a sparrow on a battlefield. Contemplation keeps awe alive. Awe is silence that is not complicit…essential preparation for speaking and doing what actually heals.
Dave Brisbin 6.8.25A man asks me about Jesus’ saying that if we believe in him and his works, we’ll do the same and greater works than he. He’s troubled by the verse because he’s not doing the works that Jesus did, let alone greater ones, so does that mean he doesn’t really believe? I ask him what works of Jesus he’s looking to do. Well, it has to be the healings and miracles, right? And therein lies the rub.The church hasn’t known what to do with this verse for the same reason, usually limiting it to Jesus’ immediate inner circle who performed healings and miracles in the gospels. But if Jesus’ message doesn’t apply to us, why read it? Or maybe we’re just misunderstanding which works Jesus means. Nothing focuses the mind like a deadline, so you can bet the last words a person believes they’ll say to you will be the most crucial they have to offer. Jesus’ last words to his friends were to love each other as he had loved them, that people would know they were his followers by their love. Not theology, ritual, or miracles.He defined love as love of the enemy—those not of our own tribe, the realization of identity with his Father and everyone encountered, whether family and friends or strangers and outcasts. The works of Jesus were his breaking all ethnic, social, and legal boundaries necessary to establish connection. Healing only happened after connection and may be understood spiritually as the connection itself, the liberation of perfect love.Pentecost, a symbolic fifty days after Easter, is the moment Jesus’ followers experienced their own spiritual liberation. Their loss at Calvary was the beginning of a wilderness journey that had to be taken without Jesus. As long as they were with him, they continued to think tribally, physically, literally, missing Jesus’ real works. He said it was to their advantage that he go, so they could identify with God’s spirit—always there, but invisible to tribal eyes. When they speak that day, and everyone hears them in their own language, what better way to understand their graduation from tribe, from the confines of ethnic identity to God-in-all identity, the real work of Jesus.
Dave Brisbin 6.1.25What is the most important goal of your spiritual formation? You might instinctively say love. Learning to love, practicing love. Good answer, but until we carefully define it, love may not help direct us. Rather than a feeling or behavior, love is simply identification with the beloved. When we identify—see ourselves in the other, a fellow imperfect human, an extension of us—whatever we do for them, we do for ourselves. To experience that identification is love. And vice versa. So……the goal of our spiritual formation is identity. We need to be able to answer the question, who am I, and its twin, why am I here—or our lives will always be random with respect to our awareness and choices. And since love and identification are hopelessly entangled, a critical truth is laid bare: we will never find our identity in isolation, in the abstract, but always and only in connection with each other, with everything, with God’s presence. We look for our identity as some separate entity, a package of roles, accomplishments, and attributes distinct from everything around us. But identity is meaningless in isolation, just a thought subject to change without notice. Jesus is all over this. When he says we have to lose our lives to find them, he’s talking about losing our isolating thoughts about ourselves in order to come back home, to reconnect and identify. Clinical studies have now shown that when we experience awe—defined as encounters that are vast, beyond our current perceptual frames—our sense of self is diminished, a first domino creating a chain breaking down social barriers and increasing sense of meaning. Whether in nature, prayer, or relationship, our spiritual formation is nothing more than serial awe inducement…bringing us back to the vastness that takes us out of ourselves.True identity can’t be conceived, named, or described. Soon as we do, we’re back in isolation, separated from the only place we’ll find it. True identity can only be experienced in moments of awe, pulled outside our thoughts to find it hidden in each other. If we’re looking for identity all by itself, we're looking in the wrong spot.
Dave Brisbin 5.25.25If I asked you who you are, how would you answer?Almost everyone I’ve asked, including myself, has answered with a mix of the roles they fill, the accomplishments they’ve accumulated, and the attributes they exhibit. Roles, accomplishments, and attributes describe the human container we inhabit in this life, the whole with which our egoic consciousness identifies. We think we are our roles, accomplishments, and attributes until we step out of our containers to find a deeper identity underneath. We’ve all stepped out at moments of peak experience, but we don’t shift identity that fast or easily.We fear the loss of our container to death, illness, age, trauma as much as we identify with it. And we identify with it exclusively until we intentionally practice the experience of stepping out.Entering kingdom is a metaphor. A physical image for a spiritual realignment. There is no place or space to kingdom. We don’t enter it. We become it. Kingdom is a shift in identity. Or better, kingdom is the realization of our true identity, the recapturing of who we really are—were at the beginning and still are underneath. The children running at our feet are kingdom because they haven’t yet learned to believe they are not. But it won’t be long before their minds take hold, telling them they must think about who they are, to hold that thought and defend it as they work to make it so. Whatever we think we are nothing without, lost without, is what we identify with. But anything we can lose is not who we are, and everything we think, will eventually be lost.The freedom of the truth Jesus offers is that who we really are can never be lost. Ever. Not even in death. Any identity imagined as separate from any other identity, from God’s identity, is illusion, so to strip the illusion is to see that we and the Father are one: true identity. Jesus’ Way is relinquishing everything that can be relinquished until only that which can’t be relinquished remains. The point of any spiritual journey is to arrive at the ground of this irreducible presence, an identity that can’t be lost, but costs us everything to which we cling.
Dave Brisbin 5.18.25Two events converged in my mind last week. My wife and I picked up the ashes of a friend we’d been helping take care of for the past few years…and our faith community turned eighteen years old. Nothing like an anniversary to open the memory faucet, and maybe because of our friend’s death, the serious illnesses of many others, and my own advancing age, my memories were not focused on timelines, but the long parade of people who have meant so much. Those who have stayed, moved on, and especially those who have passed on. They have been reminding me of the brevity of life, to make my time count. Not morbidly in a pressured way, but gratefully, aware of the gifts they gave me in our short spans together. Each of four men who helped found and lead our community had a particular gift he exuded, lived out most likely unintentionally, and of which I was unaware at the time. It’s perversely true that it’s harder to see the gifts others are giving while they live. Maybe because while ongoing they’re taken for granted, or because always mixed with inevitable faults and annoyances, the prophet is not honored if too familiar.We don’t know what we got til it’s gone.When a person is gone, we can reflect on their life in its entirety, stretch out, really see what that short time together gave us. Each of these four men had their faults, in some cases, mortal faults. Their gifts were packaged with their faults, but now, softened with time and reflection, only the gifts remain: one gave me his presence, the next showed me passion, the third how life was unlivable without humor, and the fourth, a constant devotion.To live with presence, passion, humor, devotion is to immerse so fully in life, we step outside the container we will leave at death, realize that all our fear exists only in our minds. Not in life. Or in death. Fear is a mental construct that we can take off like a dirty shirt. We will always fear the unknown at first, but our teachers, living and dead, are showing us in their most unguarded moments, that we can loosen the bonds that hold us inside our fears and experience the life that exists even in death.
Dave Brisbin 5.11.25Our English words patriarchal and paternal descend from the Latin word pater, father. We know about patriarchy—society organized around male domination, often to the point of excluding women—but paternalism is restricting the freedom and autonomy of others under the guise of protecting their own welfare. The US started out patriarchal but not paternal. We didn’t allow women to vote until 1920 but also didn’t collect income tax until 1913, generally leaving people to fend for themselves for better or worse. Today, we’re thankfully much less patriarchal, but much more paternal.On Mother’s Day, this is something to consider, because the church also been shamefully patriarchal, reflecting the culture around it. But since scripture does appear to portray God as male, is God patriarchal and/or paternal? We may wish God to be more paternal, happy to give up freedom for better risk control…but patriarchal? Male?Though we won’t find Mother God in the scriptures, the Hebrew mind couldn’t conceive of father without mother. In their very language, father meant “strong house” and mother, “strong water,” the glue that held the family together. There could not be one without the other. God was seen as father in creating the heavens and earth around us, but the Hebrew words for spirit, kingdom, wisdom, presence, were all feminine—spirit was “she” and kingdom was “queendom.” There was no God short of the full spectrum of attributes we see between father and mother, and the wisdom, compassion, intuition, devotion of God is portrayed over and over in both testaments as a God in labor, giving birth, nursing, comforting, caressing.Jesus always led with mother first, breaking ritual and social barriers in order to establish compassionate relationship before he ever instructed paternally. Father may symbolize strength, but without Mother, there is no reason to be strong. Scripture shows us a necessary and complementary balance, but more essentially, that we will never know Father God until we first experience God as Mother. All of God.God is an eternal oscillation between mother and father, a paradox we can never resolve.
Dave Brisbin 5.4.25The most damaging attitude toward life and spirituality is…wait for it…passivity. Passive people feel their actions are insufficient or that they have no real choice at all, which makes them victims—defined by choicelessness. Victims are always waiting, never in the present, looking toward some other moment when circumstances may change or someone, God, saves them from their circumstances. People with victim mentalities are passive-aggressive in their interactions with others, finding indirect ways of meeting needs and expressing anger or frustration without ever directly confronting core issues.As damaging all this is to human relationships, it’s catastrophic to spiritual ones. And yet, a passive, victim mentality is seductive, as comforting as a warm blanket, often nurtured for lifetimes. Having no choice also means no blame, no responsibility or need to act. Innocent of all charges. An innocent is not responsible either—kind of the flip side of a victim, and it’s comforting to imagine ourselves as innocent.But we were not created to be innocent. Certainly not to stay innocent.The garden of Eden was never meant to be our finished state any more than is our childhood. We are innocent as children because we have no choice to be any other way, but a child is innocent only until the age of reason. The part of us that is created in God’s image is the part that can freely choose, because love is only love if it is freely chosen. We don’t reflect God’s image until after we eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Only then can we choose, fully responsible for our choices and actions, no longer innocent, no longer victim. Capable of love.It’s scary to be responsible. Overwhelming at times. We all become victims when personal choice is removed, and as much as that hurts, the relief it can offer in ongoing passivity, the luxury of not having to choose or act, can bewitch us. If we’re waiting for God to save us, he’s not coming…because he is already here. All poured out. If we’re waiting, we’ll never see the truth. That we’re already free to choose what has already and always been freely given.
Dave Brisbin 4.27.25We’re back in count again. We just finished counting forty days of Lent, and now we’re counting again. The count of Lent signifies a time of preparation for Easter, and the count now is also preparation for a second liberation on the fiftieth day after Easter—Pentecost.Our liturgical calendar is overlaid on that of the Jews, who for 3,500 years have counted seven weeks of seven, forty-nine days plus one, from the second day of Pesach/Passover to Shavu’ot/Weeks. Originally a festival marking the barley harvest, Passover became linked with Exodus, the physical liberation of the people. Shavu’ot, at the wheat harvest, was linked with the giving of the Law on Sinai, the spiritual liberation of the people and the beginning of a deeper relationship with God.Ancient Hebrews saw a shape to their spiritual journeys that passed through a wilderness between two liberations. That even when freed from physical bondage, humans are not fully prepared to live freely. Only time in the wilderness, the hard work of introspection and self-examination, shows us how free we really are. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born a second time, that he was born physically of water, but would not be prepared for kingdom until born of spirit as well. After Easter, Jesus’ friends eventually recognize that he and God’s promises still live, but they were not yet prepared for the insanely radical nature of that reality. They needed another forty days plus ten—ten signifying integration and completion—before their Pentecost moment, the full impact of spiritual liberation, became apparent.The shape of their journey is ours as well. If we answered the call to seek something greater than ourselves, joined new communities, accepted new beliefs and traditions, we’ve had our physical Exodus, liberation from the illusion of separation. But this is just the beginning. We remain in count. Calvary, the loss that begins the wilderness of stripping off all to which we cling, is the fulcrum between our two liberations. The way to Pentecost begins at Calvary and is traveled living as if God and God’s promises are more alive than life itself.
Dave Brisbin 4.20.25Cross and resurrection form the crux of Christian tradition, but whatever these events were historically, if we merely revere them from a distance of two millennia, we are missing the point of the gospels. These events realigned every detail of the lives of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, but as long as they remain historical events and theological concepts, they won’t realign ours. If the resurrection is to have the power now that it had then, we need to know where to look for meaning.We naturally focus on the supernatural event, fighting and debating, but have you noticed that the gospels don’t show us the event at all? Makes us crazy looking for literal details, for certainty, but in the gospels, the resurrection happens offstage, in the blink of a hard cut. The story picks up afterward, following those Jesus left behind and their all-too-natural, human reactions. The gospels show us exactly where to look for meaning—not in the miracle itself, but in how the miracle affects our lives.The question isn’t whether you believe…it’s what difference it makes that you believe.It’s fascinating that none of Jesus’ closest friends recognize him face to face after he rises. We wonder how that could be possible. Did Jesus look different, disguise himself somehow, for some reason? That line of thinking misses the gospels’ focus entirely, which is not on the Jesus incident, but our ability to see it…that seeing the risen Jesus is a process of becoming ready to redefine impossible, a process that is always based in intimacy. Mary recognizes him after he calls her name, Clopas after Jesus breaks bread for supper. Tiny, intimate moments they had to re-experience to break the spell of their expectations.Whatever the resurrection literally was two thousand years ago, if we don’t re-experience intimacy with Jesus now, in prayer and every face and embrace, every detail of our lives, we may say we believe, but re-animation, rebirth, will elude. The meaning of resurrection, like kingdom, is not out there somewhere to be observed, but within us to be tasted and seen as life that is always new and always alive.
Dave Brisbin 4.13.25Very few of us live in the real world. Like avatars in a gamescape, we live in a world created by our own thought patterns, which are in turn created by our core beliefs—deeply held, fundamental assumptions about ourselves, others, and the world. Hiding in our unconscious, core beliefs are as unquestioned as the air we breathe, acting as filters through which everything in life is perceived, without our knowing they even exist. Initial reactions to earliest experiences, core beliefs remain in place, shaping not just how we interpret life, but how we behave. When positive, core beliefs can be advantageous, but when negative, they stoke fears that create dysfunctional behavior that creates consequences that reinforce the core beliefs themselves—I am unlovable, worthless; people can’t be trusted, will always let me down; the world is dangerous, I will never be happy—self-fulfilling prophecies in an endless feedback loop.Jesus said the eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. In his metaphoric way, Jesus is giving us the purpose of his entire teaching. In his language, eye/aina expands to include everything we believe and the way we see reality. If our way of seeing, our filter, is clear and true, our whole being will be full of order and clarity (light/nuhra) as opposed to chaos and dysfunction (darkness/heshuka).Jesus riding into Jerusalem is an object lesson in only seeing what we are programmed to see. Four distinct groups all see Jesus filtered through the desires and attachments of their core beliefs. The Jewish people and Jesus’ followers see him as a savior coming to fix their problems. To the Jewish and Roman authorities, he’s a threat to their powerbases. Whether Jesus is savior or threat depends on our core beliefs.We say Jesus is savior, but he’s not here to fix our problems. That’s our job. He’s here to clear our eyes. That’s how he saves. Our way of seeing, our core beliefs, are our powerbases. Until we let Jesus threaten our powerbases, he will never be our savior.
Dave Brisbin 4.6.25Just when you think the world can’t get any crazier, each week we get a whole new view of crazy. And the more the world pounds on our door through news and social media, the more our grip on spiritual reality can loosen. The silence and solitude of contemplative practice, the wordless knowing of God’s presence can feel impotent, incapable of meeting the screaming needs of life’s issues.The world always has its thumb on the scale, so we naturally tilt that way, but a fulfilled life is all about balance. We need both contemplation and action. Focusing on interior spirituality, we can become complacent, blind to the needs and suffering around us. Focusing on exterior activism, even if we call our drives spiritual, we can become identified with the dysfunction we oppose—angry, biased, even corrupt. But while working to keep weight on both sides of the scale, we can’t forget that our spirituality is still the foundation of any action we could possibly call loving.Liz Walker puts it this way: “Some people would not consider a (spiritual) healing community to be part of a social justice movement. They’d argue that our work is anemic—not the ‘on the ground’ activism necessary to catalyze social change. But the exterior work of social justice is only as strong as the interior work that births and fuels it. We can’t heal as a community if we do not concern ourselves with healing our inner lives.”When out of overwhelming devotion, Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus with a pound of expensive ointment, Judas Iscariot derides her for wasting money that could have gone to the poor. Interior and exterior on display. Jesus provides the balance, rebukes Judas saying, “you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” The choices we make to act, whether micro or macro, are only as loving as the interior preparation that births and fuels them.The interior work that Jesus did in the wilderness, the symbolic forty days of facing the wild beasts of his human compulsions, built his foundation of identity with God and informed his choices for the rest of his life. He did his forty. And we must do ours.
Dave Brisbin 3.30.25Burning bush is our cultural meme, idiom for a peak experience, a vision of God or from God. But for all its power, one burning bush is not enough. Standing on holy ground in front of the original burning bush, Moses argued with God, doubted God’s word right there, and for the rest of his life, oscillated between boldness and doubt. Just like any human. But how in the world is a burning bush not enough for permanent transformation? How could that not change us without a doubt?A burning bush, a moment when ultimate reality breaks through the veil between heaven and earth, is a glimpse of life through God’s eyes—everything connected, everything literally one substance. The human view of individual form and function falls away. Seventeen years into his monastic experience, trying to find holiness through cloistered separation from secular life, Thomas Merton had an experience in downtown Louisville at the corner of 4th and Walnut. In the middle of the busy shopping district, he was “suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that he loved all those people…that the whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream…”I have friends who have described similar experiences. I’ve had my own, and we’ve all seen burning bushes of varying intensity at times of great love and great loss. They don’t last because they present a paradox, and our minds, ever dualistic, see every paradox as a threat to certainty, convert it to a contradiction, then choose a side to relieve the tension. But that tension is the whole point. Wrestling to fit a too-big God view into the too-small human experience of daily life keeps the vision alive while keeping us grounded in our daily activities.We need burning bushes as ballast for our sacred tension, but they are rare, come unbidden. We can’t create them or control them, but we can become increasingly aware when they are happening while working to create the perfect environment in our hearts for them to occur. Ride the sacred tension, living each day as the possibility of another surprise, another burning bush moment of seeing life through God’s eyes. Always new, alive, one.
Dave Brisbin 3.23.25Remember taking math tests in school? Remember how you had to show your work? Remember how you hated that? Wasn’t enough to get the answer, you had to show how you got to the answer. Yes, a right answer, or at least a functional one, is important. But showing your work signaled that you grasped underlying principles that would give you repeatable results, a platform on which to build. Mathematics understands that the how is at least as important as the what. That any answer is only valid within the context of the process of the solution. How we do what we do defines us and our work. In scripture, this process is symbolized by the number forty—a time of trial and testing leading to spiritual rebirth, the necessary work of transformation that just takes time. After Jesus’ baptism, he sees the spirit of God and hears God’s voice. A divine download if there ever was one. Yet he is immediately impelled into the wilderness for forty days to face his wild beasts. After the Damascus road vision, Paul spends fourteen years in Arabia for his forty. Elijah after Mount Carmel, the Israelites after the Red Sea crossing, Jacob after the dream of his ladder, the disciples after the resurrection…all faced fortyness after their downloads. But why? Shouldn’t a direct download from God be enough?We can be converted in an instant. Accept a premise, have an emotional response to a mystical encounter, a view of heaven—life seen through God’s eyes—a breaking through the mind’s illusion of separateness to the realization that everything is one thing, that we are never separated or alone. Problem is, we’re still living here on earth. Gravity still rules, and that gravity-defying vision creates a nagging paradox we compulsively want to resolve. But life doesn’t resolve, and learning to fit God-reality into the too-small details of human life takes time. Forty.However intense, any download is only momentary. Will not last unless we wrestle with the paradox long enough to assimilate, push into muscle memory a single view of two ever-oscillating realities: heaven and earth. There is no other way. We have to show our work.
Dave Brisbin 3.16.25Mid-century dancer Martha Graham said that no artist is ever satisfied with their work at any time. That there is a strange, “divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest” that keeps them marching and more alive than others. This is a blueprint for excellence and recipe for disaster depending on whether a balance can be maintained. We’ve been applying this blueprint to our spiritual lives, and balance is no less critical there.The power in Graham’s statement lies in the paradox of living positively in a state of dissatisfaction and unrest. Far from blessed, we see those states as negative, and if we think of dissatisfaction as discontentment with our current circumstance, they are. But looking at dissatisfaction as the opposite of complacency—being so satisfied with our own abilities and situation that we see no need for improvement or possibility of growth—opens a door.In spiritual terms, there is always more in heaven and earth than we can hold at any moment. Like drinking from a fire hydrant, we are aware of the flow, but our mouths can only hold so much. We see how much is getting past us, yet we’re not thirsty. Each moment is just enough; filled right to the brim, no more or less. But if we’ve avoided complacency, we can use our dissatisfaction, the awareness of the flow, to stoke our desire to grow and be able to hold more of that flow in the next moment, which will also be just enough.Always a delicate balance. So easy for divine desire and anticipation to slide into obsession, where powerfully intrusive thoughts create distress that require compulsion, repetitive physical and mental behavior, to relieve the distress. But like compulsive hand washing over an obsession with germs—it’s never enough.Every one of us needs dreams and goals, desire and hope, something to plan and work toward. Without a striving for excellence, human life loses the sense of meaning and purpose that makes life worth living. But if dreams become obsessive and work compulsive enough that we never experience our moments as enough, dissatisfaction is no longer divine. Merely discontented. Keeps us marching, but less alive.
Dave Brisbin 3.9.25Years ago, at the lowest point in my life, a friend invited me to her church, marking a return to Christianity after fifteen years away. First thing, I booked a lunch with the pastor, and halfway through, across my untouched plate, he said he saw “divine dissatisfaction” in me. Strange phrase. I didn’t see anything divine in my dissatisfaction or speed-questions, but then, there I was. Asking a pastor.Years later, I looked it up. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know he was quoting a dancer. He was much more a football quoter. But Martha Graham said that artists have a divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest, that keeps them marching and more alive than others. Pastor saw that unrest in me. Though it didn’t feel divine or blessed, it certainly was motivating. Kept me marching, desiring, seeking, doubting. I doubted everything I’d ever been taught about spiritual life, which only made me desire it more.Remember Doubting Thomas?When the rest of the Twelve of Jesus’ inner circle said they had seen Jesus risen and alive, Thomas says he would not believe until he literally put his hands in Jesus’ wounds. That one line has made Thomas a meme for faithlessness for two thousand years and counting. But is that fair? Every one of Jesus’ friends doubted. None of them recognized him when they first saw him again, their doubting minds filtering out the possibility of the impossible until they had a personal experience that broke them through to new reality. Thomas was the only one honest about his doubt, bold enough to state it, and we’ve punished him for it.All Thomas said was that he was dissatisfied with a second-hand report, hearsay. That only a personal experience could break him through to trust the impossible. Thomas is our hero, showing us doubt as a gift. It stokes us with the dissatisfaction we need to admit that even the Bible is a second-hand report. It points us toward our own personal experience, but it’s not the experience itself.This Lent, can we see our doubt and dissatisfaction not as weakness, but a gift…a divine call past hearsay to a personal experience of the new life Easter represents?
Dave Brisbin 3.2.25Jesus doesn’t save anyone passively, in spite of themselves, beyond their willingness to actively engage a way of experiencing transformed life he calls Kingdom. If we’re waiting for a savior, no one is coming. If we’re waiting for anything, we’re not in Kingdom. Waiting is passive, not yet; Kingdom is always in motion, herenow. Jesus saves by empowering us to act in ways we may have thought not possible or not allowed. He shows us the process of fundamental change, challenging us to make the small choices we can make now to start dominos falling toward radical transformation not yet.The good news of the gospels is that God is all poured out. Everything God is and has to offer is already herenow. Nothing withheld…Kingdom within, in our midst. Jesus’ message tells us that we are empowered to accept the everything of God any time and always, and his Way is the unavoidable process of realizing our empowerment, only and always experiential—the choice by increasingly audacious choice or trust.Tragically, we’ve been taught a disempowering God who mirrors human leaders to whom we must appeal, who keep us waiting for what we need. If we’re waiting, we’re not empowered, not in Kingdom, and such a God is anathema to Jesus. Yet we’ve also been taught that God is disempowered himself and only half of the cosmic equation. The other half, Satan, God’s arch enemy and opponent, has the power to lead us into temptation. We imagine ourselves pawns in this cosmic battle, victims, collateral damage in a scorched earth.That is anathema to the Jews who wrote the scriptures from which we extract such a creature as Satan. For Jews, God is unopposable, the One without opposite. No battle is possible, and ha-satan, the adversary, is God’s agent—whether a person, spiritual being, or our own inclination to evil—providing us with the alternate choices that make free will real. But the choice is always ours, and ha-satan has no power over us that we don’t give.Jesus is telling us we are not victims. Everything we need is right here. The choice is always ours to break through any resistance that would tell us otherwise. Empowered.
Dave Brisbin 2.23.25Do people really change? Seems maddingly rare, especially the older we get—the way is narrow and gate constricted—but it does happen. Why are some of us able to make fundamental, personal change, beat the odds that imprison the rest of us?Joseph Campbell introduced the monomyth, the hero’s journey, the one plotline we use over and over in all forms: stories, poems, songs, movies. This universal story of transformation follows the three-part structure of a classic rite of passage. First, separation from the life and world we know, often forcefully through a wounding or traumatic event. Second, risky transition through an unknown and dangerous landscape where something is required of us before we can return home. And third, reincorporation back where we started, changed by the experience with a new role to play and ability to match. Transformation stories are faithfully retold in all media, but especially in the case of movies, can be deceiving as they neatly wrap in two hours. We know life is messier, that one journey is not enough, not the end of the story. But even movies are relevant, distilling patterns of meaning that can make the difference between being a hero in our own story or not. If we’re paying attention, stories make us aware of these patterns in daily life, begin to see that fundamental change isn’t the result of grand adventure, but of pushing through resistance to change with small, simple choices that start a domino effect leading us to grand adventure. Stories help us see that if we want fundamental change, we can intentionally work backward through the chain of events that leads to our goal until we arrive right where we’re standing, having now identified the beginning of the journey…a small choice we can make, a step we can actually take.Can we begin to see in each moment, in our smallest decisions, the seeds of adventure? The whole of life in one uncertain step? Make friends with uncertainty as the engine of change? Say yes more than no and love the dead ends of our choices as much as the fruitful branches?If we can, we can change. Beat the odds. And that is the purpose of life.
Dave Brisbin 2.16.25Life is big, loud, in your face. Like an over-the-top extravert, life can suck all the oxygen out of the room, leaving little energy or attention for anything else. And against life’s overwhelming physical realities—whether personal or political, socio-economic or relational—the spiritual can seem like a whisper we’re not even sure we heard…naïve, even irrelevant to our most pressing needs. I understand why spiritual leaders often change lanes into the socio-political, big macro issues. It’s like getting off the sidelines and into the game, something solid to grasp, a side to take, a cause to champion…all driven by the legitimate belief that spirituality is only as authentic as it is present in all our physical relationships—personal and communal.It’s a chicken and egg thing. Which comes first, spiritual formation or the championing of causes? Of course, they work hand in glove, but because life is pulling relentlessly to the physical, we need to act as our own counterweight, pulling back toward the spiritual. Not because spiritual awareness is better, “righter” than our physical lives, but because spiritual awareness is underrepresented in daily life and needs special attention. Spiritual formation builds the awareness of who we really are: not individual entities, but part of the whole of everything that is, including each other in all our diversity and disagreement. And when this awareness of oneness is informing our choices, it changes the way we approach the championing of our causes.We can’t separate our spirituality from our physicality. Each is lived out in the presence of the other, defined in the context of the other. And neither is more important than the other as long we’re breathing here. Human life is a balancing act. Each of us needs dreams, plans, and the hard work of accomplishing them—the “not yet” side of the equation. But if we’ve not mastered the ability to live that work with a sense of grateful completion right now, to balance now and not yet, if we confuse our work with the spirituality that propels us to it, we remain billboards for the human problem. Not a solution.
Dave Brisbin 2.9.25Quote from a movie priest: There comes a time in man’s search for meaning that you realize there are no answers. When you come to that horrible, unavoidable conclusion, you either accept it or you kill yourself. Or you simply stop searching...I remember how obsessively important it was to get answers to the big theological and existential questions about religious doctrine, miracles, healings, prayer, heaven, hell, death, afterlife. At a certain point, in the midst of all the contradicting voices in my ear, I had to admit that I just couldn’t know for certain. I put a symbolic stake in the ground at the point of the Father’s love as a way to hold on to the one thing I did know. But I wasn’t ready to stop searching.Then life happened—marriage, divorce, births, miscarriages, achievements, failures, sitting with others facing cancer, amputation, suicides I never saw coming, healings and reconciliations I never saw coming—and those questions that had been so all consuming grew smaller, toothless, more and more irrelevant until only the love remained. I understood why Jesus boiled it all down to loving God and others, and then even further…love each other as I have loved you…as if even God didn’t require mention.Mother Teresa described her work with the poor as loving God in his most distressing disguise. In her life-prayer-work, she had accessed momentary nondual states in which she glimpsed everything as one thing. God in everything, everything in God, no division or separation. We don’t love God directly or abstractly in prayer, ritual, worship. Those practices help us cultivate the nondual moments we need to see God in each other, to know we only love God by loving each other. There’s no other way.We’d like to bottle those moments, store nondual data as certainty. But it’s like breathing. We breathe just enough for the moment, breathe again for the next. We can’t store air, but each breath is just enough for us. We can’t store answers to unanswerable questions. But all we know for sure, the oneness of love, is just enough for us, if we simply stop searching for answers that add nothing to life.
Dave Brisbin 2.2.25Would Jesus have been a Republican or Democrat?What seems like the setup to a joke is being asked in all seriousness. Two weeks into a controversial administration, I’m hearing people ask how a good Christian could possibly vote… How a Christian pastor could possibly support… An Episcopal bishop and a sitting president both state that God is on their side while remaining flatly opposed to one another. Near the end of the Civil War, Lincoln said that both North and South read the same bible, pray to the same God, invoke God’s aid against the other, but the prayers of both could not be answered, that of neither had been answered fully. Once we see an enemy, we imagine God is on our side, because we only have an enemy if we are certain we are right. An enemy is the wrong one. God is never wrong, so God is on our side, because we are right. Blaise Pascal said that people never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Truth is, the real enemy is not the other tribe—the real enemy is the certainty that makes the other tribe an enemy.We’re all co-opting God to our side, our tribe. It’s natural for anyone who reveres Jesus, or the authority of his name, to imagine he is in their camp. But what does the record show? Jesus made his own followers crazy, over and over…every time they became certain of their positions, thought they had him figured out, domesticated, he rocked them back on their heels. For anyone with an agenda, he was frustrating, infuriating, unexpected, outrageous, an equal opportunity offender of anyone who was seeing the enemies of their certainty.Jesus refused to be co-opted into any camp. Whatever political beliefs he had are not preserved in the gospels, meaning they were irrelevant to his message. They never created enemies for him because his primary identity was not in camp or tribe, but in oneness with his Father. If we can only see truth in our own tribe, we’ll see enemies everywhere, but we won’t see Jesus. He’s in the space between camps, where the real enemy is not another tribe, but the certainty that makes enemies of everyone else.
Dave Brisbin 1.26.25One of the best-known stories from the gospels, one that has seeped into collective consciousness, is the story of Jesus walking on water. This and turning water to wine has become shorthand for divine power. It’s natural for us to focus on the literal, but all Jesus’ miracles have spiritual meaning as well, and since most of us will live full lives never walking on water, the spiritual meaning is more relevant. Especially when Peter asks Jesus to bring him out on the water, and we can suddenly see ourselves as participants in miracle making. But Peter gets out a few steps, sees the waves from his new perspective, and starts sinking, screaming for help. Jesus puts him back in the boat saying, you of little faith, why did you doubt? How many times have Jesus’ words been aimed at us when we’ve expressed the least bit of existential uncertainty? But is doubt as uncertainty really what Jesus is rebuking? The word translated as doubt comes from a root that means twice or again, so we can understand it as second guessing ourselves, wavering in resolve as we ruminate.The boat is our little island of rational thought floating on a chaotic sea of unconscious mystery. We take a breathlessly non-rational step out of the boat, a leap of faith, then immediately start thinking rationally again, fearing again. It’s our human cycle of surrender and refortification to embedded thought that limits our ability to follow Jesus to truth that liberates. We don’t have little faith when we stop thinking we mentally believe. We have little faith when we start thinking again and stop acting. Faith is not thought. It’s acting as if what we say we believe is true enough to carry us on the surface tension of uncertainty. The nonrational ability to act in the presence of doubt, step out of the boat of all our very good reasons why not.Little faith is not much doubt. It’s the need for much certainty. Keeping the faith is not steely-eyed adherence to mental concept. It’s the embrace of uncertainty, accepting we will never have enough information to step out of our boats. We just do. Over and over. Until trust replaces certainty.
Dave Brisbin 1.19.25From someone going through a perfect storm of difficulties: I see no evidence of God, but plenty of evidence of the devil. Despite years as a devout Christian, she’s hit the point we all do, over and over in life, the point Karl Jaspers called a limit situation. The moment we realize we’re gonna need a bigger boat. Hitting the limit of our ability to cope, make sense, make meaning—everything that ordered our universe lying in a heap.Why does God seem silent when evil is so loud?We can walk into a dilapidated house and say we see no evidence of an architect, but the fact of the house, the space in which we could care for and maintain a home, is the architect’s fingerprint. If the consequences of human action or natural processes like extreme weather or viruses frustrate our agendas, security, and certainty, we label them evil. They overwhelm us, obscuring the order beneath. God is everywhere and everything, the foundation and bones of the house, the floor on which we act. But no matter how badly we neglect the floor, it still exists, if we’re still acting. We can say the news is always bad, but that’s good. Though loud, bad news is still the aberration against the backdrop of good.Someone asked me how we know when God is speaking—looking for words, specificity, certainty. But God’s native language is silence, a non-specific, non-rational background radiation, the fabric of life vibrating in every person and landscape. God’s silence never overwhelms the noise we create, but when we allow ourselves to sink beneath the noise, we can reaffirm a wordless message that is always the same, like an audio loop we can enter at any moment: I am here. All I have is yours. All is well and will be well.Such a non-specific message is not what we want, but all that we need. The suffering always present in a limit situation is the only experience powerful enough to pull back the curtain of our certainties du jour and show us the next larger reality we may be ready to engage…a spiritual awakening. But as long as we equate our suffering with evil, let it blot out the possibility of good, it can’t show us anything.
Dave Brisbin 1.12.25I’m often asked about the big words... The words of Christian doctrine that seem to contradict the nature of God that Jesus called Good News, love itself. Degreeless and indiscriminate love that can’t be altered or avoided, showering on everyone equally—just and unjust alike. Yet Christianity feels exclusive…acceptance withheld unless we believe in an orthodox Jesus, declare him as Lord, obey church rule and ritual. There is heaven for those who perform, the eternal torment of hell for the rest, and at the center of it all stands the cross. Ironically, the ultimate dividing line.Here’s a big word: propitiation. An English word used to translate the Greek and Aramaic words used by John and Paul to describe Jesus’ death on the cross. It means to appease wrath, regain favor, change the mind of an angry God. In 1611, the King James bible translated the Greek hilasmos and Aramaic husaya as propitiation, but this has become controversial. Later translations use expiation instead—atonement, the extinguishing of guilt. The ancient words can mean both, so which?If you’re a hammer, the world looks like a nail. Our concept of life determines what we see and understand, so if our focus is justice, we see propitiation—if love, expiation. Propitiation defines God’s nature as angry and apparently incapable of mercy without the mechanism of a perfect sacrifice. Expiation defines our nature, our need to extinguish “original sin/guilt,” the illusion of separation of which our minds are capable once we become self-aware as children. To extinguish that illusion is the true meaning of the cross. That Jesus could overcome his human sense of separation, remain one with the Father’s love even on the cross, is the salvation we seek. There is only reward and punishment in propitiation. In expiation, we find the degreeless and indiscriminate love that is never withheld.None of the big words mean what we think when placed back in the language Jesus and his followers spoke and wrote. We must re-know what they knew. Jesus was laser-focused on love… The meaning of any big word that contradicts that love is a mistranslation.
Dave Brisbin 1.5.25An angel was walking down the street carrying a torch and a pail of water. When asked what he was going to do with torch and pail, the angel said that with the torch he was burning down the mansions of heaven, and with the pail, putting out the fires of hell. Because only then would we see who truly loves God. With no promise of reward or fear of punishment, what is the temperature of our love when there is nothing “in it” for us—no consequence for not engaging.Everything in us rebels at this. We’re offended if there’s no reward for hard work. Yet Jesus tells us that no matter when we show up, we’re all paid the same at the end of the day—love is its own reward. We’re offended if there’s no punishment for failure, yet Jesus says that sun and rain fall on the just and unjust alike—love can never be other than what it is. We have to scale the wall of reward and punishment before we can ever hope to experience love without degree. Jesus relentlessly works to tear down this wall, knowing how deeply life has embedded it while giving no experience of something as alien as degreeless love.When I stopped practicing Catholicism, my horrified mother told me it wasn’t enough to be a good person, implying that without conforming to correct doctrine and practice, punishment would be my only reward. Yet for Jesus, all law and scripture is summed by loving God and neighbor. His last commandment was to love as he loved, that his followers would be defined by love—not what we rationally understand, irrationally believe, or ritually practice. The only purpose of religious belief and practice is to guide us to the experience of degreeless love. If it does, it’s true. If not, it’s irrelevant at best.Life is so uncertain and humans so fragile, we crave certainty as medication, and the paradigm of reward and punishment at least gives some illusion of control. That performing as we imagine God wills, binds God contractually to love and acceptance. But even the slightest vestige of meritocracy blinds us to the possibility of a love that can’t be withheld or altered, keeping us forever striving for what we already possess.
Dave Brisbin 12.29.24When a rich young man asks what he must do to experience eternal aliveness, and Jesus tells him to sell all he has, and the man walks away with head hung, Jesus tells his friends how hard it is for wealthy people. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter aliveness. The Aramaic word for camel, gamla, can also mean rope, so take your pick of images, but…it’s really hard.So how did the Magi beat those odds? Magi were wealthy, educated, astronomer/astrologers, influential advisors to power, yet when they saw the eastern rising of the prophetic star for which they had been searching for centuries, they jumped on their camels and headed west. So far, so good. All in the realm of accepted science and entrenched belief. But when that star “stood over” Bethlehem—when Jupiter went retrograde, signaling the end of their western push, and they found the one born at the rising of the king’s star—what could have prepared them for the abject poverty and insignificance of the infant? How were they able to see past centuries of expectation to the unassuming fulfilment of promise?This is the always question. And the Magi are our best teachers because we are wealthy and educated too. We are the rich young man looking for eternal aliveness, not marginalized first followers. And however we see ourselves, even as middle class in the developed West, we are wealthier than 98% of the world’s population. More telling, we are invested in the status quo for our imagined survival and advantage. That investment is the eye of the needle.What did the Magi have that the rich young man did not?The Magi brought three gifts. Gold symbolizes desire, and frankincense, the action of faith. So far, so good. But desire and action along the certainty of our entrenched belief can only take us to the precipice of the manger. At the manger, we are asked to sell everything that expects something certain. The Magi have one gift left. Myrrh…surrender. Without surrender to the unexpected, impossible, improbability of God, all our other gifts don’t matter. They can’t squeeze us through the needle’s eye.
Dave Brisbin 12.15.24What is it we’re supposed to see in Christmas? Talk about a mixed message... Only two gospels mention Jesus’ birth at all, and the few details given depict a birth so ordinary to parents so poor that those closest didn’t even make room for them in the inn. Enter shepherds and Magi...here the gospels spend a bit more time, because their reactions were anything but ordinary. What did they see that everyone else missed?We only see what we’re prepared to see. Impoverished shepherds spending their lives in silence and solitude with their flocks, grew a consciousness that allowed them to see significance in the smallest detail. Magi—wealthy, educated advisors to the king—were used to power and influence. Yet these magi had retained a humility and vulnerability that allowed them to see the promise of their star while still unformed in a poor Hebrew infant. If we’re willing, the magi are showing us wealthy, educated ones how to get small enough to see Christmas.Christmas has a way of bringing vague, submerged feelings to the surface the way hook and line bring up fish. We find ourselves grasping squirming emotions that should have nothing to do with what we think Christmas is supposed to mean, what we remember it used to mean. We imprinted the meaning of Christmas through a child’s eyes, then subtly mourn its loss each year through adult eyes.Christmas hasn’t changed; the possibility of Christmas returns every December. We have changed. We’ve lost the pace of childhood, forgotten the smallest details. Maybe Christmas-as-remembered happens exactly when we stop trying to make it happen. Maybe when we stop running faster and faster, trying to catch the stored experience of Christmas, meaning has a chance to catch up and catch us. We can’t choose the pace of life around us anymore than we can alter the course of a storm. But we can choose our own pace within it. Of course we will always find our God as a child. Unassuming. Unformed and always forming. Are we prepared to see?Every time we meet our God is Christmas morning.The babe is in the manger.The star is in the east.And we are the Magi, and they are us.
Dave Brisbin 12.8.24What does the story of Job have to do with Christmas?Any story is a story about risk. We’ve all been at risk from our first breath, but we don’t like to think of ourselves balanced on a razor’s edge of circumstances we can’t control. We work really hard to manage risk, grow as big as we can, accumulate money and materials so risk will have to get through all our stuff before it ever gets to us. Illusion. Risk passes through stuff like ghosts through walls.Job was big. Had everything a person could imagine—big hedges against risk. So when it all was taken, no one was more surprised than he. He cried out for answers, but when God finally speaks from the whirlwind of mystery and non-answer, Job finally admits his smallness. He had to lose everything to see himself as he was, that working to grow big is just another attempt at the control and invulnerability that will always elude. It’s not who we are as humans, and we’re never complete without accepting who we are. Only in our innate vulnerability do we find the connection that we call meaning and purpose. Job had to grow small to see this.If you want to find something lost by a child, what do you do? You get on your hands and knees so you can see all the little crevices and nooks hidden at adult standing height. The story of Christmas is the story of growing small. Jesus is born a helpless infant and also lying in a manger—code for poor, marginalized, powerless. Jesus started as small as is possible for a human…and he never grew out of his smallness. Even as his fame and influence grew, his attitude remained that of the anawim: people who have accepted smallness while retaining hope and gratitude.Jesus and Job found what can only be seen from the standing height of a child, the kneeling height of a servant. Why are so many of us depressed at Christmas? Because we imprint the magic of Christmas from a perspective three feet off the ground and try to find it again from the height of an adult. Our God risks being small, vulnerable for the sake of connection. The only way to find what has been seen by a childlike God is to get on our knees and grow small.
Dave Brisbin 12.1.24Long ago, many people came to seek counsel and wisdom from a great Zen master. One day, a very important man, used to giving commands, came to him, “Teach me about Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” The master smiled and said they should discuss the matter over tea. When the tea was ready, he poured and the tea rose to the rim, then overflowed to the table and on to the robes of the man who jumped, “Enough! Can’t you see the cup is full?” The master smiled again, “You are like this cup, so full that nothing can be added. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.”This is how we all come seeking enlightenment. So full of what is true and false, right and wrong, attractive and repugnant, that nothing gets in as it actually exists in the wild. Automatically transformed into something we think we already understand, everything slips into our premade categories, judged good, bad, beneficial, not. Our cups are full.Epictetus said it is impossible for anyone to learn what they think they already know, and Jesus teaches exactly the same way. His use of paradox—if you want to find your life, lose it; questions as answers—Good master what must I do?...Why do you call me good?; and story—Who is my neighbor?...and he tells about the Good Samaritan; are all meant to empty our cups. Stop our minds in their tracks and disrupt our neat categories, make space for something we haven’t considered. Bring us back to beginner’s mind, the open, teachable mind of the child that he always holds as a model for jaded adults.When Jesus tells us not to judge, he means it in this most expansive sense. As long as our minds think they know, judging and placing everything we encounter into familiar categories, we will never see what really shares our moments with us. We won’t see each detail as it appears, let it amaze and surprise us. We won’t smile and send photos to our friends. We won’t let this moment be enough and rest in it.We won’t feel gratitude for tiny gifts we could never give ourselves.It’s all about seeing past our mind’s understanding to the perfect enoughness of each imperfect moment.
Dave Brisbin 11.24.24To ancient Hebrews, the number twelve signified the completion or perfection of earthly systems, rule, government. More than a literal number, this is the meaning being transmitted by the twelve patriarchs, tribes, apostles, every detail of the New Jerusalem. It symbolizes a complete cycle—twelve lunar orbits creating the twelve months of the solar year, the twelve constellations of the zodiac counting out the agricultural seasons. Even Gehenna, the word badly translated as hell, had a maximum stay of twelve months, a symbolic full cycle of purification.Twelve reminds us that time is not a line, but a circle, that endings are beginnings, or in Eliot’s words: to make an end is to make a beginning; the end is where we start from. Like a snake eating its tail, we live endless circular cycles, arriving where we started in order to know the place and ourselves more and more deeply. To arrive at Step 12 of AA is a simultaneous ending and beginning, taking us back where we started with the wisdom and insight only a journey of serial surrender could give us. The total surrender that is recovery, salvation, is too big to effect all at once. Step by step, cycle by cycle, the abrasion of our passage strips more and more of what is untrue from us, creating the spiritual awakening of Step 12 that gives us a message to carry to others and principles to practice in all our affairs. But coming full circle also reminds that we started in the humility of powerlessness…so how much more surrendered could we be? Powerlessness at Step 1 is rarely fully conscious. Not yet aware of its immensity, we use the concept to mark the end of resistance and beginning of submission that makes the rest of the steps possible.The powerlessness of Step 1 is born of the desperation of an unmanageable life, the reality of our lack of control. It’s a painful, fearful admission that initiates the cycle of Steps leading to the spiritual awakening of Step 12—the realization of living in a world to which we finally know we belong. To which everything belongs. A belonging that makes powerless vulnerability in God’s embrace a joy to live.
Dave Brisbin 11.17.24The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Eliot’s iconic line reminds that time is not a line, but a circle. Beginning and end one and the same. That any authentic journey is a journey of awareness, bringing us back to ourselves expanded. And knowing…what?Step 11 tells us it’s God’s will we seek through the prayer and meditation that makes conscious contact with God possible. Without that conscious part, what have we got? But what have we got when we’ve got God’s will? We crave what we imagine as God’s “what:” what he wants us to do, the perfect life he wills us complete to the last detail. Mistake-proof. But God’s will, sebyana in Aramaic, is deepest desire, pleasure, delight, purpose—the essence that paints God’s presence in the only colors we will ever see.How do we come to know that? See those colors? In circles. Circles within circles of growing intimacy. Knowing, yida, is not cataloging data points, but becoming intimately familiar, a process that takes time and for which our soil must be prepared. In the first circle journey of prayer we develop awareness by establishing the structure and framework of formal, word-based prayer. Without structure, we can’t practice awareness into the muscle memory that takes us to the second circle, the process of knowing as mindful, wordless meditation, the silence of God’s native language. Until we can get out of the way, become fluent in silence, we can’t know God’s essence, which we can then carry third circle into our lives with the practice of presence. A homecoming of realization that we don’t need to do anything other than whatever we do all day long to know God’s will—as the how of our doing, not the what. That with the how of God’s deepest purpose and delight, any what becomes the exact center of God’s will.There is no substitute for traveling these circles within circles. Knowing as intimate familiarity can’t be transferred or bestowed. It can only be experienced, circle after circle, coming back to an expanded home…knowing ourselves and the place again and again for the first time.
Dave Brisbin 11.10.24What do you think of as a miracle? Seas parting, walking on water, healings? Dictionaries tell us miracles are events not explainable by natural or scientific laws. But what if an event is not explainable to or by you personally? Or leaves inexplicable space between data points? When you raise your hand, can you explain that? What happened between unthought intention and action? When you think a thought, where did it come from? When you forget, where did it go?A thing doesn’t have to be spectacular to be inexplicable. Common, everyday events are as well. Maybe a better definition of a miracle is a gift that we could never have given ourselves. Birth. Next breath. A friend’s forgiveness. Abraham Heschel, the great Jewish theologian, said that his greatest talent was his ability to be surprised. Jesus, another Jew, never gravitated far from a child’s point of view, and the genius of children is to live in a world that is magical—full of surprises and inexplicable gifts immune to the density of entitlement, the illusion we’ve earned all we have. Children embody Jesus’ Kingdom as a state of amazed gratitude, but life works against our inner child. Hard work breeds entitlement and familiarity breeds contempt. Still, some moments cut through: surprising enough that miraculous gifts reveal themselves—smiles spreading without permission. But a lot of life can slip by between such uncultivated moments, and if we’re waiting, we’re neither grateful nor amazed. The 10th Step of AA is continuing to take personal inventory; if we limit it to mere cataloging of defects and bad behavior, we miss it.Chesterton said we see things fairly when we see them first…recovering the candor and wonder of the child, the unspoiled realism and objectivity of innocence. The 10th Step is the fulcrum on which the other eleven are balanced—the practiced ability to see ourselves and life as if for the first time is both the cause and effect of our transformation. It’s a swimming against the current of life that keeps us surprisable, seeing the miraculous in the commonplace, grateful and amazed at gifts we could never give ourselves.
Dave Brisbin 11.3.24I’ve tried to make amends to people I’ve hurt in the past. Sometimes I felt reconnected. Sometimes my apology was flatly refused. Sometimes the words of forgiveness were spoken, but everyone knew nothing further was exchanged. In all of them, there was no reconciliation. We’ve not spoken since.The 9th Step of AA tells us to make direct amends wherever possible except when doing so would injure someone. But what are these amends? Dictionary says putting things right, restitution, mending. But if our attempts don’t mend, is there still purpose in the process? Turns out, process is all we have, all we can engage, so if there’s any purpose, that’s where we’ll find it. And regardless of outcome, the process of making amends is all about forgiveness—properly understood as freedom from the limitations of victimhood. For both victim and perpetrator, the freedom of forgiveness is essential. Whether a victim of someone else’s actions or our own, we’re not free to connect with anyone or God’s presence until we’re free enough of our limitations: the resentment, blame, fear, paralysis of victimhood. But amends themselves can’t make us free. So why make them? Jesus said that if we forgive another, God forgives us, but if not, then not. Truth is, God doesn’t forgive at all. God is forgiveness itself…leaving to us the choice whether to accept the radical connection that is God—not mentally or verbally, but by engaging a gradual process of liberation. If we have created a victim, we can’t uncreate it. But making amends is a gift we give to help clear a path for our victim to free themselves—from us. Remove some of the debris blocking them from forgiving us. The beauty of amends is that in clearing the path for our victim, we are simultaneously clearing a path for ourselves. It’s the only way to do it.I’ve hurt people who will never forgive me, or may never know if they do. Doesn’t matter. We can’t make our victims forgive us, and they couldn’t forgive us if they tried. But together, in the process of amends, we can help each other free ourselves with forgiveness. If we wish.We are all as forgiven as we wish to be.
Dave Brisbin 10.27.24When we hear the Hebrew word shalom, we think of peace, as in the absence of conflict. And when we hear the word forgiveness, we think of pardoning or excusing, even condoning a person’s harmful action. But shalom—selama in Aramaic—means the greatest amount of unity, wholeness, health, and prosperity possible. And sebaq, forgiveness, means to set free. To the Semitic mind, forgiveness is being set free from victimization, and the fear, anger, resentment that has metastasized as a result. But since we can’t free another person’s heart, when we forgive, we’re actually setting ourselves free. We’re the only ones who can.In the 8th Step of AA, when we make a list of all the people we have harmed, we are going far beyond a mere list. We are recognizing our deep interconnectedness, maybe for the first time. How each choice and action we make ripples out, affecting others, just as theirs affect us. Not a problem when our actions are affirming, but can be devastating when not. And the closer a person is to us, the more they are affected. Our interconnection creates a responsibility for each other, but accepting that is a tricky process because most of the people we’ve harmed have harmed us back—or at least we imagine they did. Becomes easy to justify our actions, wiggle off the hook by clinging to our own victimization. So when we become willing to make amends to them all, we are going far beyond a mere transaction, beyond apology or restitution. We are moving toward actual forgiveness, our own set-freeness…because we’ll never see the harm we’ve done until we’ve set ourselves free from the harm done to us.AA’s own literature calls Step 8 the “beginning of the end of isolation.” Perfect description. Anything less than the perfect unity and wholeness of shalom is considered hataha—Aramaic for sin. Sin is separation itself. Harmful action takes us there, to the separation and isolation of compromised relationship. To become aware of our interconnectedness, to be freed from our sense of victimhood so we can see the harm we’ve done is the beginning of the end of our isolation. And the beginning of shalom.
Dave Brisbin 10.20.24Ever try to give someone a compliment who couldn’t accept it? I like your shirt. Oh this? I got it on the clearance rack. Good job! I could have done better, just got lucky. Or next level: It wasn’t me; it was the Lord. All glory goes to God. Maybe we feel unworthy…or think we’re being humble or more spiritual by deflecting praise. But in trying to be humble, we humiliate ourselves with deprecation and the giver by essentially saying we know better. True humility doesn’t reduce us or others to lower levels. It simply recognizes what is.Humble people see themselves as they are. No more or less. Their relationships with others as they are—perfectly level. Their relationship with God—dependent, vulnerable, yet loved and accepted at the same time. But to be humble is to step outside your egoic mind that is always fighting to make you more or less than you are: defensive, fear-based positions, the ego’s will to survive. To be fearlessly humble—or gratefully realistic—is to have become entirely ready to see self and life from God’s, love-based position, where all is one and connected.Our defects of character express our deepest fears of aloneness and inadequacy driving thought and behavior patterns that harm relationships and further isolate us, reinforcing fear. To humbly ask God to remove our defects is the culmination of having become aware of our deepest fears and how they drive our destructive behavior; to have admitted them to another person and experienced continued acceptance and love; and to have become entirely ready to see ourselves from God’s point of view.To ask, in the Aramaic of Jesus’ language, is an expression of deepest longing and desire for change. A desire accompanied by the will to act now as if that change had already occurred—faith. To humbly ask is to cradle our desire in the awareness of the resistance our fears create and the reality of our connection to everyone and everything else. Humility balances fear with connection, unparalyzing us to take next steps as if the change we seek has already occurred…the only way to find that by asking in humble action, it actually has.
Dave Brisbin 10.13.24When I went skydiving for the first and only time, I didn’t want a tandem jump—strapped to a jumpmaster—so that meant a full eight hours of training, and that the decision to jump was all mine. Fear grew all day through classes and videos; fitting for jumpsuit, helmet, goggles, pack; walking out to board the silver prop plane with its door-sized opening in the fuselage; takeoff and ascent to 12,500 feet; my name called; looking down at two miles of air with fear now in my throat. All day long the fear was with me, breathlessly at the moment of decision, but once I jumped, hyperventilated through the first few seconds of acceleration, I was no longer afraid. The day’s fear, gone. I’d set in motion a sequence of events that would end the at the ground one way or another, and I couldn’t take it back. Fully committed, there was nothing left but what I was trained to do. And enjoy the ride.The 12 Steps of AA break the removal of our shortcomings, our obsessive-compulsive thought and behavior patterns, into two separate steps: to become entirely ready before we humbly ask God to remove them. Seemed redundant at first, but on reflection…when do we ever know we’re entirely ready to do anything? Start a workout routine or diet, marry, have a child? How did I know I was entirely ready to believe I could survive the jump? Only when I relaxed my fingers and let fall.We have to act. Only in action do we know we’re entirely ready. And when it comes to removing the obsessive-compulsive symptoms of our lifelong fears, what keeps us from being entirely ready?Arriving after a drive with my then four-year-old son, he jumped out of his car seat as if spring loaded, landed on the asphalt and declared, I’m happy! When I asked why he was happy, he said, You’re supposed to be happy. I’m a happy boy. Do we believe that? That happy is how we were born and our true default position? We’ve lived in fear so long, with our shortcomings so long, we’ve forgotten and made a virtue of suffering. Until we remember we’re supposed to be happy, it’s almost impossible to become entirely ready to act, to participate with God for change.
Dave Brisbin 10.6.24Longtime friend sent a text just long enough to tell me that his wife had died and could we set up a time to talk. I was shocked—knew she was fighting cancer, but no idea so advanced. On the phone, he didn’t want to talk about her death as much as what it had stirred up. Any death raises awareness of our own, but the death of a spouse takes it through the roof. He asked if he could tell me about things in his life that he wasn’t proud of, that he’d never told anyone. He said, you may not like me after you hear what I have to say.What is our greatest human fear? Being alone. Whether in personal relationships or existential vastness, alone is terrifying. All our compulsive, dysfunctional behavior is aimed at soothing that fear, so it’s perfect irony that such behavior only creates more aloneness by killing our presence—our ability to connect. My friend was alone in his home now and afraid that his deeds over decades would end our connection once spoken and maybe his connection with God if not. But life had brought him to the point he was willing to risk confession, essentially doing a 5th Step with me. He’d been carrying his 4th Step moral inventory around like a boulder in a backpack for decades and had long ago admitted to himself and God the exact nature of his wrongs. But that wasn’t enough to ease his fears. Fear of what makes us alone only has the power of a blackmailer…once the secret is out, the power is gone. Only in the eyes of another person who knows our deepest secrets, can we know our connection remains. I liked my friend just as much after he told me what he needed to say. He had lived most of his life imagining his secrets to be unforgiveable, that if people really knew him, they would leave him. But in the breathless vulnerability and humility of letting another really see us, we reenter the herd of humanity and find the truth... …that the default reality of life is unaloneness, that everything and everyone are connected and nothing can separate us from the love of God that holds us all in place…that the fears that make us feel alone and unconnectable exist only in our minds.
Dave Brisbin 9.22.24If the first three Steps of AA are a serial surrender of the illusion that we can manage our lives isolated from the greater power of community and God, then Steps 4-7 are a serial healing of the damage those illusions have done. Just as surrender is too big to happen in one step, so is our emotional and psychological healing. Stages. Cycles.When the 4th Step speaks of making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, we think of lists of defects and shortcomings. A moral inventory is much more than a list. Defects and shortcomings are surface symptoms that expose deep, unconscious fears. Until we face those fears, the source of our dysfunction, we blame everyone and everything outside ourselves for our pain. We live as unconscious victims of circumstance…under the myth that circumstance determines well-being.The circumstances of Polish Jews in 1940 were horrific. After the German invasion that started WWII, they were concentrated and walled off in a tiny section of Warsaw—the ghetto. Over 460,000 Jews, 30% of the population, were crammed into 2.4% of the city’s space. Rationed under 200 calories a day, compared to over 2,600 for Germans, disease and starvation were rampant. Under such circumstances, these people should have been destroyed. Instead they built an underground society of hospitals, soup kitchens, orphanages, schools, libraries, workshops synagogues, recreation centers, a symphony orchestra. A smuggling ring of children aged 4-8 crawled through openings in the walls to bring food and other necessities from gentile sympathizers.Their writings reflect the need to find themselves by finding God in every detail of life. They kept their humanity, sanity, and faith by staying in contact with life, with God and God’s creation beyond the ghetto walls, beyond circumstance…aware that their thoughts and emotions, however intense, were not the whole of themselves, that they had a choice.This is Step 4 lived out, not listed out. Becoming aware of the whole of ourselves, the unresolved fears that if not fearlessly faced, will keep us in our own personal ghetto whatever our circumstances.
Dave Brisbin 9.15.24Made a decision to turn our lives and will over to God, a power greater than ourselves…Step Three of AA…sort of a let go and let God. Sounds so easy, but it’s only as easy as our grip on whatever we’re holding on to. And if we believe we’re holding on to the only way we’ll ever experience security and survival, affection and esteem, power and control—just how easy a grip are we expecting?I remember a scene from a movie where a man is dangling off a cliff, clinging to the end of a rope with those at the top calling down to let go. He’s screaming back, eyes squeezed shut, face contorted. Exhausted, he finally lets go and falls about eighteen inches, lands in sitting position. That’s each and every one of us, clinging for dear life to illusions of power and control that blind us to the fact that in God’s care, it’s a very short fall.Once upon a time, I went skydiving. Jumped out of a plane at 12,500 feet with a bedsheet in a pack on my back. I decided to turn my life (literally) over to the care of those around me, the greater power that said I could survive the fall. I had to trust the people who taught me and packed my gear enough to jump, but couldn’t prove them trustworthy until I did. Classic Catch-22. How did I gain enough trust to let go? It started early in the morning with the decision to drive to the center, to sign the legal release of liability, to attend each class all day long about the gear and techniques that would brake my fall. Gearing up with jumpsuit, helmet, goggles, getting on the plane—each small act taken as if I believed I could survive, made the next act possible until I was staring out at two miles of air...As in skydiving, so in life.Belief is not enough. We won’t let go until we trust enough. But trust is experiential, only exists after we act on our beliefs. That’s faith—acting as if what we say we believe is already true. Faith is the bridge between belief and trust. We start small, day by day, in every living moment, until we’re staring down a sheer drop that after a deep breath, faith lets us realize is only eighteen inches.We can let go for a short fall like that.
Dave Brisbin 9.8.24Looking at the 12 Steps of AA as a rite of passage: separation from the now too-small world we knew, to a disorienting transition, to reincorporation—a changed person returning to community. It’s the shape of every human life, but the trick is to make it conscious, our steps intentional. The danger is substituting the ritual for the real thing—talk about it or work through a book—useful in mapping our way, but never the journey itself.A Roman centurion approaches Jesus and implores him to heal his servant. Jesus says sure, take me to him. Centurion says I’m not worthy to have you in my home, just say the word. Jesus is amazed, has never seen such faith in all Israel. So much happening in so few words. A military commander of a ruthless empire, hated by the Jews, loves his servant enough to publicly humiliate himself before a ragtag Jewish healer…compassion cutting through rank and status. Aware of the blood on his hands, the military atrocities…remorse has opened him to a vulnerable humility. Understanding how authority works, he sees it in Jesus…discernment, submission to the point Jesus is amazed. The centurion’s whole life has propelled him to this moment.To admit that he was powerless to help himself, that all his authority was useless. To come to trust that he was standing before a power greater than himself that could and cared to restore. To make a decision to publicly display vulnerability, to submit his will over to that care…these are the first three Steps in real life. It’s a serial surrender of everything we have imagined ourselves to be. Too big to happen all at once, but over time, life events and our own growing self-awareness conspire to take us down the steps our ego would never allow. And the steps do go down…until we’re stripped of all that obscures the truth.As with the centurion, life will do its job, breaking us open, exposing us to bigger and bigger truth. But we have to help. Will we remain defended, reinforce the illusions we’ve built about ourselves? Or let that truth grow into a fearless vulnerability that brings us face to face with a power that cares and restores?
Dave Brisbin 9.1.24Think of this election as the extension of a collective rite of passage into which we were plunged with the pandemic. A rite of passage is a three-part experience that grows us from one stage of human development to another. Being separated, by life event or ritual, from the world we knew; thrown into a difficult, even traumatizing transition; reincorporated back into community with new perspective is exactly what we’re facing together.Rites of passage only “work” when we allow the middle transition part to take us liminal—the space between no longer and not yet, the willingness to embrace the disorientation we feel on the threshold between worlds and beliefs. We’re there right now. The world we knew before the pandemic, social unrest, divisive elections, is gone. A new world is coming, and that scares us. But liminality only “works,” whether from cancer, divorce, pandemic, elections, when we let loss and ambiguity help us release hard judgments, see ourselves and others again behind the positions we hold for power and control.On the eve of the liminality of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln stunned the nation by beating three bitter rivals on his way to winning the presidency. What he did next was even more stunning. He appointed all three of those rivals to his cabinet, seeing them as strong, essential men that the country needed to survive the coming war. His ability to stand on the threshold, see past his truth to his rivals’ truth, his rivals’ ability to accept his hand, built stronger leadership and eventually fast friendship between the four men. In his second inaugural address, he pointed that liminal ability South, “With malice toward none and charity for all…let us bind up the nation’s wounds…achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace…”The bitterness over this election shows we haven’t yet gone liminal. Life itself is the liminal transition between birth and death, but the personal and collective transitions life continually presents mark our passage along the way. We imagine we get wiser as we get older. Some of us just get older. The conscious betweenness of liminality is the difference.
Dave Brisbin 8.25.24We don’t have real rites of passage in our culture anymore. At least not conscious rituals that take us through the three essential stages of separation, transition, and reincorporation. In true rites of passage, we are taken from the familiar world we know and plunged into a transitional experience that is betwixt and between the life we knew and the life we will enter when ready. It’s a liminal, threshold experience that disturbs and disorients as it teaches, and when the transition is complete, there is a reincorporation that recognizes our new place in the community.Babies losing their teeth and debutante balls don’t count, but joining the military certainly does, especially if deployed. But we don’t ritually reincorporate our soldiers back home as other cultures do, leaving us with such high veteran addiction and suicide rates. We still have two traditions that preserve rites of passage—the Way of Jesus and 12 Steps of AA. Unfortunately, we have reinterpreted Jesus’ Way as a system of intellectual belief labeled as faith, losing the original Aramaic understanding. So we turn to the 12 Steps—structure built on Jesus’ original principles.We’re all recovering from something, and the Steps take us on the circular path of any rite of passage: the first three separating us from our egoic thought-worlds, the middle six a liminal transition of becoming, the last three reincorporating us back into daily life. But the first step: admitting we were powerless over our compulsions, that our lives had become unmanageable, is the key to them all. Our minds create thought-worlds with illusions born out of a lifetime of hurt and trauma. We are captive to these worlds, including illusions of personal power wielded alone against the forces around us to fill implied survival needs. No one gives up power voluntarily, but in Step One we begin to see the truth—that our illusions of power are really our compulsive addictions themselves. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection.The illusion is that power is personal, isolated.The truth is that power is shared in connection. We can give up an illusion.
Dave Brisbin 8.18.24Woman tells me her daughter just left to go back to college after the summer home. How’s she doing with that? Sad, but ok. Truthfully, she’d gotten used to the freedom of an empty nest. Missed that freedom with her daughter back at home. But when daughter is away, misses her as well. We all do this. Mourn things missing to the point we miss things present. Trick is to be present to daughter when daughter is home, and when thoughts of missing freedom intrude, come back to daughter. And when daughter is gone, be present to freedom and keep coming back to it when daughter intrudes. Staying present to the ever-changing circumstances of the moment is the definition of happiness, understood as accepting moments as simply being enough. As they are.But what if current circumstances are painful, even traumatic? Will staying present still equal happiness? Presence to painful moments will hurt, but can also contain the awareness that life is still as it must be. If we’re honest, in painful situations, we’re really most present to our resistance to the pain—that it is wrong, unfair, cruel—and it often is. But once acknowledged, it’s our level of acceptance that will allow us to extend presence beyond resistance to everything else that shares the painful moment. To be more present to the connections that remain than the ones missing is the beginning of healing. Doesn’t happen all at once, but in cycles of acceptance and presence.Does this mean we just accept everything that happens without working for change or praying for healing? Of course not. But not everything that happens can be changed, and if we can’t accept that, we can’t be present, and we won’t be healed. Though we focus on the physical, in all his healings, Jesus focuses on connection first—presence. Blind see, deaf hear, lame walk, dead rise—all images of restored presence returning to new life. Regardless of whether painful circumstances can be changed, healing comes with acceptance that allows presence that feels like a return to hope and gratitude. This is the healing with which Jesus is most concerned, and ultimately, the only one that matters.
Dave Brisbin 8.11.24Moving days are always stressful, but our last move was off the hook. My wife sick, cleaning and packing until 1:30A, then up again at 6A to pouring rain that lasted all day. Delays at the new house meant they were still laying floor on moving day. The moving crew showed up, men in their twenties with tats and knit caps, seemed energized by the rain, made a game of seeing how efficiently they could load and keep water off everything that mattered. Fast and loud, calling out to each other, working as if trying to set a rain record. At the new home, rain still driving, they unloaded in a kind of dance, stepping over stacks of laminate and the crew laying floor who were laughing and dodging the movers, singing at the top of their lungs in Spanish to a boom box blaring traditional Mexican music.Everyone was happy in the rain. Except me. Yes, it was our house and our stuff; we were paying; they were being paid, but it was more than that. When I’ve asked people what makes them happy, they inevitably say laughing, family, food, music, sports…one guy said when he opens a brand new can of coffee, breathes it in. But like moving and flooring in the rain, some find happiness, others can’t. What really makes us happy? When your head is back, laughing from your toes, there’s not another thought in your head. Laughing doesn’t make us happy…laughing makes us present, and presence feels like what we call happiness. We chase things hoping they will lead to happiness, unaware that we’re really chasing what clears our heads. Presence doesn’t lead to happiness—it is happiness itself.A theologian once prayed eight years for God to send him someone who could teach the way of true perfection. He sees a beggar on the steps of the church and wishes him a good day. Beggar replies that he does not remember ever having a bad day…so present with God, he is always happy.Young tatted men and Hispanic workers were fully present to rain and music. I was thinking of a hundred other things. It took a theologian eight years to become ready to be taught by a beggar. How long before I’m ready to learn from those God constantly sends?
Dave Brisbin 8.4.24When Christians fight, you can bet it’s going to be over the book. No matter the issue at hand, it will always come back to the book, or more specifically, interpretation of the book, which is all we really have. No matter what a text was meant to say, all that survives our reading is interpretation. To be certain of our interpretation enough to fight, is to accept the assumption that such certainty is possible at all. That there exists a single, literally accurate interpretation of a sacred text that renders all others false.Psychologists tell us that all human neuroses are rooted in an intolerance of uncertainty. If uncertainty is too terrifying, to what lengths will we go to create a sense of certainty or distract ourselves if we fail? This is the crux of Jesus’ teaching. To graduate us from the illusion of certainty in spiritual matters so we can experience truth as a person—an unfolding connection—not data to analyze.One of the most iconic stories in the bible is also one of the most misunderstood. From the standpoint of certainty, it is a literalist’s nightmare. Why would God command Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac? God promised that Abraham would be father of a nation too large to count, but he remained childless into old age. When the miracle child, Isaac, is born, the promise becomes real to Abraham, only to have God command him to kill the only means of its fulfillment. Literally, what kind of God is insecure enough to test a father’s loyalty in such a way?To Abraham, the fact of Isaac was his certainty that God’s promise would be fulfilled. But he became the father of faith for the three great monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the moment he graduated from that certainty. To sacrifice the certainty in his mind, move from mere ethnicity to trust in an unprovable God, changed everything in his heart. God is not testing us. Life itself is the test. To graduate from the need for literal certainty, embrace an extended metaphor for the experience of truth as a person is no less traumatic than losing a child. And no less essential to knowing truth that makes us free.
Dave Brisbin 7.28.24A friend sent me a link to a podcast interview that rambled, but was mostly concerned with end times prophecy. Confused and concerned, he wanted to know what I thought. In one of their tangents, the interviewee flatly stated: God doesn’t love everyone. Now that’s often implied, but rarely declared, and in case there was any doubt, he added there’s a lot Christians are confused about, that they’ve forgotten how Jesus operated.His reasoning was internally consistent. Starting with Psalms 6 and a list of the “people” (actually actions) God hates, he qualified Jesus’ statement in Mt 5 that we should love our enemies by saying that our enemies are not the same as God’s enemies, that David in Psalms 139 hated God’s enemies with a perfect hatred…concluding we must love our enemies, but not God’s.It’s fascinating how reading the same text, we can end up at such wildly different conclusions, all based on our assumptions…our rudiments. Rudiments are basic principles, elements, fundamental skills like the basic stick patterns that lay a drummer’s foundation for everything that follows. If we’ve forgotten how Jesus operated, we’ve forgotten his rudiments. Hard to argue that Jesus’ essential principle is love, understood as oneness, connection with everything and everyone, but…There are two basic ways people approach God: through God’s love or sovereignty (absolute authority). God is both, but we will focus on one over the other depending on our primary motivation: connection or fear. Interviewee said we must fear God, the one who could kill both body and soul. Fear always boils down to fear of punishment. 1John 4 tells us God is love, and anyone who fears punishment hasn’t known a love that neither punishes nor abandons.Interviewee tells what he’s convinced of. All anyone can do. We can debate or go back to our rudiments. If Jesus’ rudiment is that everything in life is one, connected, and equally loved, then certain interpretations of seemingly contradictory passages can’t describe the God of Jesus. Driving a stake in the ground at Jesus’ rudiments gives us our north star, and a push in Jesus’ direction.
Dave Brisbin 7.21.24I’ve said that Jesus’ teaching is not meant to give data, but point to an experience that changes everything. But what is the everything that changes? If we say our very understanding of life—how things are or should be—next morning, making coffee, what has changed? Life is same mix of work, pain, respite that we share with everyone else…like the Greek myth of Sisyphus pushing the rock up the mountain only to endlessly roll back down.French philosopher Camus believed that life is absurd, neither rational or irrational, just unreasonable. And with no reasonable answers, meaningless. Only two ways out: suicide or the manufacture of hope—both unacceptable. One giving in to despair, the other to illusion. Yet he found value in life in the constant, conscious revolt against the “lie” of meaning. That our consciousness of absurdity itself is what gives us a reason to continue, that Sisyphus is happy walking back down the mountain to his boulder, conscious of his choices.For spiritual people, meaning transcends physical life, but does that make life any less absurd? There are two absurdist books in the bible. Job points at the absurdity; Ecclesiastes calls it right out. At the end of his life, the Teacher, traditionally Solomon, king of Israel, writes, “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” For all his accomplishments, he realizes that all humans are alike in death. There is no meaning in anything we do in life. His question, “What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?” is answered with, “There is nothing better for people than taking meat and drink and having delight in their work…for anyone who is joined to the living, there is hope.”Irony is, from opposite sides of the spiritual divide, scripture and Camu agree. Outside of this conscious moment, full engagement in it, there is no meaning. Only in constant contact with life is there hope. It’s an unreasonable meaning, only experienced right herenow, within this day. Anything else doesn’t exist in any meaningful way. Accepting life on life’s terms is the first step of Jesus’ Way—to a meaning outside ourselves.
Dave Brisbin 7.14.24We’ve all had to reboot our computers, phones, pads, anything with an operating system. Sometimes they just get so cluttered and confused, they slow to a crawl or freeze entirely. When in doubt, reboot, yes? Hit escape, control-alt-delete, shut down, restart, pull the plug, or if the system is sophisticated enough, restore to a point before the confusion set in.In the movie Contact, a brilliant young astronomer uses science as both sword and shield. Orphaned at age nine, science was something solid, safe, something she could submit to controlled processes. She ditches a relationship the moment she feels vulnerable, scoffs at belief in God and human spirituality because there is no empirical proof. But in the experience of first contact with an alien intelligence, a solo journey from which she returns with no proof whatsoever, she meets the world’s disbelief and skepticism as any person must who has had an experience of the inexpressible.Her experience gave her no data, answered none of her rehearsed questions. It rebooted her system. In an instant, it irrevocably changed her entire perspective on life and meaning. To realize that she was not alone, that we are all rare and precious, belonging to something greater than ourselves, lifted the limits her trauma had imposed. Gave newfound awe, humility, and hope at the expense of the frustration of being convinced, but unable to share with anyone else. Conviction is certainty without proof. It’s always a solo journey, can never be transferred, and only feels certain in the first person, present tense.Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount are not meant to give us data, answer rehearsed questions, or make us certain. Just the opposite. They are the first step in a system reboot. A challenge to whatever certainties we hold and a portal to a first-hand experience. An experience that requires the vulnerability and humility that allows real connection—the only power great enough to convince us we’re not alone. No one can tell us such things. Only where to look. But if we’re willing to reboot, rebirth, we can restore to a moment before we were orphaned.
Dave Brisbin 7.7.24Very few of us know the word albedo, yet we use it every day, and it’s a huge factor in climate change. From the Latin word for white (think albino), albedo is the amount of light reflected off any surface. We all know that light colors reflect sunlight, a cooling effect like those impossibly white houses on seacliffs in Greece. Dark colors absorb, storing heat, so the amount of snow, glaciers, and sand versus dark forests, ocean, and urban sprawl greatly determines the temperature of our planet.Jesus tells us that we’ll know the quality of prophets—and by extension anyone—by their fruit. You can’t get figs from thorn bushes. Good trees produce good fruit and bad ones bad, so looking at the fruit gets at the heart of a person. But he also says that not everyone who calls out in his name will enter the kingdom of God, and when they protest that they prophesied and cast out demons, performed miracles and built 24/7 satellite networks, he’d simply say depart from me, I never knew you. If prophecy and miracles aren’t good enough fruit to be known by God, what is Jesus talking about?Jesus is constantly trying to get us to graduate from accomplishment and reward as motivation. It’s not that our accomplishments, however motivated, aren’t good in that they can benefit others, but that they are meaningless in terms of gaining what can’t be acquired—a connection as primal as the air we freely breathe. Though God would never banish us because we haven’t yet graduated, the more we work to distinguish ourselves to gain approval, the more we believe the illusion of our own separation, banishing ourselves.How do we know we’re living a life that is graduating? By our own fruit, of course. Not our accomplishments, but our spiritual albedo…total reflectivity. With God as spiritual sunshine, how much are we reflecting? With God as connection itself, how much connection do we leave in our wake? Are we leaving people better than we found them? Are our closest relationships intimate? Knowing God is the only criteria Jesus gives. To know God is to reflect God, and until that is our only motivation, we can’t do either.
Dave Brisbin 6.30.24Ever wondered what Jesus would have been like growing up? People have been wondering that ever since the generation who grew up with him died out. One of the many gospels that didn’t make it into the bible, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, assumes Jesus had all his powers from birth, but had to grow into them. Portrayed at age five as a child who could be hot tempered, a boy bumps into him running by…Jesus calls out angrily, and the boy falls down dead. Days later, he is playing on a roof with other children when a boy falls off and is killed. Accused of pushing him, Jesus raises the boy from the dead asking him to tell his accusers the truth. But by age eight, we see him helping his carpenter father by pulling a board cut too short to the proper length, healing his brother James who was bitten by a viper, and raising his dead cousin back to life to ease his family’s suffering. Obviously, these stories are not to be taken seriously, but their point remains: Jesus had to grow up into a devoted member of his family and an empathic healer. Jesus grew up, yet spends his entire ministry telling us to live like children, that if we can’t be childlike, we will never enter God’s presence. In his wilderness experience, Jesus learns to be a child again, bringing his grown-up empathy with him as he grows back down into his Father’s childlike presence. In overcoming the three symbolic temptations—to be relevant, powerful, spectacular—he learns that we are not great because of our accomplishments, we are great when present to God’s presence. But we can’t be present as long as we’re seeking great accomplishment as prerequisite for meaning in life and approval by God. Those who didn’t grow up with Jesus, imagined him powerful from birth, having to grow up into those powers. But those who did grow up with Jesus were amazed to see he had grown back down into childlikeness, into the apparent powerlessness of servanthood. They resisted the growing down, and we do too. A child is pre-egoic; doesn’t know it’s naked. Until we grow back down into such spiritual unknowing, we’ll never trust the greatness in Presence.
Dave Brisbin 6.23.24When we were kids, my sister did a paint-by-number of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. You know, where the image is preprinted as numbered areas you fill in with the matching-numbered paint. It looked ok squinting at it from across the room, but imagine the difference between painting by numbers and the original master, creating and mixing his own paints and working from the depths of his experience as a human.Jesus is trying to take us from painting by numbers to true spiritual expression. The Pharisees of his day had created a numbered approach to God, matching behavior to legal codes that, squinting from a distance, looked like righteousness…but Jesus knew better. The gospels show him systematically dismantling that system, but every generation, left to its own devices, goes Pharisee, devolves to a paint-by-number mentality because it feels controllable. Risk-free behavior and reward. Jesus is practically shouting to all of us that our behavior has nothing to do with God’s love. Nothing we do or don’t do can change what God is—oneness, love itself. But our behavior has everything to do with whether we will experience the oneness of God’s love. It’s inside out, like the artist’s way. Creative expression can’t be numbered. It flows from the whole of the artist’s being onto the canvas. It’s undefended, unhindered, vulnerably transparent, or it won’t connect with others. Not now, certainly not centuries later. You can’t obey your way to a masterpiece. You allow its flow. How many of us risk that permission?When Jesus says the road to destruction is broad and the road to life is narrow and few find it, we imagine he’s talking about heaven and hell. But do we really think God created most of us for eternal torment? Is that the God Jesus says is good news? Critically, his context, Hebrew context, is always here and now. Few people are willing to risk the unknowns of the artist’s way of vulnerable transparency to find an experience of oneness, God’s love and good news, in their lives right herenow. The road less traveled may seem risky—why it’s most often not taken. But it makes all the difference.
Dave Brisbin 6.16.24Years ago, I remember thinking that if I could just have one burning bush moment, that would be enough. Talking with God like a friend, face to face as Moses did, would answer everything. Yet that wasn’t enough for Moses. He begs to see God’s glory, just as Jacob asks for God’s name and Philip asks Jesus to show him the Father. But such requests are always denied in scripture and in life.Is God just being coy?Whether looking into the smallest or largest of things, the closer we look at our universe, the more it seems to be revealing the nature of its creator. We all learned about electrons orbiting the nuclei of atoms like planets around the sun. But electrons actually resemble a cloud, a cloud of probability. An electron doesn’t orbit a nucleus at all…it surrounds it like a fog with only a probability of being here more than there. It has energy and momentum, but doesn’t move. The cloud is completely still. We know exactly where the cloud is, but the electron has no specific location. Stephen Hawking said the universe is finite but has no edge. If you flew in one direction long enough, you would never get to where the stars thin to black, but would end up back where you started like an ant walking inside a ping pong ball. Space curved in on itself, every spot in the universe looking exactly the same—same distribution and density of stars—and you would always be exactly in the center, because no other position exists.In the fear of our uncertainty, we want to see God’s face, pinpoint a location. Make it intellectually certain. But as the ancient Hebrews imagined, God’s presence is a cloud. A cloud of probability with no edge. We know exactly where the cloud is: always right here and now, yet God’s face has no specific location. Everywhere and everywhen we go, God is always experienced herenow, and we are always exactly in the center of God’s cloud of presence. No other position exists. We know where and when to look—closer than our next heartbeat or breath. But the looking is not with sighted eyes and the finding not with geo coordinates. God’s face is the incomprehensible embrace of trust in love.
Dave Brisbin 6.9.24Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Yeah, that’s a country song, but Joe Louis, the great boxer, said it first. Death is the moment everything we can think of as ourselves, our entire sense of self, falls away. It’s the moment our minds stop thinking, stop imagining ourselves as individuals, separate from everyone and everything else. The irony is, we never feel better, more connected, loved, grateful, meaningful, fulfilled than moments when we lose our sense of self—whether in meditation, prayer, or an intense, peak moment, like falling in love. When our sense of self falls away, the anxiety of aloneness falls with it. And yet, that falling away of self is exactly what we fear in death, because we can’t imagine who we’d be when we can no longer think of who we are.Heaven is the state of absolute connection, but we must die to get there---die to our sense of self. The mind is the sole repository of ourselves-as-separate, so as long as we’re in our right minds, we are not in heaven. An elder in an ancient monastic community of desert Christians taught that if you see a young monk by his own will climbing to heaven, take him by the foot and throw him to the ground... Early Christians knew that heaven is not a goal to achieve, but a reality to realize: we are all connected, always. We don’t acquire that, we relinquish all that obscures it. Climbing to something we already possess only intensifies our illusion of self and individual control, the opposite of heaven.Have you ever fallen in love? Did you work at it? Climb to it? More likely, you worked against it, at least after your heart was broken. But at some point when you weren’t looking, you lost yourself in your beloved. Your sense of self fell away, merged with another. That’s why they call it falling. We don’t and can’t ever climb to heaven. We fall to heaven.The moment we become willing to stop clinging to an imagined identity as a separate self, become willing to die to all we think of ourselves, to all we think at all, we lean back and start falling. Everything we fear we will lose or never gain is in the falling.
Dave Brisbin 6.2.24One of the most cinematic scenes in the gospels is at John 20 where Mary Magdalene is sobbing by the empty tomb, and the risen Jesus asks why she is weeping. She whirls to confront the voice but not until he calls her name does she recognize. She calls out to him, and Jesus immediately replies, stop clinging to me. We don’t need to be told that she runs to him, falls down sobbing and clasping his feet in the ancient eastern custom. Our minds connect those dots. We see it all on our inner screens.Why would Jesus break off such a human response? Under the circumstances, to say it’s a cold reply is a world-class understatement. But like any good film, nothing is presented in the gospels without purpose—the real estate is far too precious. Jesus is hammering that though his love for Mary hasn’t changed, the nature of their relationship is now radically different. Just as Moses couldn’t enter the promised land because the people had begun relying on him rather than God, Jesus told his friends that he needed to leave them so they could experience God’s presence directly and graduate from vicariously clinging to becoming as one with Presence as he was.Painfully, that process begins with a loss. It always does.Is there anything Jesus would tell us to stop clinging to? He’s pretty clear. He says flat out that anyone unwilling to give up all they have can’t go where he is going. What part of everything don’t we understand? This may sound pathological, but he’s exposing a reality of life. Since the moment our primary needs as humans were first frustrated in early childhood, we’ve been building unconscious programs for happiness and survival that we don’t even know exist. We become addicted to our intelligence, talent, family, career, mission, theology, politics, wealth, as essential elements of control over uncertainty.But anything on which we rely short of pure Presence, even Moses or our image of Jesus, is limiting us, blocking us from that Presence. When Jesus says stop clinging, he is saying that holding on to what has sustained us, or at least soothed us to date, is now keeping us from what sets us free.
Dave Brisbin 5.26.24Carl Jung said that the first half of life is dedicated to forming a healthy ego; second half is going inward and letting go of it. We spend our first half looking for meaning, purpose, identity through accomplishment and acquisition—outward performances that mean less and less over time. We enter our second half when we realize that true meaning comes from a completely different direction. Jesus said that kingdom, his shorthand for second half spirituality, will never be found out there somewhere. It’s already within us.Authentic spirituality isn’t acquired. It’s relinquished. All the meaning and purpose we can stand is already within us, along with our true identities. It’s like ground water, deep and inexhaustible, always there, but not at the surface. You dig your well through layers of accrued illusions and patterns of thought and behavior. When Jesus says no one can follow him who doesn’t give up all they have; when he tells of men who find treasure in a field or at the market and run off to sell all they own to buy it, he is saying the same. Until we become willing to relinquish all we have gathered and count as our egoic identity, we’ll never find who we are not, so we can begin to know who we really are.It’s an inside-out gospel that’s easy to miss because we want to miss it. Most churches are more concerned with finding power in God that will vanquish enemies, fix circumstances, right wrongs, armor against vulnerability, create prosperity... Jesus’ descent, letting go, powerlessness, vulnerability, invisibility of servanthood is not attractive. Fifty years ago, Marshall McLuhan said that the medium is the message, meaning that the means we use to communicate affects us more than the content itself. Jesus poured his message into the medium of a personal experience of perfect oneness—truth that would make us free once all illusion of separation was removed. The effect of that experience was recorded in the gospels, which we read and claim is true. But ink on paper is not truth, it’s a different medium. It becomes true once poured back into its original medium—the experience of our own lives.
Dave Brisbin 5.19.24So easy to lose the forest in the trees. Especially with scripture. We dig deep into the weeds of each verse, pull it apart, imagine meaning that may not have anything to do with the larger passage or chapter, let alone the whole book.A famous writer says unless you can describe the whole of your book in one sentence, you won’t write convincingly. You’ll meander, each part not contributing to the whole. The bible is actually sixty-six books, an anthology. Even harder to pull back enough to see a single line capturing its meaning—each verse revealing more of the whole. I’ve heard said that the bible is a love letter from God. A bit overly simplistic and sentimental for me, but on the right track. Maybe this: the bible traces the nature, development, and realization of our relationship with God. And if God is love, and love is identification with the beloved, then what we’re realizing is the oneness at the core of all our relationships.The gospels are all about this oneness. Jesus is one with the Father and the Way to the Father. He calls his Way kingdom, the quality of a life lived in full presence and connection…oneness. Everything he teaches relates back to kingdom and kingdom to the oneness at the heart of relationship. He tells us not to worry—focusing on the future destroys presence. He tells us not to judge—objectifying others destroys connection.When he tells us not to give what is holy to dogs or pearls of wisdom teaching to pigs because they will trample it or turn and tear us to pieces, it sounds condescending and has been used to exclude those not of our “faith.” But is that an interpretation consistent with the whole of Matthew’s gospel, with Jesus, the whole book? If we know the whole, we can reverse engineer the part, fine tune our interpretation of any part by never losing sight of the whole. Jesus is one with the whole, never excludes, accepts everyone where they are, never judging where they should be. Takes the time presence requires to first establish connection before healing or instruction. If we seek kingdom first—presence and connection—the whole will always be in the part.
Dave Brisbin 5.12.24It’s heartbreaking that many women in the second halves of their lives would be expressing remorse, but after dedicating their first halves to child and home, they find no concrete way to calculate the value of their life’s work. No degrees or trophies, certainly no pensions or even social security payouts. Our society doesn’t reward the most important contributions we make to our children and each other, those made from the traditionally feminine traits of acceptance, compassion, vulnerability. We’re all over the traditionally masculine ones—performance, accomplishment, acquisition—and though our churches may praise vulnerability and acceptance, they still reward the performers, male or female. All institutions do. Performers make the material world go round.Church is where we should be balancing the material and spiritual, masculine and feminine…especially when it comes to our notion of God. Yet God is almost exclusively portrayed as Father, with the implication of maleness, emphasis on roles of judge, jury, executioner. Though God is called Father in Judeo-Christian scripture, there is much more going on under the hood. Spirit and kingdom are feminine words in Hebrew, making spirit, “she” and kingdom, queendom. Wisdom is personified as female, and God anthropomorphized as a loving mother over and over. Jews understood God as the perfect balance, the perfect parent—knowledge balanced with wisdom, accomplishment with relationship. Jesus did too, calling Father God abba, underscoring intimate relationship, and always leading with mother before father at every human encounter.We can only be healthy and balanced in Jesus’ order: mother before father, compassion before justice, acceptance before performance. Our minds are the repository for all the loss and fear that makes us believe we’re not worthy, so as long as God remains in our minds alone, he remains “he”—a distant father. Experiencing God as mother folds her into our embrace. Until we experience God from both sides, we are loved and lost at the same time—never knowing how we’re loved and never valuing what hasn’t earned degree or pension.
Dave Brisbin 5.5.24Do we ever change another person? Save them? Sometimes people thank me or our community for saving them, placing them on a lifesaving path. It’s wonderful to be recognized as part of their journey, and I thank them, but if the conversation goes on long enough, I’ll remind that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. That if they changed directions, it was because they were ready to change, and I was the millionth guy over their bridge, winning the prize of being present when the miracle occurred. They were a change waiting to happen, and if I hadn’t shown up, someone else would have.This is not an attempt at false humility, but the realization that being saved is not the passive waiting for a savior, but the willingness to participate in the saving change our lives require. Important distinction for both saviors and save-ees. Must be careful about developing savior complexes. We can help people, help change circumstances, but all we can provide is support and information—no change until acted upon. The most important things in life can’t be transferred; they must be experienced.You’re thinking we can give love? In those five love languages, we can give loving words, service, gifts, time, and touch…more support and information until we experience them as coming from love over time. Even Jesus never said he changed or saved anyone. He was careful, “Your faith has made you whole.” We pray for God to save us, but if God changed us unilaterally, violated free will, love would no longer be real—not God’s, not ours. Love is not love if not freely chosen, and God’s perfect love makes us perfectly free or it’s not perfect. God cannot make us love him and be love at the same time.We can help create an environment for change, but we are no one’s savior. And no one is our savior, passively understood. If we’re waiting for a savior, we’re not ready to be saved, for the teacher to appear. Salvation is not God’s decision about us…that choice has always been made in our favor. Salvation is our decision about God. Whether to trust enough, risk the steps needed to experience the love that is already ours.
Dave Brisbin 4.28.24When Jesus says do not judge so you won’t be judged, that your way of judging will be used on you, we modern Westerners hear that in predictable ways. First, we think of judging in the sense of condemning or criticizing others, and we think of it punitively—that if we do wrong (judge), someone (God) will wrong us back as punishment. We also imagine our punishment happening sometime in the future, most likely after death. But thinking like this misses the essential point Jesus is making.The reality we believe is the reality we endure.Understanding that we live in a thought-world of our own creation is key to a life of meaning, purpose, and sense of identity. Unconscious beliefs programmed into us from earliest childhood form the way we think, our “judgment” of reality. As Jesus says, if our “eye” (way of seeing in Aramaic) is clear (not coloring reality) then we are full of light (harmony and clarity) but if not, we are “judged” by our own way of seeing. It all happens simultaneously. The limitations set by the whole of our belief system are already imposed on us before we ever try to impose them on anyone/thing else.God isn’t judging us at some point in the future as retribution for our judgments now. We are doing it to ourselves unawares. Our judgments define our reality, which if our eye is not clear, can be a personal hell. Jesus is doing some cognitive behavioral therapy with us, helping us become aware of our judgments—thoughts and behavior—how they affect our experience and relationships, and how to begin clearing our eyes to see what is true.When Jesus says do not worry or judge, he is pointing us to the symptoms of our belief systems. The judgments we make on others, conditions, and moments, are the consequence of unresolved fears that are really judging us, creating a world separated from the only place we’ll ever know the truth…that love, not fear, is the basis of life. Fear causes us to chase the horizons of past and future as substitute for meaning, but this moment right herenow is the only place we’ll ever meet the truth of God’s presence. If we’re judging it, we’re not here. Not now.
Dave Brisbin 4.21.24When Thomas Merton gave a final address to his monastic community before retiring to a hermitage in 1965, he was famous worldwide for his spiritual writings. His speech was recorded on audio tape, and I ran across a short clip in which he was talking about the fact that we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, that God is always shining through. God is in everything and everyone, every event, and it’s impossible to be without God. Ever.We don’t see this fact because we make the world opaque by becoming attached to, preoccupied with things we regard as individual objects—analyzing them as if unwrapping packages, layers of opaque paper, all while missing the larger transparent world. We get to bottom of the pile of paper, only to find nothing there; we were only unwrapping our own thoughts about something, not the thing itself. It’s not until we loosen our grip and lose ourselves in the experience of something that we can stop thinking of it as a thing in isolation and see it as part of the whole of creation, and all of creation, God, shining through its transparency.Our attachments keep us from seeing the whole in all the parts. Constantly taking thought keeps our world opaque and hides the truth…no coincidence that taking thought is the literal meaning of the word translated as worry in a series of Jesus’ sayings. He tells us not to take thought, to worry about our lives, what we will eat, drink, or wear. He points to birds who work constantly but don’t store in barns, staying rooted in the present moment without taking thought.To worry is to live in fear. Fear creates the obsessive need to acquire. In telling us that if we want life that is eternally alive we need to sell everything we own, Jesus is telling us we need to sever our attachments to individual objects in order to see the whole transparent world at once. No matter how essential a thing may seem, if we’re unwrapping it, the world is opaque. An ancient elder said that he sold the book—his treasured bible—that told him to sell everything and give to the poor.When we can do that, God can shine through our transparent world.
Dave Brisbin 4.14.24What would you say is the most damaging personal attitude to life in general and spirituality in particular? Fear, anger, hatred? What about passivity…and its close cousin, victimhood. Passivity is sneaky, because it isn’t immediately discernable as a vice, but the lack of will to respond actively, proactively, even to resist when that is necessary, keeps us from participating in life at all. Anger or hatred, if it’s active, is less harmful than passivity to a person’s return to life.For someone who sees themselves as a victim, passivity is the norm. A victim isn’t just someone who was hurt, but someone who had no choice in the matter. Choice is key. Once choice returns, so does personal responsibility. How many of us hang on to victimhood as a way of absolving ourselves from the responsibility to change, heal, grow. Not consciously, maybe, but just as effectively passive.The church has taught us a largely passive way of spiritual life. Unquestioning obedience to law and doctrine is passive. Yet Jesus questioned everything, resisting where necessary, risking consequences. Believing we must be saved, that God can’t accept us without a savior’s intervention is passive and contradicts Jesus’ life and teaching. He consistently pointed to the Father rather than himself, saw himself as the living Way to that unity, stressed that his followers were to do what he was doing, not be passively saved by his action. His first followers picked up that emphasis by calling themselves Followers of the Way. Not Christians or even followers of Jesus—an essential distinction pointing to the need for personal action.Jesus’ life and message is all about removing any blocks between us and God, whether the religious authority of his or any generation, or our own fears and victimhood. He is showing us a non-passive Way to approach God directly—and telling that what we’ll find there is good news. That God has already chosen us, has chosen and accepted us since the beginning of time. There is nothing left for God to choose; nothing left for us to ask for, nothing left to wait for. God has made his choice. Now it’s our turn.
Dave Brisbin 4.7.24We just finished counting the forty days of Lent that ended with Easter, only to begin counting again, this time to 49 plus one that will take us to Pentecost. Each counting is a time of preparation, but for what?Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, and Pentecost the moment his followers engaged the full weight of spirit, but these were superimposed on the Hebrew celebrations of Pesach and Shavu’ot. Originally agricultural festivals, the people would ritually count seven weeks of seven between Pesach at the spring barley harvest and Shavu’ot at the summer wheat harvest. Over time, simple timekeeping between harvests—seven, the number of spiritual perfection, times seven—became the perfect time of preparation between Pesach/Passover, the physical liberation of the people from slavery, and Shavu’ot, the giving of the Law, a new relationship with God and the spiritual liberation of the people.We are now in this count, the time of preparation between Easter, physical liberation from death, and Pentecost, representing spiritual liberation. Jesus told Nicodemus he must be born again, that he was born of water, physical birth, but must be reborn of spirit. Ritually, baptism, represents birth, entry into the tribe, our physical liberation, but too often the story ends there. Many of us spend entire lives in this count, this time between physical and spiritual liberation, never experiencing another liberation that can only be realized after a descent that strips us down to as basic an existence as if being born all over again. For Jesus, the descent is represented in the wilderness and his time in the tomb. For Jesus’ followers, it is the shock and awe of Calvary that strips them bare of everything they thought they knew, leaving them counting the days to their individual Pentecosts, the moment they break into new relationship, their own spiritual liberation, second birth.Our journeys have this same shape, and Calvary is the threshold between two liberations. The way to Pentecost begins at Calvary…the moment we think we’ve lost everything is the beginning of our ascent. It’s why we count.
Dave Brisbin 3.31.24 Easter SundayEver wonder why the resurrection accounts in the gospels are written the way they are? We crave details and explanations for the event itself, but the gospels are uninterested in satisfying our obsession with certainty. The central event takes place offstage, and the story picks up after it happens, following Jesus’ friends, their reactions and choices. The gospels are focused on the effect of the resurrection on Jesus’ first followers, not on the resurrection itself. This is a huge distinction that shows us where to look…not at the miracle, but at how the miracle affects our lives. It’s fascinating that no one recognized the risen Jesus at first sight. We wonder if Jesus looked different or whether he was miraculously hiding himself for some reason, but the truth is that the followers’ minds, like any human mind, were not yet prepared to see what they considered impossible. The gospels are telling us that seeing the risen Jesus is more process than event, a process of becoming ready to see beyond the limitation of our programming. We focus on the external event. The gospels focus on the interior process.In every gospel story of eventual recognition, the smallest, most intimate and familiar gesture breaks the spell our minds cast over our seeing. Mary hears her name called as she heard it a thousand times, Clopas sees the breaking of bread at supper in Emmaus, Peter feels the pulsing weight of fish in his nets after a catchless night. Intimate connections experienced over and over show us who we are, and those same tiny details prove our identity to each other, not big events. If we want to see the risen Jesus—the focus of Christian spirituality—where do we look? The women who come to find Jesus in the tomb are asked why they seek the living among the dead. What a question.Life is defined by motion. No motion, no life. If Jesus is alive, he’s in motion too, not among the static dead, among set beliefs about past events. We will always find the risen Jesus in the center of all our motion. Among the living. In all the tiny, familiar, intimate movements of our own lives or not at all.
Dave Brisbin 3.24.24Western Christianity has largely failed us in its primary responsibility: to preserve Jesus and his teaching and help us engage. Focused on law and punishment to the point of legalism; ritual to the point of superstition; scarcity to the point of passive petition; outcome to the point of dismissed herenow, an authentic Jesus and his message have been left behind.One little passage sums it up. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” Lest we take the English too literally, in Aramaic, eye/aina means a person’s entire way of seeing, their worldview. Clear/p’shitta is clear in the sense of simple and sincere. Light/nuhrah is illumination, intelligence, order. Bad/bisha means unripe, immature, not fully formed. And darkness/heshuka is chaos, disharmony.Jesus’ whole ministry was to show us how we can sincerely allow the order and clarity of ultimate reality penetrate the chaos of the immature thought-worlds we have created for ourselves out of fearful survival needs. And in following this only Way, to see the Good News of our reality—that we are already as loved and approved as we want to be. When Jesus rolls into Jerusalem on his last week before the crucifixion, his followers, the people, the Jewish and Roman authorities only see him through the filter of their own wants and needs. For those at the margins, he is savior. For those invested in the status quo, a threat to their powerbases.Is Jesus a savior or a threat? We reflexively say savior, have grown comfortable with that image, but if we don’t also see Jesus as a threat, we will miss how he saves. The next day, Jesus overturns the money tables in the temple. If there is anything in our thought-worlds we have built up and rely on, if we let him anywhere near, Jesus will overturn it that our eye may be clear. It’s up to us to be outraged or intrigued. This is how Jesus saves—by showing us how to clear our eye. But until we accept his threat, he can’t save us.Jesus is our savior and our threat. But not necessarily in that order.
Dave Brisbin 3.17.24What do humans look like when they break through their own thought-created worlds—all about survival, controlling competition—and become present to the real world around them? I remembered the movie Chariots of Fire, based on a true story set around the Paris Olympics, 1924. It contrasts two runners, a British Jew, Harold Abrahams, and a Scottish Christian, Eric Liddel. Abrahams has been embittered by the prejudice he’s suffered as a Jew, and runs for revenge, driven to win and prove superiority over those who despised him. Liddel, China-born to missionary parents, has been preparing to return to the mission field even as he gained stardom in rugby. His sister, Jenny, just as driven as Abrahams in her religious zeal, is dismissive and critical of his athletics; they distract from God.Liddel tells Jenny, “I believe God made me for a purpose, for China…but he also made me fast…and when I run, I feel his pleasure. To give it up would be to hold him in contempt.” Abrahams runs for revenge. Jenny runs for duty and obligation. When Liddel runs, he feels God’s pleasure. Liddel stands apart. Principled to the point he won't run his 100M race because it falls on a Sunday, he withstands withering fire from his elders including the Prince of Wales himself. Yet, when able to run the 400M instead, as the fastest runners in the world are tensely preparing to run, Liddel casually walks the lanes, sport coat over his running shorts, smiling, shaking hands, wishing each the best of luck. Liddel was only 22 years old. How’d he do that?Running was just another place where he felt God’s pleasure: sheer oneness and connection. But seems he also felt God’s pleasure when he greeted his fellow runners, unconcerned at that moment for the race itself, until that became the source of God’s pleasure. Twenty years later, he was still feeling God’s pleasure in China, working with children in the WWII internment camp where he died. Wherever he went, whatever he was doing, he felt God’s pleasure, changing everything.I don’t know how he felt all this at 22. But with intention and a bit more time, we can all feel it too if we wish.
Dave Brisbin 3.10.24The reality we believe is the reality we endure.We don’t see reality as it is. We see reality as we are. Our minds are a necessary tool for survival, but keyed to survival, they are fear-based, making our thoughts overwhelmingly negative as they literally create the world in which we live. As long as we’re thinking, we’re enduring a world we believe we must control to survive. We’ll need our minds as long as we’re drawing breath, but our mistake is to take them literally. To believe our thoughts are true is to live in the anxiety of our own personal hell.Jesus is acutely aware of the grip our minds have over us, that our minds can’t tell the difference between the thoughts it generates and sensory input coming from the outside. Always trying to engineer breaks in our stream of thought to allow something really real to break in, he never answers a question except with another question, a story or parable. He knows an “answer,” received as part of the mind’s drive to control the fear of uncertainty, is the problem. The solution is to take our thoughts by surprise so we can step away, become free of their self-created, fear-based world.Sometimes Jesus doesn’t use words at all. When he washes his followers’ feet, he is breaking into their fear-world in the most intense way possible. As his followers jockey for positions of power in Jesus’ kingdom as they think it will be, Jesus shows them, through the most humiliating and disgusting act of service in ancient Jewish culture, the meaning of true power. The highest position is the lowest, because only in service, in laying down our lives for another, is the reality of love ever expressed.Jesus is a footwasher. He says that he and the Father are one, which makes our Father a footwasher too. We have placed God high over our thought-worlds in positions of power and control. But if we really want to find our God, we have to look down, not up—not in the clouds, but in the standing height of a child, the kneeling height of a servant. Can you honestly accept and respect a God who washes your feet? And if not, what will it take to break into your thought-world?
Dave Brisbin 3.3.24Decades ago, I met a Christian who converted to Judaism, eventually becoming a first century Jewish follower of Jesus. He spoke of his personal theology, a stated set of personal beliefs. I’d never considered such a thing. Growing up Catholic, theology belonged to the church, as if God had written it, and the church discovered it, parceling it out each Sunday. Unquestionably true, the idea of a personal theology was blasphemous. We had no permission to think personally.Yet here’s Jesus overturning tables in the temple and cursing a fig tree for having no fruit. Both stories pointing to the fact that the Jewish system of his day had become bankrupt, fruitless, unable to guide its people to authentic spiritual encounter. Jesus gave himself permission to explore his own beliefs, lived and taught out of that conviction, exposing the defects of his tradition. And where did that tradition come from? If you roll back any religion to its inception, you get to one person. A person who had life changing spiritual experience, which they lived and taught and people followed.All theologies begin as personal theologies—attempts to express an inexpressible experience of the infinite in a finite life. But when we come to that religion as a follower, what we experience first is the expression as it has been handed down, not the experience. Heresay…which won’t be useful unless or until it guides us to our own experience. Once theology becomes institutionalized, it becomes a closed loop, no longer pointing to life changing experience, but to its own law and ritual, as if they were such experience themselves.Any theology only become useful once it has become personal.Once you’ve memorized the phone number, you can burn the slip of paper. Once the law is written on your heart, you can forget the rules. The purpose of theology is to catch God. Once God is caught, theology can be forgotten—we can meet God without a middleman. But we’ll never know this until we give ourselves permission to get personal. Permission will never be granted to overturn our tables of old thinking or kill our trees of unfruitful action.
Dave Brisbin 2.25.24When Jesus rolls into Jerusalem the week of his execution, there are major mixed emotions in the crowd of onlookers. The common folk are chanting and cheering as the authorities, both Jewish and Roman, hang back, concerned over any shift in power. Jewish leaders tell Jesus to quiet the crowds, but Jesus replies that if these were silent, the very rocks would cry out. Just pretty poetry? Something deeper?He seems to be echoing both King David and Paul who said that all creation testifies to truth and can’t be silenced or ignored. More poetic license? Astronomers say they have heard the sound of a black hole singing: a massive black hole in the Perseus cluster is emitting sound centered on a tone 57 octaves below middle C. And microwave background radiation, radiation from celestial bodies and nebulae can also be heard as sound, as music. Creation is singing. We just have to be tuned to the right frequency.Obviously not being so technical, Jesus is recognizing that there is unceasing music, an expression of truth emitting from everything around us…all nature, even the rocks. How can we tune in? Paul calls it unceasing prayer, but as if knowing we’d misunderstand, couples his directive to pray with rejoicing always and being grateful in all circumstances. These three directives together create the context for understanding the nature of unceasing prayer. Not prayer of words or thoughts, but a state of awareness so tuned to each moment that we can participate at a level beneath words, thoughts, and the judgment that objectifies and separates. To engage our moments at this level is to become aware of the deeper connection that is experienced as a sense of wellbeing, a metaphysical ok-ness for which the automatic reaction is gratitude. When you feel the smile spreading across your face without your permission or thought, when you suddenly see in the smallest detail you may have seen a thousand times, the thrill of something deeper, you are praying this prayer. Significance in insignificance. Divine truth in the most ordinary moment when your prayer is your awareness—tuned to hear the rocks sing.
Dave Brisbin 2.18.24We’re still in the first days of Lent. If you didn’t grow up in a liturgical church, you may not know about ashes on foreheads, confession and penance, fasting and giving up candy bars or some other treat for forty days. And even if such memories are part of your past, you may have as much to unlearn as others have to learn about Lent.For nearly 1,800 years, the forty-day period before Easter is meant to be a time of preparation. Originally the preparation for baptism of new converts, it was ported over to Easter as an annual time of preparation for the new life of rebirth. Mirroring Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, the deprivation and suffering of Jesus’ experience is emulated, but why? As children, we understood it as punishment and penance for our sins, wiping our slates clean for God, but this relatively passive and vicarious approach is not what Jesus experienced during his fortyness.Forty in the bible means a difficult time of trial and testing leading to a transformative rebirth. Think Moses on Mount Sinai, Noah in the ark, Hebrews wandering in the desert. Jesus faced three trials in the wilderness that correspond to every human’s biological needs for security and survival, power and control, affection and esteem. Jesus’ three temptations symbolize the unconscious drives every human must transcend far enough to gain the emotional regulation and awareness the rest of Jesus’ Way requires.The fortyness of Lent is meant to be a similar, ritually difficult preparation for transformation. But if that’s our intent, we need to reframe it: not as a negative punishment or penance, but as positive, affirmative action we intentionally take to clear out distractions, take a dive into our shadow selves, and create an ideal interior environment for spiritual breakthrough. The fasting and deprivation of Lent is not punishment, but an opportunity to lower our egoic guards and awareness threshold—allow God’s presence to show through. We can use Lent as a crash course to silence and simplify enough to see what is really meaningful in our moments and any interior limitations keeping us from that meaning.
Dave Brisbin 2.11.24What churches and religion inevitably forget—as does every human group—is that their laws, doctrine, and practice are not ends, truth in themselves, but pointers, guides to non-rational truth that must be personally experienced, never bestowed.Thomas Huxley said that new ideas begin as heresy, advance to orthodoxy, and end in superstition. Belief systems practiced for a length of time follow this curve, and Christian thought is no exception. The practices that Jesus taught and his followers called the Way, heretical to most, were understood as a way of life that prepared individuals to experience the paradoxical truth of God’s love. But as the movement matured and institutionalized, life practice became ritualized, and the theological ideas that had grown around them were legalized into orthodoxy. Eventually, law and ritual were believed to have supernatural power, ends in themselves rather than pointers to spiritual experience.The original Hebrew meaning of law—torah—was instruction, guidance, like training wheels on a bike. But that in no way diminishes its importance. Jesus said he was not abolishing the law, but fulfilling it—that even the smallest letter and stroke would remain until heaven and earth pass away, which in Aramaic means to cross a boundary. We need the guidance, restriction, and discipline of law and ritual until the oneness of heaven merges with the individuality of life on earth in our own hearts. When heaven and earth merge in us, we no longer need law and ritual as training wheels, but will live them from the inside out as expressions of the love we have experienced along the Way.Jesus is teaching us that law is not fulfilled in obedience or righteousness in ritual practice. Legal compliance and ritual observance mean nothing in themselves, but everything when they have become the deepest purpose of a transformed heart. To believe otherwise is to miss the Way entirely, remain focused on conformance rather than transformance…as if training wheels are permanent, the highest expression of riding a bike, and not a limitation—the outward badge of an inward inability to fly.
Dave Brisbin 2.4.24Some things are too big to grasp all at once. Like those Nazca lines in Peru…geoglyphs laid down on a windless plateau around the time of Christ—so big you can only see them from the air. Other things are too big to grasp within the limits of rational thought. You need greater perspective to see, not altitude, but a step outside conscious thought to the wordless awareness of pure presence. You still can’t grasp the thing intellectually, but you can experience its reality.God’s radical, degreeless, indiscriminate love is just such a thing. This is why Jesus doesn’t give us a theology. More things to think about. We can understand the words that describe perfect love, but not its reality from words alone. So Jesus gives us a Way of living, the only way to experience the reality of a love so alien that it can’t be rationally understood. Alien. I hope that word is uncomfortable. Only if we are experiencing something uncomfortably unfamiliar at first, or even frightening or amoral according to our sense of justice, are we even in the neighborhood of God’s radical love.Nowhere is this paradox more apparent than with the concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness is greatly misunderstood. We equate forgiveness with condoning the past, making restitution, even reconciliation, but it has nothing to do with any of these. Neither does it have anything to do with the person who hurt us…we can forgive the dead. In Aramaic, forgiveness descends from the same root word as freedom. To those who wrote the gospels, to be forgiven is to be set free from any victimization or unbalance that has occurred, to be restored to our original state. This is a completely interior process that only we can do for ourselves. No one, not even God can do it for us. God doesn’t forgive; God is forgiveness as much as God is love. God can’t withhold his own nature; it self exists. All we will ever get from God is love and forgiveness, but we will never know this reality until we live the Way, until we love and forgive those who haven’t earned it. Then we’ll know how real it is, how it had to first be given to us before we could ever give it away.
Dave Brisbin 1.28.24Familiarity breeds contempt usually means that the more we know people, the more we can lose respect and judge more harshly. If contempt seems too strong a word, at least the more familiar things become, the more they blend into the wallpaper until we don’t even see them anymore. And when those things are religious scripture and doctrine, we may be so saturated that we believe we know things we have never considered on our own: accepted as children or under group pressure, such teachings became familiar before ever teaching us how to live spiritual lives in a physical world.And what is more familiar than the Lord’s Prayer? Even those not steeped in Christian tradition are familiar with it. We learned it as kids, recited it—but what is this wallpaper saying? Is there anything to learn beyond mere recitation? We know the words: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth…But when Jesus’ friends asked him to teach them to pray, he would have said something like, abwoon d’bwashmaya, nethqadash shmakh, teytey malkuthakh, nehwey sebyanach, akanna d’bwashmaya aph b’arha. Transliteration alone gives a sense of the unfamiliar otherness of a teaching from as far out of modern Western experience as humanly possible. But beyond mere translation, when we put these Aramaic words back in their ancient Eastern context, we discover this “prayer” is actually a blueprint for living a spiritually aware life.The five lines of the prayer form the steps of a process that starts with becoming unfamiliar again with everything we think we know. Clearing an interior space allows us to see the reality of the sacred in the ordinary details of life and begin to match our values to God’s, only knowable when our sense of separate self is lost in present action. Released from that sense of separateness, the victimhood of the past, we realize a new connection, always herenow. If we can become unfamiliar again, see these words again for the first time, we can stop reciting them and start living the path they describe. Or better, recite them as a reminder to really live.
Dave Brisbin 1.21.24Disciples of a spiritual master come to his home only to find him on hands and knees in the front yard. He tells them he lost something of great importance, so they fall in to help search, hands and knees, eyes straining. After some time, they ask where he had it last, where he might have lost it. Oh, he says, that was inside the house. Then why are we searching out here? Because the light is so much better…We laugh, but as crazy as that sounds, isn’t this exactly what we do spiritually? The master is trying to teach his students that we all want to conduct our existential search where it's comfortable…how it’s comfortable. In our strong suit, under conditions where the light is good, and we can hold on to the illusion of control. We want to dictate the terms of the search, and even the nature of the thing searched for. Much safer to search for a god we imagine we understand.In our need for absolute answers, we construct questions in the light of our dualistic worldview, setting up straw man opposites so we can knock one down as false and say we’re certain the other is true. Our human insecurity requires this manufactured certainty, but we’re setting up opposites in a world that Jesus says is one—a oneness that can only be seen once we’re searching in the house, where we can’t control the light and must trust a process and spiritual muscles that we can’t see.In his famous love chapter, Paul said when he was a child, he acted and reasoned like a child, but when he became a man, he put away childish things. He places this metaphor against the fact that we can only see spiritual reality dimly, but when the “perfect” comes, face to face. We think he’s talking about heaven, but Jewish context is always this life herenow. When the perfect comes is any moment our house of cards, our world of opposites collapses, and for an instant we see the oneness, the sole substance behind our opposites. For Paul and Jesus that substance is what we call love, the ultimate reality we’ll never find until we grow up and out of the need for certainty—willing to search in mystery where the light is not so good.
Dave Brisbin 1.14.24Dualism is a sneaky worldview. Worldviews themselves are sneaky. We don’t often realize we have one, that we experience life through cultural and self-imposed filters—it’s just reality as we’ve come to believe it is. Dualism divides our view of reality into opposed and contrasted aspects. The most obvious is mind and body or material and immaterial. But once you have drunk the dualist Kool-Aid, you see duality everywhere: right/wrong, male/female, now/not yet, secular/spiritual, heaven/earth. As if everything we experience is reducible to two opposing aspects.Since we are focused on contemplation as a primary tool for spiritual growth and Jesus as a Hebrew contemplative—working interiorly to step away from cognitive and emotional distractions in order to experience pure presence—another dualism presents. Contemplation and action. If we’re focused inwardly, using silence, solitude, stillness, and simplicity to quiet our minds, hearts, and the world around us, how are we of any use in our relationships and communities?Our world is falling apart, and we’re meditating in the corner? Inactive? Uncaring? One of the main benefits of contemplative practice is to strip away our preconceptions, both conscious and unconscious, to see reality as it really is. See past our worldview’s filter, past imagined dualities to the unity beyond. Life is not about either/or. It’s both/and. Contemplation is the preparation we must go through in order to see what is really needed, what love requires in our relationships and communities so that our action is appropriate and part of a true solution. Not just an expression of what our egos and unresolved traumas need.Paul appears to uphold inaction toward slavery and subjugation of women in his biblical letters, but I see him trying to help people prioritize. To fight the interior revolution first, prepare hearts and minds before we strike off to fight the exterior revolution. Contemplation and action together. In that order. We train before we compete, wipe windshields before we drive. Must see reality as it is before we engage action that is clearly our duty to perform.
Dave Brisbin 1.7.23Psychology tells us that all human neuroses are caused by our intolerance of uncertainty. Think about that for a minute. As children, everything is unknown, uncertain, but we don’t know we’re naked so we accept each moment as it presents without question. Everything is as it should be until we get hurt, and when old enough to conceive of tomorrow, we first fear the uncertainty of next time.When fear is great enough that we can’t tolerate the uncertainties of life, the need to create or at least imagine certainty becomes overwhelming. The strategies we use, mostly unconsciously, are our neuroses—attempts at control that emotionally feel better than uncertainty. Intellectually, we know there are no certainties in life, at least not in the big things: life and death, health, wellness, relationship, spirit. But can’t we carve out little certainties for ourselves in the spaces between the big things that can add some tolerance for the rest?Think of a child growing up in a home with solid family rituals—times for rising and resting, eating, playing, schooling, birthdays and vacations. Safe, comforting. Holds the world at bay. As adults we create our own rituals built around work and play and families of our own. Society and church build their rituals around a calendar of secular and religious events, while the world provides the clockwork of days, months, years, seasons, the interplay of sun and moon. Small comforts within larger uncertainty.Repeated cycles imply a conscious creator, someone who set the cycle in motion and cares to keep it going for the sake of those who need a solid place to stand. And that care implies the love from which all else is derived. Once aware of such love, we can make friends with the uncertainty at the core of life and finally begin to let go of our neurotic attempts at control that keep us grounded in fear. It’s all about the balance. Celebrating the cycles of sun and moon that make life possible while creating cycles of daily ritual that hold life in place and make learning to love uncertainty possible—trusting the mystery that gives life its ultimate interest and meaning.
Dave Brisbin 12.31.23Another new year that’s promising to be as crazy as they get. After the past three years, that’s saying something, but a contentious election on top of escalating world events make it a contender. Anticipating this, we wonder why things can’t just settle. We look for resolution to contentions and contradictions, but when does life ever resolve?There’s something deep in us that knows that life only and ever resolves in death. That like ignoring a spoiler alert that makes a movie uninteresting and unwatchable, to know the end, the resolution of life would make it pointless and unlivable. The mystery, the crazy contradictions, the missing pieces keep us guessing, interested and alive…and afraid. There’s the rub. Our fear keeps us obsessing and grasping for the very certainty that would drain the life out of our lives if we could ever actually achieve it.So what’s a human to do? Forever caught between the horns of a paradox—between intolerance of uncertainty and a world specifically designed to make certainty impossible. We’ve known this at the quantum level for nearly a century, but what we know rationally and need emotionally are another paradox we can’t resolve. A forty-year-old song captures it: Crazy world, full of crazy contradictions like a child. Just when I believe your heart’s getting warmer, you’re cold and you’re cruel, and I like a fool try to cope, try to hang on to hope. Oh, how I love this crazy world.Jesus said he came to teach us to live abundantly. How do we do that in a crazy world, a crazy new year full of contradictions? The world is built on the uncertainty of its smallest particles. To believe that the world is not as it should be is to live in scarcity. Waiting for the world to meet our expectations before life feels safe enough to live is a train that never comes. If we can’t accept the world as it is, the work we do for change will carry the obsession of scarcity. Abundant life begins the moment we realize that we love this crazy world and its unresolvable contradictions. That it is as it must be, and even as we work for change, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Dave Brisbin 12.17.23We think we know Christmas. Bed-sheeted children reenact the details every year, so it’s shocking to go back to the gospels and see how little is there and how much is merely tradition. All we know about Jesus’ birth from Luke is that he was wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn. All we get from Matthew is the story of Herod and the magi, wise men from the east following a star. Reading closely, there weren’t three wise men, and they weren’t kings. With some word study, there was no inn—the word refers to the living space of a first century Judean home. And historically, Jesus couldn’t have been born December 25th—Judean shepherds did not keep their flocks out at night during cold winter months—or in year 1 CE, since Herod died in 4 BCE. Most likely date was either in spring or summer between 7 and 5 BCE. And what about that star?Matthew tells us magi saw the star in the east, that it went before them, guiding them west, then stood over the place of Jesus’ birth. No star could do this. Are we looking for a miraculous star with non-physical properties? Scholars have offered comets, supernovas, planetary conjunctions as explanation, but none of these fit Matthew’s details, and there’s no astronomical evidence either. But in the ancient world, astronomy and astrology were one and the same, and amazingly, there is astrological evidence for the magi’s star. From April 17 to December 19, 6 BCE, Jupiter obeyed all Matthew’s details in its apparent motion, astrologically speaking…making Jesus’ birthday April 17, 6 BCE.Is this true? Can’t know. Important? Only in considering the magi. Probably descendants of Jewish exiles searching the stars across centuries, longing for signs of their promised king. The devotion and discipline, willingness to risk life and reputation following a star only they could see, humility to surrender their treasures to an impoverished child. What is the temperature of our desire? Hot enough to persevere? To search the stars, risk following the star we find, surrender preconceptions blinding us to the truth our star reveals? That’s important.
Dave Brisbin 12.10.23What do we really know about the birth of Jesus? There’s so little information in the gospels, just a few scant paragraphs in Matthew and Luke. Only Luke gives us details of the birth itself and the shepherds’ vision and visit, while Matthew tells of the Magi after Jesus’ birth. All we’re told of Jesus’ birth is that he was wrapped in cloths and placed in a manger because there was no room in the inn. That’s it.Early Christians didn’t consider Jesus’ birth very important compared to his death and resurrection; it would be over 800 years before Christmas was widely celebrated in the church. Probably why the gospels didn’t record much, but the details that survive are important because they emphasize an absolutely ordinary and unremarkable first century birth. The relatives or friends with whom Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem didn’t even make room for them in the living space of their home—the word inn is a mistranslation here—they had to stay in the part of the house reserved for the animals.Ordinary? Unremarkable? You’re thinking the shepherds and Magi saw something pretty spectacular, right? Yes, but why are they the only ones recorded as having a significant experience with this birth? Why didn’t the people in the same house as Mary and Joseph see anything special? Why didn’t king Herod or his court see the star? Jesus was born as any poor Galilean: washed, rubbed with salt, tightly wrapped in spare strips of cloth, but also laid in a livestock feeding trough because no room was made for him in the house.We say seeing is believing, but some things must be believed to be seen. The deep truth the gospels are telling about this birth is that only those who were prepared to see beyond their expectations could see the significance of what was right before their eyes. True then, true now. Our God is an unassuming God. Humble, vulnerable, unremarkable to those set on power and wealth. Only when we become humble and vulnerable enough, begin to reflect and value what God values, will we see that God really is Immanuel—with us, right here and now, perfect love in human form. And always has been.
Dave Brisbin 12.3.23Amid the holidays, ‘tis the season for giving. Expectation and requests bombard from every form of media and family and cultural traditions. Trying to come up with perfect gifts for family, friends, clients, prospects, bosses, those who matter in your life, those who can give back, those who can’t—how much feels like obligation and how much freely blows like wind into the shopping, decorating, cooking, planning?Giving shouldn’t be complicated, but it can be…tied up with many conflicts of interest. Ancient Jews considered charitable giving one of three measures of a person’s righteousness, along with prayer and fasting. The rabbinic tradition, with its typically legal perspective, had defined giving to death with numbers and percentages, reduced it to rules and obligations. And with all that emphasis at stake, those following the rules naturally wanted everyone to know just how righteously giving they were. Jesus lays his ax right at the root of these conflicts.In religious circles we often hear that we can’t out-give God or that our tithes and offerings will come back to us 100-fold. True as that may be spiritually, if that is our intent, then our giving has become mere investment. And as soon as we put a number or percentage on a gift, it’s just a tax. Jesus teaches us to give so that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing—preserving the anonymity of the giver and the dignity of the receiver, removing the conflicts that make giving not a gift.It’s a first step in chipping away at the God-complex we have about giving: the need to be in the superior, controlled position of the giver rather than the vulnerable dependence of the receiver. Until we have received, what do we have to give? Until we recognize that all we have of any lasting value is a free gift we could never give ourselves, how will we ever know the vulnerability and gratitude that animates all true giving? The difference between a gift and an investment or tax, is the fear of not knowing that we’re merely caretakers, constantly receiving, and all we can ever do is regift what has already been given. Freely and secretly.
Dave Brisbin 11.26.23My good friend these past eight years, a committed member of our faith community, Bob Lang, died last week. I was at his house the night before with his wife and daughter and again the next day after he had passed. Staying connected to him and his family during his illness, I was very glad that last night to have been able to say in his ear all I wanted him to know, hoping he could hear and understand. He leaves a big hole in my breakfast schedule, the conversations we’d have, and accepting that he’s no longer callable will take some time.Moments like these call so much into question, maybe everything that matters to us as fragile humans. What is Bob doing now? Who is he with? Anyone at all? Does he know the answers to all the questions I have, that every human has ever had since we started this whole thing? Most of us are well steeped in religious and cultural doctrine, but moments like these have the power to strip all that away, undistract us, question everything we think we know and lay bare the reality of what we can’t.Truth is, there’s no certainty about the unseen parts of life. By definition, they are unprovable. Unseen, we can say they don’t exist, or we can let what we do see convince us of something more. Fear makes us crave certainty, but certainty is only mind deep; conviction goes all the way to the bone. We choose our convictions out of the experience of our lives—not as a certainty, but as the basis of how we live. Now. Not then. All we have is now. All Bob has is now. I’m convinced it’s the same now, shared, at different frequencies.Moments like these have convinced me that choosing to live based on love is to feel love’s eternal quality. That we come from love and return to it, that we as part of love are never lost, just change form. Like energy and matter, we remain constant while constantly changing. I’m convinced that Bob is not lost, just unseen to me. We often say that the dead are still present and alive in our hearts, but I’m becoming convinced that our hearts, tuned to the frequency of presence, can make us aware of unseen life in our one, shared now…moments like these.
Dave Brisbin 11.19.23Important government official comes to a renowned Zen master and says, “Teach me the ways of Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” It’s more command than request. The master smiles, saying, “Let’s discuss it over tea.” When the tea is ready, he pours for his guest, and pours until the cup begins to overflow, creeping across the table until it runs off onto the man’s robes. He jumps up, “Stop! Can’t you see the cup is full?” The master smiles again, “You are like this cup. So full, nothing can be added. Come back when your cup is empty. Come back with an empty mind.”As modern, Western people, our cups are now so full, overflowing with digital data, that a study has shown our attention spans have dropped from twelve seconds in 2000 before the mobile revolution to eight seconds today. Considering that goldfish have demonstrated attention spans of nine seconds, we have fallen below goldfish in our ability to hold the moment, to simply be present to what is rather than what projects on our screens and our minds.Why does this matter and what does it have to do with gratitude? Gratitude is more than mere thankfulness. It begins there, but journeys on to a life altering attitude and way of living connected to gifts we could never give ourselves. Gratitude is dependent upon presence, the ability to get all our preconceptions out of the way, clear our minds of distracting thoughts by immersing in what is right before us. We can’t create gratitude, seek it directly or count blessings into it. Gratitude is what happens when we let go of the complexity in our minds in favor of the simplicity of an instant. It’s an umbrella term that covers all the positive emotions and excludes the rest. You can’t be grateful and anything negative at the same time. It’s a physical, mental, emotional impossibility. Maybe gratitude isn’t a thing itself, but the absence of anything that distracts from the ongoing gift—what it feels like to let the moment we’re in be enough for us, realize that anything added or taken away would only diminish. Gratitude is what we call what we feel when we empty our cup and graduate from goldfish.
Dave Brisbin 11.12.23You can understand much of human behavior by remembering that we are fragile little creatures living under a death sentence trying to survive and somehow thrive. Fear makes us crave certainty and control, which don’t exist in life but drive our thoughts and behavior in predictable directions, including our religious obsession with prophecy and end times speculation. All enthusiastically doomed to frustration.So how do we do it? Survive and thrive under such conditions? Since human experience never changes, we can look to the ancients, not for what we can know with certainty, but for how we can live in uncertainty without fear. Throughout the Judeo-Christian scriptures, there is one overarching metaphor for life lived here between heaven and earth—the Hebrew wedding tradition…from the bride’s point of view. Seems strange at first, but consider that a Hebrew girl was betrothed to a man she may have never met in a ceremony called the kiddushin. Her groom would then leave her to build the chadar, their apartment at his father’s house where they would consummate and live out their marriage. He could be gone a year or more, returning without notice, surprising the bride to carry her home for the nissu’in, the wedding ceremony.Imagine the bride living between kiddushin and nissu’in…excited anticipation of her new life deepening the awareness that she must leave everything she’s ever known and loved, all while knowing that at any moment everything could change. All human history and life are lived in the uncertainty between betrothal and consummation, promise and fulfillment, birth and death. The bride is living the paradox of balancing now and not yet—anticipating the excitement of new life, working toward change without ever losing immersion in the moment and relationships now.Immersion now, even as we anticipate not yet, teaches us that all moments are equally sacred. That all moments, now and not yet, are the same moment once entered, and the uncertainty we fear resolves only and always now in the connection we make and maintain—the only certainty we’ll ever experience with the power to cast out fear.
Dave Brisbin 11.5.23 I’ve continued to receive questions about the war in Israel and related issues, and one of them was very specific and raised an ethical nightmare of conflicting moral imperatives. Got me thinking of the competing ethical systems I learned in school: categorical imperatives—universal laws and duties that are self-contained and always morally right without regard to consequences vs utilitarianism—actions that are morally right when they produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people vs virtue ethics—the what would Jesus do question of looking to an ideal virtue agent to show us right action.Each one has its pros and cons, and we probably need all three to regulate the excesses of the others, but what would Jesus do presents an interesting question for those of us trying to follow his teaching. First off, we can’t apply what would Jesus do to macro situations—Jesus was always teaching in the context of micro relationships and individual hearts. But a friend told me his reaction to the macro war was so personally devastating that he “googled Gandhi” to find, an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind, and Jesus in the gospels, do not treat evil with evil, but rather with love. My friend’s clear use of virtue ethics helped him reframe, return home from macro confusion and despair.Jesus is much more situational than categorical in his ethics. Since he can’t ask what Jesus would do, in asking what the Father would do, he focuses on what love requires in any situation rather than what is categorically right. But to know what love requires, itself requires pure presence—awareness to really see the situation as it is, all who share it as they are.When Jesus gets the devastating news that his dear friend Lazarus is dying, he stays two more days where he is, teaching and healing. Did love require delay to create the greatest good for greatest number or was he just lost in presence? When he arrives, he knows love requires a deep conversation with Martha, but with Mary, he simply weeps. What love requires can cut through volumes of ethical philosophy, but only if we’re fully present first.
Dave Brisbin 10.29.23The Israel-Palestine war is kicking up a lot of questions. How did we get here? Why for four or five generations has there been an active volcano in Israel/Palestine that can erupt at any moment? Israelis, Palestinians, and the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all claim the land. Whose land is it? Who is the occupier? Can we make any sense by looking at history?Jews have continuously occupied what is now Israel/Palestine for at least 3,000 years. Arabs have occupied the same land for the last 1,400, side by side with Jews. For most of that time, the land was taken and controlled by a parade of foreign occupiers: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks, and finally the British. There has never been a formal Palestinian state and no Jewish state since 63 BCE. Rome renamed their province of Judea, Syria Palestina, about 135 CE after the second Jewish-Roman war that finally purged most Jews from the land. The name stuck.But 100 years ago, at the end of WWI, Britain took control of the area and supported a declaration calling for a Jewish national home in Palestine, opening the door to Jewish migration and creating tension and conflict with the Arab population. Twenty years and another world war later, Britain withdrew its control of Palestine in 1948, and the newly-formed UN approved a partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. Arabs rejected it; Israel declared independence; Arabs attacked; Israel defended and won most of the land partitioned to Palestinians, then purged those Arabs from their homes. The stage was set for the constant conflict of the past 75 years.Both Jews and Arabs have ancient claims to the land. But land is always occupied by the winner of the last fight, and Jews and Arabs have taken and retaken this land over millennia. Whose land is it now and what can we do from the sidelines? We can start by admitting that history is not decisive, that all people have a right to a place to stand, and that we can’t afford to reflexively take sides and fall into the same patterns of hatred that lead to atrocities we abhor.
Dave Brisbin 10.22.23In the last line of Matthew 5, Jesus says, therefore be perfect as God in heaven is perfect. Wow. Hearing that for the first time, would it spur you to work harder? Try to hit imagined thresholds? Or feel completely defeated? Shake your head and walk away? Most of us know we’re not perfect, that the human condition doesn’t allow, so exactly what is he asking?Since Jesus said, “therefore,” we need to go back and see what that’s there for... Therefore connects back to the entire chapter as the how of this perfection, but especially to the immediate passage in which Jesus tells us to love our enemies. How are we supposed to love what we hate and what hates us? The original language helps. Enemy is not just a malicious adversary, but one who is not of our tribe, someone we don’t know, understand, trust, like. We’re to love our enemies as we love our neighbors—those close to us in proximity and relationship—and love our neighbors as ourselves, which still doesn’t imply affection, but at least basic human decency. Still, that word love trips us up. Even showing basic decency to those we consider indecent is too much. But there are two words for love that Jesus uses in Aramaic. When he says love your neighbor, he uses rehem, which is a love full of affection and devotion that flows as if from a deep wellspring. And when he says love your enemy, he uses ahab, which literally means to kindle a fire: gather dry, dead twigs and ruffage, carefully spark and blow and guard until a warming fire burns.Loving our enemies is a process of becoming someone who experiences growing a love never thought possible with someone always thought unlovable. Such an impossibility comes as a perfect moment, a connection beyond those we normally experience that changes our view of love and life. Jesus is saying that even in our imperfection, we can feel our love, our decency, falling like sun and rain on those who deserve it or not, for whom we feel affection or not…just as perfectly as God’s. It’s a momentary union of imperfection and perfection, an experience of perfect love that can grow into a character that defines.
Dave Brisbin 10.15.23It is absolutely, positively, unreservedly impossible to overestimate the impact of culture on language. Language is a child of culture and can only breathe in the culture that birthed it. When translated to another language, we’ve taken a fish out of water, trying to understand as it flops on the ground. If we want to know a fish, we have to get into the water. If true for modern languages, how much more for ancient ones, where not only culture, but history, science, and technology also affect meaning?Cultures exist to bind people together, ensure survival by making group experience meaningful and cohesive. So first task of culture is to control behavior—make sure the behavior of individuals is not harmful to the group. We see that as a function of law, because modern Western society is based on what anthropologists call a guilt/innocence culture: order is maintained by creating and reinforcing feelings of guilt and expectation of punishment.But the ancient world, and much of the East to this day is based on honor and shame, not guilt and innocence: order is maintained through indoctrination of shame—loss of honor—and the threat of ostracism. Such cultures are collective: individuals exist to serve the group and bring either honor or shame to everyone in it. When shamed, the restoration of honor often through revenge, not punishment under law, restores balance. An honor/shame culture produced our Judeo/Christian scriptures and the impact of those texts can only be understood when we get into that water.When Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek if struck on the right, until we know this meant a backhand slap, a shaming insult that would require vengeance to restore honor, we can’t know what he was asking in terms of voluntary humility for the sake of relationship. And when he says to go a second mile after Roman officials commandeered you for the first, until we see the shame in oppression, we can’t know how everything Jesus is teaching about the assurance and fearless vulnerability of God’s love is never found in the first mile. Only a second mile, beyond honor and obligation, can show us that.
Dave Brisbin 10.8.23How hard is it for you to say no? From telemarketers to employers, people on the street with signs to friends and family, there’s a psychological spectrum of difficulty. No one likes to give anyone the bad news of no, but if the difficulty is so great that it’s near-impossible, then we’ve shifted from concern for another to a form of codependency, concern for what another thinks of us. We’re all codependent to certain degrees, but when we can no longer simply say yes and no, there’s a problem.In a recent group discussion, women said they thought it was harder for them to say no than men—that women are more relationally focused and taught to please others in a way men are not. But everyone had varying levels of difficulty: the introverts said the answer is always no, no matter how many times they say yes; one man said you should always say no first, because it’s much easier to change your mind later to yes; a woman said that her no was always softened, accompanied by an alternative; while another spoke of the virtues of “maybe.”Jesus said that yes or no are sufficient answers, you don’t need oaths or appeals to higher authority. In the context of formal contracts and proceedings, he spoke to a tradition that allowed people to legally break their promises depending on what authority they based their oath. God’s name was always binding, but lesser authorities were not. Jesus is saying we don’t need any higher authority than our own word to bind our promises once we have come to care about others as much as ourselves. Who is the person making the promise?For an honest person, no oath is necessary—for a dishonest person, no oath is enough.What does it take to be the person Jesus suggests? To simply say yes or no…why, only later if needed…takes someone who’s experienced an inner assurance of belonging and acceptance. Someone strong enough to say yes and carry it out; non-codependent enough to say no without loss of identity. When we say yes to one thing, we say no to another. Yes and no, define us and the course of our lives. Jesus is showing us the freedom to choose with something other than fear.
Dave Brisbin 10.1.23One of the most misinterpreted and misused passages in the Bible affects a foundational part of our personal lives. Jesus appears to tell us in Matthew that adultery is the only legitimate ground for divorce and anyone who remarries after divorce for any other reason commits adultery. In Mark and Luke Jesus seems to remove the exception: all remarriage after divorce is adultery. I’ve seen pastors send women back to abusive husbands, toxic marriages held together at all costs, divorced people leave the church in order to live their lives.Is it legal to drink under the age of twenty-one? We mentally add alcohol or the question is nonsense. We leave it out of the question because the context is clear. Same happens biblically, but we don’t know the context. Everyone in first century Israel knew there were five legal grounds for divorce, and adultery was not one of them. Proven adultery was punishable by death, not divorce. The matter of indecency Jesus cites that we have translated as adultery, meant bringing shame to the family, while the other four dealt with neglect, abuse, and infertility—common-sense responses to the realities of marriage in their culture.Jesus was asked: is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any matter? “Any matter” created a narrow legal question. One school of Pharisees maintained the “matter of indecency” as a single ground for divorce; another school broke it in two: indecency and “any matter,” which meant a husband who wanted another woman, could divorce his wife for any or no reason at all. When pressed to choose between the two, Jesus maintained a matter of indecency as one ground—a husband had to show just cause, and if he divorced for “any matter” in order to marry another, it was the same as adultery. Common decency. Common sense.God’s purpose is always to bring together, make separate things one, peace out of chaos. This is the purpose of marriage as well. But if a marriage is chaotic, abusive, toxic, divorce may be the only way to create greater oneness later. God knows this…that sometimes it has to get darker before the dawn. Jesus did too. How about us?
Dave Brisbin 9.24.23Co-facilitating a debrief for a medical team that was emotionally stressed by a case in which a baby died after drowning in his bathtub. And if that wasn’t traumatic enough, the mother was charged for leaving her baby alone in the tub while under the influence of drugs. As the staff is caring for the baby, the police are in the hospital room arresting the mother, cuffing her, taking her into custody. The medical staff know the baby will not make it and confront the police, asking that the mother be allowed to stay as long as her baby is alive. The police relent, but stand guard in the room and won’t uncuff the mother. She backs against the bed…trying to touch her baby.It’s a classic clash of cultures between law enforcement and medical care. It’s not that the medical staff doesn’t know or care what the mother did; they are horrified. But where law enforcement sees the mother as offender and the room as a crime scene, the medical staff sees the offender as a mother and the room as a place of care. More broadly, it’s a clash between justice and mercy, macro and micro where neither side is wrong nor fully right in each other’s contexts. This mother must face the law and what justice demands, but as one nurse said, in that moment we needed to let her grieve over her baby.The medical team was in moral distress. Being constrained from doing what they believed was ethical at the bedside, they were outraged at the action of law enforcement, who were also constrained by the law, whatever they may have been feeling. But if we can understand the necessary shift between macro law and micro compassion, the need for both, we can more easily understand the actions of those working in a different context. In Matthew 5, Jesus shifts us from macro law to micro compassion over and over, showing us how we can live well between the two, fulfilling both.Even as we accept macro constraints, we can still choose the character of our micro life—compassion, connection, respect. How we live under the law is always our choice. Jesus is giving us back the awareness of our own power to choose. No one can take that from us.
Dave Brisbin 9.17.23Years ago, first time visiting an inmate at men’s central jail, I was surprised by the attitudes of the other visitors. There wasn’t the melancholy or tears I was expecting, but a lightness, almost celebratory atmosphere. Young women made up and dressed up, parents, grandparents laughing and talking. Big Hispanic man loudly encouraging and praying, two women beside me speed talking, effortlessly gliding between English and Spanish. Family and friends doing what family and friends do. Was a forty-five-minute wait at my assigned window; time to take it all in.Swinging around on my bolted-down metal stool, a young woman at the opposite bank of windows is talking on the handset to a young man on the other side of the glass. Orange jumpsuit. I see her from an angle, leaned forward and intent—free hand in the air, tone of voice, smile—she could have been sitting across white tablecloth and candlelight. She saw no orange jumpsuit, no offense, only the man she loved. I thought of the prodigal…in an orange jumpsuit…and I realized that she and the father of the prodigal were orange colorblind. Saw no offenses or punishments, only the beloved. Is that fair? What about the offense, the victims? What about justice? Isn’t God just?We humans live between heaven and earth. Between mercy and justice, between micro, one-on-one relationships where mercy and compassion are the highest good, and the macro groups to which we belong, where justice and law must prevail. To miss the fact that love must look like justice in our groups and compassion for each individual within those groups is to miss learning how to love in the ever-shifting context of our between-ness.God is justice in the macro, when viewed where three or more are gathered. But when God views us—it is always micro, as if we are the only person living between heaven and earth. God is orange colorblind too. Sees through our faults like x-ray vision or a young woman at central jail. While we are still beholden to macro laws and the punishments they assign, between God and us, there are only and will only ever be white tablecloths and candlelight.
Dave Brisbin 9.10.23 The purpose of a fish trap is to catch a fish. Once the fish is caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch a rabbit. Once the rabbit is caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. Once the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Show me a person who has forgotten words. That’s the one I want to talk to.
Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu, wrote this three hundred years before Jesus, but it speaks to a timeless part of human nature. We are always getting means and ends confused. Missing the forest for the trees—missing the intent of a process by getting lost in its details, letting those details become an end in themselves, more important than the purpose for which they were put in place. This phenomenon of putting carts before horses is probably most clearly seen in religious practice.
An old joke: Why don’t Baptists allow premarital sex? Because it leads to dancing…
When it comes to law, religious or civil, we have often followed the practice of prohibiting behavior that may lead to larger offenses. But what happens when prohibiting the gateway behavior becomes more important than the unlawful behavior itself? Or when the code of the law itself becomes more important than the community it was meant to protect?
This is what both Chuang Tzu and Jesus are confronting. The religious laws of the Hebrew bible existed to preserve the life of the community and promote the awareness of God’s presence…not as a test of righteousness. The Hebrew word we translate as law really means instruction or guidance, which means that the rules are not goodness in themselves; they can only point us in that direction—a means of personal formation, of assuming the values of the law’s intent. Expressed in scripture as writing the law on our hearts, law is only needed until we learn to love, then the law can disappear.
We have learned to follow rules as the proof of our goodness and acceptance, but… The purpose of the law is to catch God’s goodness. Once goodness is caught, the law can be forgotten. Show me a person who has forgotten law. That’s the one I want to obey.
There’s a great story, apparently from Mexico, in which an old mule falls into the farmer’s dry well. Poor animal is braying down there miserably, but the farmer can’t think of a way to get it out. And the mule is old and he’d been meaning to fill in that dry well, so he decides to put the mule out of its misery, bury it, and fill in the well all at once. First shovels full hit the mule, and it’s panic-braying, but after a few more, it goes silent. Farmer looks down to see that with every shovel full of dirt that hits its back, the mule shakes it off and steps up. Shakes it off and steps up, until he simply steps up over the edge of the well itself and trots off.This story is usually used to illustrate how we can face adversity by shaking if off and stepping up. Nail hit on head. But when Jesus says the effect of our taking on God’s attributes as we grow spiritually is to become light in the world, we’re left thinking of straight rays of visible light as opposed to darkness, the absence of light. Or we may be thinking of light and dark as symbols for good versus evil—ever opposed. But ancient Hebrews understood light, nuhra, as straight lines of order, harmony, clarity function—and darkness, heshuka, as curved energies of mystery, obscurity, chaos, unfunction…not dysfunction, because darkness is not bad, just not directly usable, as we’d like.At the bottom of our wells, in the chaotic uncertainty that life always delivers, we want straight, clear lines beamed down to pull us up into the light. But that’s not how enlightenment works. Straight rays can’t bend and reach around the curved space of heshuka. Rational thinking, can’t reach around the paradox that spirit represents.Enlightenment is really endarkenment.It’s not a direct beaming down of straight rays of understanding that lights our darkness, but an indirect layering up of experience that lifts us into the light. The intense experiences of love and suffering that life shovels onto our backs, if we shake them off and step up, keep vulnerably showing up to life, enlighten by slowly removing what obscures. It’s the only way.
Dave Brisbin 8.27.23Talking to a man going through a devastating life transition. Now in his sixties, he’d always been a man who could make things happen through sheer intellect and effort: built businesses from the ground up and rose to top leadership in church and ministry. He derived his identity primarily from those two focuses—from ironclad beliefs that were both anchor and compass.But a series of disillusioning events at the church drove a deconstruction of his faith and beliefs that cast him adrift, a down-spiral that included alcohol and a bad fall that incapacitated him long enough to lose his business and nearly his family as well. Four years later, he’s saying he wishes he could go back to the days when life made sense, that he’s not contributing anymore, doesn’t feel value to life. Thinks maybe he should move to a larger city where he’d have opportunities to volunteer, maybe write a book, start a new business.I so resonate with this man.I know that true identity never comes from temporary accomplishment and recognition, but from a silent place within that no one will ever see or applaud. That experiencing this deeper identity infuses meaning from inside out, rather than trying to extract it, vampire-like, from another source. And yet I still feel the pull to do something others will see as significant, leave a legacy that will outlive, a mark on the world like carving into a tree that I was here.I know that in two generations, no one will remember me. Two generations. That’s it. Even if I leave a book or legacy, my products may be remembered, but not me. If I can’t find value right now, typing these words careless of whether anyone reads them, I won’t find it anywhere else. When Jesus says we’re blessed when we’re poor in spirit, he’s saying just that: to have an attitude of poverty even if we’re rich, admit complete dependence, realize we don’t exist individually but only in connection with each other, is the only meaning that is permanent. We’re blessed—whole and complete—the moment we can stop striving to be different to be remembered, laying back into the grateful anonymity of oneness with all that is.
Dave Brisbin 8.20.23 How do you know you’re in love? Can you explain it, define it? Control it? Oh sure, you can talk about effects on your heartrate and attitude…but define, much less control? You just know. The train leaves the station, and you’re on it. Great movie exchange between atheist and theist: atheist says she will only accept what she can prove scientifically. Theist thinks for a beat, then asks, do you love your father? Yes. Prove it.
Jesus gets this. Said such spiritual processes are like the wind. You can’t see it, only hear and see its effects. Can’t know where it’s going or coming from. Powerful, invisible, mysterious. In his usual enigmatic way as poet, Jesus is saying that love and spirit operate outside of logic and rationality. We can’t define or control anything without thinking about it, and if we’re thinking about it, we’re not in it.
The only way to fall into the complete loss of self we call love is to stop thinking, fall out of control. To be in love is to be out of control, out of our minds. Literally. The mind’s job is to separate, compare and contrast, storing that information for quick retrieval. Great for survival, but to perceive ourselves as separate from, in competition with everyone and everything else is what creates all the misery we see and experience in our lives. The deeper truth is that we don’t even exist independently as separate entities. Our only existence is in being connected to everything else, which is why it feels so good to be in love, to stand outside the mind that creates the illusion of separation.
This is basic human nature, and why Jesus’ main objective is to shock us out of our minds. Look at his words again. He’s a poet, so you won’t see it directly, but an ancient Chinese philosopher framed it perfectly, telling of a river, full of its power during a flood, emptying into the ocean and there facing the shock of its own insignificance, dependence on greater waters. Life will deliver such shocks naturally, but our minds resist the conclusion. Jesus is teaching an intentional Way, eliciting experiences that will shock us into a benevolent mental breakdown.
Dave Brisbin 8.13.23 Ever heard of the nine dots puzzle? Nine dots arranged in a square, three equal rows of three, like tic tac toe. Challenge is to connect all dots using only four straight lines and without lifting pen off paper or retracing any lines. After snapping a couple of pencils and throwing up your hands, you find the solution looks like an arrowhead with its head on a corner and wings extending beyond the box of dots. We naturally assume the solution must be contained inside the box. There is no solution inside the box.
Puzzle imitating life.
We naturally assume every challenge we face must be solved inside the box—the scope of our life experience—because we can’t conceive of anything outside our box. You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere, the philosopher said. As with the frog, the sneakiest part is: we don’t even know we have a box. It’s just life. Our lives. The laws of society, religion, physics, the dynamics of our family of origin, our traumas and training…all we know and have decided to believe, forms the walls of our box.
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that everything Jesus does in the gospels is creating leverage to get us outside our box. The good news he’s telling of a degreeless and indiscriminant love can never be found inside our box. By definition, it violates any box we can imagine. Thoughts, words, logic, experience we’d use to try to understand and express it, were born in our box and can only describe its walls, never something outside. You must be born again; sell all you possess; you can’t see the wind or know where it goes; you must hate your father and mother, children, even your own life; pick up your cross daily; drop your nets at the shore, come and see, follow me.
Jesus leaves nothing on the table in a single-minded drive to break us out of the prison of our box. Boxes limit and contain. That’s their functional beauty. But the love and life Jesus is living can’t be contained and remain themselves. Only when we’re willing to get out of control, out of our minds, will the first glimpse of vast ocean come into view. Outside the box.
Dave Brisbin 8.6.23 Thirty-some years ago, I was at retreat with a group that booked the same weekend every year. I’d just go, get a room, and participate in whatever was going on. Or not. This weekend was a large group of older men, and the retreat director, a Chinese-American Franciscan priest, was leading the session. I mention Chinese, not because he was first generation or could write beautiful Chinese script, but because he stood squarely between East and West in his approach to life and faith in a way that changed everything.
He was increasingly frustrated with this crusty old group, finally asking why they thought Jesus came to us humans. Hands went up and answers came right out of the Baltimore catechism: he came to die for our sins. The director let out a near wail of a no…clapping his big hands over his shaved head as if to hold it together. What kind of father sends his son to die? He sent him to live, to show us perfect love. He then said something like, if you are going to come here year after year and never change—next year, just stay home.
It took years for the full significance of that exchange to sink in.
About the same time, another priest introduced me to Brennan Manning’s new book, The Ragamuffin Gospel. Here was another Franciscan, now lapsed and married, a struggling alcoholic writing about grace and love in a way I’d never heard or experienced. Brennan was open about the shame he collected as an abused child, his drinking, failings, inconsistencies, and yet he never ceased to see himself as God’s beloved.
All these years later, if I were to raise my hand, I’d say, Jesus didn’t come to save us from our sins. He came to save us from our shame.
Saving from sins is legal, a transaction that leaves us unchanged. Saving from shame is relational, the experience of a love we can never lose. It’s a longer way home, but to lose shame is to lose the fear of disconnection that makes all our sinful behavior necessary. Only unlosable love overcomes fear. To know we’re beloved not because we’re lovable, but because we keep showing up to Unlosable Love is all the salvation we’ll ever get. Or need.
Dave Brisbin 7.30.23 Fasting is the body’s natural reaction to loss and longing. Have you ever thought of it that way? When you’re grieving a loss, longing for the return of that loss, you’re probably not thinking about food. Associated with grief and heightened awareness, ritualized for religious purposes, fasting has always been with us. Ancient Jews ritually fasted twice a week personally, four times a year nationally, and to obtain or avoid things longed for or feared. In other words, fasting is not associated with celebration.
When Jesus is criticized for not making his followers fast, he replies that they can’t fast as long as the bridegroom is with them. Any Jew hearing that response would instantly know he’s talking about the Jewish wedding tradition, a seven day festival where loss and longing are held at bay for that precious week, celebrating with groom and bride. This little saying gives us a window on Jesus, how he views life—always celebrating, laughing, eating, drinking, experiencing abundance rather than loss, enoughness rather than longing.
Then in a seeming non sequitur, Jesus pivots and says no one puts an unshrunk patch on an old garment. First time you wash it, the patch will shrink and make a bigger tear. And no one puts new wine in old wineskins. New wine was not yet fermented, and wineskins were literal animal skins or bladders that could stretch with the fermentation unless they had already been stretched before, bursting and losing everything. Jesus is hammering right on the same point.
The old garment and wineskins represent a static, unyielding mindset stuck on the humorless, legal severity of working to become worthy of connection, on loss and longing, the fear of disconnection. New wine and unshrunk cloth represent the flow of changing circumstance, the willingness to flow with it, bubbling outward with new life and growth. Only minds free to be herenow, rooted in tradition as a tool for guidance, not a prison cell, can see their connection everywhere, celebrate all the moments of life: the times of fasting, those when the bridegroom is still present, and all the little ones in between.
Dave Brisbin 7.23.23 Over sixteen years at theeffect, we’ve only had to ask two people to leave a gathering. We want everyone who wants to be with us to be with us, unless they can’t maintain themselves enough to allow others to have their own experiences. Years ago a woman living on the streets would come on Sundays from time to time, usually under the influence. We and the donuts didn’t mind, until one Sunday she was acting so violently, we had to escort her out. But at the end of the gathering as we were all mingling, she came back and made a beeline for me.
I stiffened, wondering what was coming—may have actually taken a step back, but gave her direct eye contact, listening while she speed-talked about things I can’t remember. On full alert, I was ready for anything, all sensors tuned to signs of distress, but the more she talked, the more it seemed her difficult moment had passed. Then she stopped, and after a beat said, I guess I just need a hug. Didn’t see that coming, hope I had the presence of mind to smile, sure that I hesitated, but moved in for the embrace.
You know about first hugs…head and shoulders, arms and hands. I was still thinking through it all, waited what seemed right number of seconds, then relaxed my grip to back away. She maintained pressure, not letting go. Oh, ok…I re-engaged and waited what again seemed right lapse of time, relaxed, but she still held on, saying in my ear but not necessarily to me: sometimes it’s hard to get a good hug. The human condition in eight words. And as my humanity recognized hers, all the categories in which I’d placed her, all my interior boundaries, my tension, fell to the floor. I reeled her back in and held on until I finally felt her relax.
Jesus always seems out of order. Touches a leper and calls a paralytic his son before healing them. Loves before forgiveness. For Jesus, even when our need is lowered through a hole in the roof, the touch and forgiveness of family are the healing itself. Physical healing is almost an afterthought. And for all our focus on miracles, I think Jesus is trying to redirect us. Get us to see that sometimes a good hug is hard to find.
Dave Brisbin 7.16.23 Thirty years ago, three men, Catholic priests, gave me some of their time, became key figures, teachers in my life. I didn’t see it then—it takes time to see trajectories being established, the paths that remain. One of the three I only met once, but I still remember his name and the names on all the book covers he pointed out at the bookstore that afternoon. The other two I knew longer, a period of years. They counseled me and challenged me and then they were gone. I always thought we’d reconnect, but two of them died years ago, and we never did.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears. They came into my life exactly when I was ready to receive them, gave me what they had become, and though they left again before I was ready, I still remember their names.
The hardest part of being a pastor is watching people go. Letting those who have become friends go their way, sometimes never knowing if you really helped, never hearing the rest of the story. But like teachers and parents, for most of the relationships we engage, at some point the nest empties. Life takes them in and out of focus and proximity. We assume and want to believe that all our relationships will last a lifetime, but whether they do or not, they are only ever experienced as moments of connection.
I’ve looked at life from both sides now. And though it can still hurt, I can finally see the way of it, the necessity of it. When we’re ready, a person appears, and we let down our defenses and let them in…show up, break boundaries, connect, give all we’ve become, and when it’s time, let go. If we can’t let go, the strings attached show us how it was much more about meeting our own needs than a gift freely given, the simple flow of who we’d become.
Jesus healed ten lepers one day. Sent them off to the temple to be restored to their families. Only one came back to thank him. That didn’t stop Jesus from doing the very same thing the very next day. Our moments of connection define us. There is no outcome or legacy, no rest of the story. Just the willingness to break a boundary and make all you’ve become available to whomever you’re with.
Dave Brisbin 7.9.23 One of the rallying cries of the Protestant Reformation five hundred years ago was “sola scriptura,” which means scripture alone reveals God’s word to humankind. For any Christian who holds the bible in such esteem, what they believe about the book is more predictive of their thought, behavior, and emotion than what they believe about God. If the book is the supreme authority revealing God’s nature and relationship with us, then how we interpret the printed word dictates how we hear God’s word. Unless…
The Greek of the New Testament uses two different words we translate as word. The most common one is logos, which signifies the constancy of the written word: the underlying meaning, reason, intent behind it. The other, lesser known and less used, is rhema—the spoken word, a call, the action of uttering a thing said. It is always immediate, present, personal, and spoken now. Plato used rhema as the verb/action that drives the logos, noun/proposition, into being. Rhema is the living voice of God, the call that requires a response.
In Luke 5, Jesus is beset by such a large crowd at the shore of the Galilean sea, that he climbs into Peter’s boat, already pulled ashore for the day, and asks Peter to put out a little way from the land. Sitting in the boat, he teaches his word to the people on the shore and then tells Peter to put out into deeper water for a catch. Peter resists at first, saying they were fishing all night and caught nothing, but then stops, takes a breath, and says, but upon your word, we go. The word heard by the people sitting safely on the shore was logos. The word Peter hears, the call to the risk of deeper water and a miracle breakthrough, was rhema.
We tend to think in terms of sola—this or that alone. Both logos and rhema are necessary for moving from hearing to listening, passivity to action, understanding to knowing. Logos gives us a paradigm, belief enough to put out a little way from the shore, gain the confidence for something more. Logos is not the final answer. It’s only mind deep, but prepares us to hear rhema, the call to put out to deeper water and drive logos into being.
Dave Brisbin 7.2.23 The recent film Top Gun: Maverick, was hugely successful, with many fans saying, “they don’t make movies like this anymore.” Maverick feels like a throwback to Hollywood’s Golden Age, and it is. It’s depiction of clear heroes and villains, unapologetic respect for country, military, staunch individualism, are all marks of the Modern age that began around the year 1500 and is characterized by reason, science, capitalism, and the morality of individual and human rights. But since the end of WWII, we’ve been living in an increasingly Postmodern world that has questioned and deconstructed Modern values, accounting for most of the left-right culture wars we now face.
For all the valid points Postmodernism makes, it’s fatal flaw is that we can’t live life as a negative. We can’t say there’s no meaning here and live that way indefinitely. Humans need meaning, and since the turn of the 21st century, a new movement has been gaining traction that some are calling Metamodern—meta: beyond, transcend—that is attempting to essentially fuse Modern and Postmodern into a blend that finds meaning again in an increasingly confusing and meaningless world.
These are cultural revolutions, and like any revolution, make things worse before any possibility of better. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we shouldn’t enter revolution lightly, but when we have suffered all we can with no hope of relief, revolution is the only course left. The shape of such exterior, macro revolutions mirror our own interior, micro revolutions. The search for meaning is a series of revolutions we wage as the meaning we have accepted is challenged by the traumas and losses we experience. Each loss creates a personal, postmodern reaction that must be replaced by some metamodern return to more expansive meaning.
It’s a relief to fall back into the arms of Maverick, return to familiar forms of meaning, but truth is always messier than we’d like. We can’t unsee, unfeel the losses we have sustained, so when we’ve suffered all we can suffer with too-small meaning, we become entirely ready to engage our next interior revolution.
Dave Brisbin 6.25.23 Heard of an elevator speech? You get on an elevator with someone of influence who wants to know what you do. Could you tell them before the doors open again? Thirty seconds to get across mission, vision, meaning, purpose, maybe even a bit of identity. Three or four sentences to be clear, concise, compelling. Obviously, this is a must for sales and marketing, but applies to anything we do with intention or passion. Including our spiritual practice…especially spiritual practice.
If we can’t express the crux and intent of our spirituality in one sentence, in one word, it’s likely we’re not experiencing it on a daily basis.
Jesus understood this. So did Br. Lawrence, a 17th century French monk who said that his spiritual life was all about presence, that the practice of the presence of God is the spiritual life itself. One word, one sentence…they ordered his life and experience. Jesus said that his Way to the Father was all about love, to seek first the Kingdom of God, and all else would be added. Different? What is love without presence that unites love with beloved? And how can presence be experienced without expressing love in its purest form—identification with the beloved? And what is Kingdom but the quality of life when love as presence has become the basis of who we are?
Br. Lawrence and Jesus are saying exactly the same thing with different elevator speeches tuned to their own audiences and cultures. And they are saying it today. Their today, our today. Always today, because once you’ve experienced presence, you know it can only exist today, and can only be expressed in the language of today. All the sayings, stories, teachings that Jesus voices are active, present, and radically immediate. There is no escaping todayness in his elevator.
But today is terrifying. No wiggle room. Today demands a choice, now. Will we “enter” the presence of Kingdom today, this moment, or not? Much more comfortable to imagine truth out there somewhere distant, someday after tomorrow. But all the truth that matters is right here, within us, within our families, friendships, communities. Our presence makes it so. Today.
Dave Brisbin 6.18.23 Father’s Day One of the greatest science fiction novels ever, Dune, finally made into a decent movie last year, takes us to a planet that is entirely desert. Sand dunes encircle the globe like an ocean punctuated by islands of scorched rock, the only refuge against the immense sandworms that swim the dunes like leviathan. In such a world, the culture, religion worldview, behavior, discipline of the native people—every detail of daily life, every ritual and concern—revolves around the scarcity of water, their lifesource.
As both principle and metaphor, the world of Dune describes us humans on any world at any time. Whatever we experience or perceive as scarce becomes the center of our concern. We wrap our time, attention, effort, religion, culture, hopes, and dreams around it. Whether gold or oil, fame or power, youth, health, wealth, it becomes an object of worship and center of attention. But back on Dune, an outworlder tells a group of natives that where she was born, water fell from the sky, ran in wide rivers, vast oceans… There is an audible gasp from the people, sighs, awe at such possibility.
We also live a desert mentality of scarcity, competition, rationing, thirst, fear. Our experience and culture have installed this worldview, and our churches have reinforced it, applied it to God. We imagine God’s love and acceptance as scarce—withheld and elusive—and we obsess over performing to acquire them, aim religion and ritual at convincing God to bestow them. What if we stepped off a starship, onto a planet where God’s love fell from the sky?
Jesus is trying to show us that we don’t need a starship. Such a planet is already ours, and scarce is not a word in Jesus’ vocabulary. His God is insanely extravagant, abundant beyond belief with trillions of stars in trillions of galaxies, tethering trillions of planets with trillions of life forms in his back pocket. All of them good in God’s eyes, swimming in a love that falls from the sky. Squinting through the downpour, Jesus wonders when we will become willing to drop the nets of our performance and sell the possession of any worldview that imagines otherwise.
Dave Brisbin 6.11.23 Can you state your spiritual journey, the whole of your search for meaning, in just one sentence? Br. Lawrence, a 17th century French monk, did just that: The presence of God is what the spiritual life is all about, and by practicing it, one becomes spiritual. Of course he was only channeling Jesus: Seek first the Kingdom, and all else is added. God is unity, oneness; kingdom is being one with God and all God has touched—being present to Presence. Both sentences are one: practice presence, get it all.
Jesus loved one sentence, one-liners. Used them to describe what it meant to practice presence: unless we become little children we can’t enter kingdom; unless we exceed the righteousness of the law; unless we are born again, sell everything we own, lose our lives, deny ourselves, we can’t experience that pure connection. All these point at letting go of rational understanding in favor of something indefinable, uncontrollable—spirit experienced like wind, the meaning of spirituality itself invisibly breathing by.
I read an article by a long term care chaplain who over the years has sat with over five hundred people at the end of their lives. And what she learned was that “there are many instances when meaning has no truth or value or place in reality.” That a rational expression of meaning “breaks down precisely at the juncture of crisis and death.” That to simply listen, to “sit with the reality of the unknown…has plunged me into depths I cannot always fathom…caused me to see beyond words and action. There is, in truth, no separateness, for all is one, deeply and profoundly one, interdependent and grounded in oneness.”
Rational meaning breaks down, as all physical systems do, at the point of transcendence, just when we imagine we need it most. At the extremes of life, the junctures of crisis and death when meaning is most intense, it becomes inexpressible, invisible. We can assign words in retrospect, but at the moment we experience spiritual meaning, words are a distraction at best, an insult if spoken. All we can do is be present. Wordlessly present. Do that, get it all.
We can fit that in one sentence.
Dave Brisbin 6.4.23 It can be jarring, offensive to talk about Jesus having to learn and grow in wisdom…even more to think of him working through his own human obsessive-compulsive drives to a place of presence, balance, emotional regulation. Though we were taught, at least implicitly, a fully self-aware Jesus lying in the manger, the gospels tell a very different story. That Jesus was human in every way that we are, had to work through every development we all do. No shortcuts.
When the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, he was being called to a hero’s journey, the personal growth cycle always initiated by loss or insight stark enough to devastate our self-narrative, our view of the world as we know it. We don’t have to answer this call—most of us don’t the first dozen or so times. Some never do. To answer the call is to leave our old, too-small world and security behind to face a new world we know nothing of, full of tasks we don’t know how to complete. But if we persevere and complete the cycle, we return where we started with interior gifts for those willing to receive.
Jesus answers his call and puts down the three symbolic “temptations” of our human need to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular, our drives for security and survival, power and control, affection and esteem. He finds his meaning and purpose in his identity with his Father who he can now call Abba out of intimate familiarity. He is so transformed by this journey, that his hometown neighbors who watched him grow up are astonished. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? But one hero’s gift is the next person’s call to their own journey, a challenge to their own narrative. For those not yet ready, not only unwelcome, but a threat to oppose. Violently.
Jesus’ hero-gift, gospel, declaration of hope to the brokenhearted, is the truth that we are all as loved, free, forgiven as we want to be. Right now. Today. But today is terrifying for those unready to leave their nets at the shore. Today demands decision, challenges the security of our narrative. Jesus learned that the waiting is over, everything we need is already here. Just need to answer the call to make it so.
Dave Brisbin 5.28.23 PentecostJesus heals two blind men with spit, and there’s been endless speculation why Jesus would use such a strange way to heal. Passing a man born blind on the Sabbath, Jesus spits on the ground, kneads the dirt into mud, applies it to the man’s eyes, and tells him to go wash. Why the spit and dirt? To heal with a simple word, would not break the unwritten rules prohibiting work on the Sabbath as taught and enforced by the Pharisees. But kneading the saliva and dirt did. Jesus is going out of his way to put mud in the eye of these rules that had grown exponentially to such a burden on the people as to subvert the intent of the written Law. To imply that God was just about obedience to an inflexible system of ritual justification, obliterated the degreeless love that Jesus represented.Jesus heals the second blind man by spitting directly on his eyes. At first, the man can only see dimly, blurry people walking around like trees. Jesus lays hands on him again, and full sight is restored. In Jewish culture, to spit in a person’s face was an ultimate insult, complete rejection—yet only after this insult and a second laying of hands is the man fully healed. This story is followed by another in which Jesus tells his followers that he will be rejected, humiliated, killed, then will rise again. That if they intend to follow him, they will also have to take up their crosses and lose their lives before they find them. The two stories are meant to be understood together. Jesus was spat upon, had to descend, lose everything it meant to be himself before rising to new life. We all must endure the same loss before rising to the Pentecost moment when we finally see clearly that we’re healed. Jesus’ followers saw him only dimly, clinging to their beliefs about law and justice restored when Jesus and they would rise to power. But Jesus is showing that obedience as a form of control is not enough. Only in the humiliating loss of all sense of personal power can we clearly see the truth of a love that obliterates law.
Dave Brisbin 5.21.23Last week someone asked how I would reimagine church. What would I change? We had just passed our 16th anniversary as a church—I said that’s exactly what we did sixteen years ago. We were a subversive lot back then, wanted to make a big statement about our differences. I was twenty years into study of Jesus from a Hebrew/Aramaic perspective and a personal contemplative journey. Our leadership group had formed around those principles, so we wanted our statement centered on those differences.We didn’t want to call ourselves Christian or church; those terms were loaded, descriptive of a different worldview. We wanted to de-emphasize theology in favor of personal experience in contemplative practice, using theology to limit our error rather than make absolute statements—embrace the uncertainty, paradox of this life. We wanted our gatherings (not services) to be EPIC—experiential, participatory, image-based, communal. We experimented. We started as a recovery church that also worshipped together, working with addicts and alcoholics, trying to stand the model of community church on its head. We saw ourselves chasing the effect of God’s love on our daily lives rather than a theological cause, answering both the necessary steps of early recovery and Jesus’ Aramaic Way. We saw everyone as recovering from something.Honestly, we’ve stayed true to those principles, but the reality of a generation of community life has changed us. The losses we’ve sustained, the deaths, overdoses, disagreements, rejections—but also the miracles, healings, recovery, friendships. What were we saying yes to sixteen years ago when we reimagined?We said yes to having everything we thought we knew about ourselves, life, reimagined church and our ability to build it, challenged, dissolved. Loss of certainty, broken hearts, shattered faith. But as we kept showing up, what grew back after the wildfires was recovery. Miracles we never saw coming. We said yes to life unredacted, unadorned, unclothed. Would I say yes all over again? In a heartbeat.
Dave Brisbin 5.14.23Patriarchal and paternal. Two words descending from the Latin word pater/father, but a patriarchal system is one that is male dominated and a paternal system is one where leadership—male or female—restricts the autonomy of people supposedly for their own good. Our country began shamefully patriarchal but not paternal—the states jealously guarded their freedoms. Today we’re much less patriarchal but more and more paternal, losing freedom in the name of the common good. Whether you feel this is appropriate is not so much the point on Mother’s Day as the role women are playing. The assumption has always been that if women were in charge of things, there’d be more balance, and the world wouldn’t be such a mess. But as women take more seats of power, is anything really changing, or does power make men and women look the same? Is matriarchy as toxic as patriarchy and equally paternal? As a model of balance, the perfect parent/government, we certainly should be able to point to God. But is God just another patriarchy? In scripture, God is referred to as male by name and pronoun, but how is “he” portrayed? Ruach, malkutha, shekinah, hockhmah—spirit, kingdom, presence, wisdom—are all feminine Hebrew nouns, so in spirit, presence, wisdom, God is “she,” and kingdom is queendom. God is consistently depicted as a mother birthing, caressing, and suckling her children. Jesus calls God abba, a child’s word conveying an intimacy first experienced as emma/mother, and he leads every personal encounter with a mother’s acceptance before the teaching of father.Making our government and churches more equitable means more than the number of seats occupied by men and women. The Hebrew mind couldn’t conceive of God apart from a perfect balance of father and mother—masculine and feminine, justice and mercy, knowledge and wisdom, logic and intuition, performance and acceptance, accomplishment and intimacy. Until we meet Mother God ourselves, we’ll never know Father God. Until we who occupy seats of power become more perfect parents, our institutions will remain toxic and paternal, whether patriarchal, matriarchal, or anywhere in between.
Dave Brisbin 5.7.23A man has been ill for thirty-eight years. Ill enough that he’s spent all those years lying by a public pool begging for a living and waiting for a healing. Jesus comes by and asks him if he wishes to be well. After thirty-eight years, that should be insulting. The biggest no-brainer of all time. And yet, the man can’t simply say yes, exclamation point. He complains there is no one to help him get into the pool when the healing waters stir. But that’s not what Jesus asked.What exactly did Jesus ask? In Aramaic, it would be something like tsaveh d’ethelem. Tsaveh is a form of tsevyana, the word we translate as will, but in the sense of desire, delight, pleasure, deepest purpose. Ethelem is complete wellness, wholeness, and health. Paul uses the word to denote sound doctrine, so we could say integrated—sound mind and body—just as shalom (peace) is really the greatest amount of connection, health, prosperity. Jesus’ question is all-encompassing: is your deepest purpose and desire to be whole, integrated, living in shalom, in kingdom?These ancients viewed illness not as a medical problem, but the tragedy of being taken out of the flow of day-to-day life, to lose social standing and interaction with family, friends, neighbors, commerce. To be healed was to be restored to community, everything that gives meaning to life. Jesus knows this man is sick, not just physically, but spiritually, emotionally, relationally. When he can’t simply say yes to wholeness, we all know he is steeped in a victim mentality that keeps him from the relationships that are healing and forgiveness, restoration to all that life offers.Jesus heals the man anyway, but he doesn’t even ask his name or look for him afterwards to thank or follow. The deeper sickness remains. Jesus finds him later and tells him now that he’s well, don’t sin anymore so nothing worse happens. Jesus isn’t promising more disease as punishment, but making a central point. Sin isn’t unlawfulness to be punished…sin is disconnection itself. The man is physically healed, but more importantly has been given a chance for new relationship. Will he take it? Will we?
Dave Brisbin 4.30.23It’s ironic that Jesus’ primary teaching, the one that defines his ministry and on which he spends nearly all his time, is the one we most misunderstand. Jesus is always talking about entering Kingdom, and of course we’re thinking about entering Heaven. Entering some Place. Or Space.Entering kingdom is a metaphor. A physical image for a spiritual realignment. There is no place or space to kingdom. We don’t enter it. We become it. Pointing at the children Jesus’ friends were shooing away, Jesus instructed to let them through, for such as these are kingdom. The littlest ones, whose egos have not yet formed, are kingdom—have not yet learned not to be kingdom so have no need to re-become it.Kingdom is a shift in identity. Or better, kingdom is the realization of our true identity, the recapturing of who we really are—were at the beginning and still are underneath. The children running at our feet are kingdom because they haven’t yet learned to believe they are not. But it won’t be long before their minds take hold, telling them they must think about who they are, to hold that thought and defend it as they work to make it so. Whatever we think we are nothing without, lost without, is what we identify with. But anything we can lose is not who we are, and everything we think, will eventually be lost.The freedom of the truth Jesus offers is that who we really are can never be lost. Ever. Not even in death. Any identity imagined as separate from any other identity, God’s identity, is illusion, so to strip the illusion is to see that we and the Father are one: true identity. Jesus’ Way is relinquishing everything that can be relinquished until only that which can’t be relinquished remains. The point of any spiritual journey is to arrive at the ground of this irreducible presence, an identity that can’t be lost, but costs us everything to which we cling.The first responders to a message like this are those who are already close to the ground. We call them humble. Jesus calls them children, for such as they are kingdom.
Vernon Porter 4.23.23Vernon Porter takes the pulpit to give us a good look at God's love from another perspective. That we can't outrun God's goodness no matter what happens, however traumatic or how we feel about it. That God's love is always present, and because of the peculiar nature of perfect love, we are all God's favorite kid. Every single one of us.
Dave Brisbin 4.16.23Met a prison chaplain who told me about needing to notify an inmate that his father had died, but when he called the inmate to his office, they were in count. Prisons count multiple times a day—inmates go to their cells and stand at their bunks until the count clears. Everything stops. No one moves. I realized we’d been in count for Lent, interiorly standing at our bunks, stopping distractions, counting out 40 days preparing for Easter. But by then, we were already in count again. Jews begin counting days from the second day of Passover through seven weeks of seven, 49 days, with the fiftieth day marking the Feast of Weeks. These two festivals mark first the physical liberation of the people from Egypt and then their spiritual liberation as they received the Law, establishing a new relationship with God. A necessary gap, a period of adjustment lies between the two liberations—a gradual graduation from the comforting but limiting reliance on physical connection to the limitless expanse of pure spirit.Christian tradition overlays on this structure. Begins counting seven weeks of seven on Easter Sunday, and after counting to 49, the fiftieth day is Pentecost—the day that Jesus’ first followers were freed from the mental certainty of their physical relationship with Jesus to the full realization of their relationship with unseen God. Just as Jesus told Nicodemus that we all must be born of both water and spirit in order to see the Kingdom of God, the two births are separated by a gap, a period of adjusting to a new, non-physical, non-rational relationship with a God who like the wind, can’t be pinned down. This is where we are now. In count between Easter and Pentecost.The way to Pentecost begins at Calvary, the death of our physical certainty and reliance on rational thought. As we move through our grief over that loss, we begin to recognize that God didn’t die with our certainty, but still lives in the details of our daily lives in ways we hadn’t considered. And with that awareness, we’re in count to our Pentecost moment, the second liberation and birth, our embrace of pure spirit in physical life.
Dave Brisbin 4.9.23What is the meaning of the Resurrection? Christians are all over the map, fighting and debating not so much that Jesus is risen and still lives, but how and for what purpose. Ultimately, such questions are a matter of faith, but where can we look for guidance? Scripture, of course. The gospels show us where to look, what’s important to see. While we focus on the supernatural miracle, fighting over what can never be proven historically, the gospels focus on the effect the Resurrection had on Jesus’ first followers—not the Resurrection event itself.This is a huge distinction. The Resurrection happens offstage, and the story picks up afterward, following the tiny, unspectacular reactions of a few of Jesus’ closest friends. It tells us not to look at the miracle so much as how the miracle affects our own lives. The meaningful question isn’t whether or how we believe in the miracle, but what difference it makes that we believe. What can the reactions of Jesus’ friends teach us about that difference?Not one of Jesus’ followers recognizes him post-Resurrection. They interact with him, sometimes for hours, as if with a stranger until an intimate and familiar gesture breaks the spell. We humans only know a person after experiencing intimate details over time, and Jesus’ friends had to re-experience that intimacy to prove his identity, a process of becoming ready to see a Jesus both intimately familiar and yet wildly changed. Same with us. The meaning of Resurrection is not out there in history or theological doctrines, but within us, in the most intimate details of our lives and relationships.When the women come to the empty tomb to anoint Jesus’ body, they are asked why they seek the living among the dead. Again scripture is telling us where to look. Set beliefs are snapshots—static, motionless, dead—no longer among the living. If we keep the meaning of Resurrection in our thoughts alone, Jesus is not there. Like ruha—spirit, breath, wind—Jesus is always in motion, our motion. Among the living…that’s us, the living. We find the risen Lord in each face and embrace, every moment of our lives. Or not at all.
Dave Brisbin 4.2.23Most of counseling is listening. Listening to stories that give you a snapshot of a person’s life at the moment, backstory, symptoms they are suffering, and some of the stressors causing the symptoms. But only some. The stressors we can self-identify are the ones we can see outside of ourselves—circumstances, events, relationships that are creating pressure or pain. When a person says they have no idea why they are feeling the way they do or their feelings are far too intense for the stressors they are experiencing, there are stressors inside themselves where they can’t be seen.These inside, “endogenous” stressors lie in the unconscious as core beliefs about ourselves and life, programs for happiness and survival put in place unconsciously as necessary reactions to outside, “exogenous” stressors experienced from earliest childhood. These core beliefs define our reality for us in ways we’re not aware. They force us to live in a world that no longer exists with fears no longer real, now creating or exaggerating fears that create obsessive thought and compulsive behavior patterns that create disruption in relationships that create more external stressors. We can only see the world our unconscious defines for us, not free to live our moments as they really are.We say Jesus saves, but we imagine he saves exogenously—fixing outside stressors and circumstances, paving the way for heaven. But looking closely at his teaching, Jesus saves endogenously—showing us how to clear our way of seeing, clear out limiting beliefs that block us from seeing that heaven is already here, as close as our ability to be present. He said that the eye is the lamp of the body and when our eye is clear, our body is full of light. But when our eye is bad, we are full of darkness. Translated back to Aramaic, eye/aina is much more than eyesight—it is the way we see: our beliefs and attitudes, our entire worldview…all that endogenous programming.Following Jesus’ Way of truth clears up the way we see life by stripping down our deepest, earliest beliefs. The ones that block our view of the truth that makes us free.
Dave Brisbin 3.26.23Had an intense conversation with a child specialist at the hospital grieving her friend, a nurse on the floor who died that morning. Cancer. She was reeling from her friend’s death, and we talked through her feelings and regrets—the sadness, numbness, disbelief, inability to imagine that she’d never see her again. The regret that she didn’t reach out more, even though she knew the nurse would only minimize everything, refuse any help. Caught between should-haves and respecting an intense need for privacy in her friend.Then almost incidentally, she said losing her friend had intensified her fear of death. That she’s always been afraid of death, but today was off the charts. She said it almost casually, the way we’d say we don’t like broccoli or baseball. A simple, known fact of her life that she’d come to accept. My ears went into overdrive. I asked why she feared death so intensely, but she couldn’t tell me, just has as long as she could remember. Was it a fear of hell or judgment in a religious sense? No, more just the thought of not being here anymore. Being anywhere. She was vaguely Christian, believed in God, but was no longer sure there was anything after this. Not being. With her family, here, in life.She hadn’t heard of contemplative prayer. I told her it was a stepping away from all thoughts, words, feelings, everything you imagine you are, to experience a deeper self that still remains. At peak moments in her life—the birth of her sons, a first kiss, a sunset—she had experienced moments so intense they blew out her thoughts like a candle. We never feel more alive than at such moments, more fulfilled, connected, loved.To step out of our minds is to step into the reality of love. Why do we assume death is any different? Irony is, we live for the moments we step out of our minds, yet fear the moment we step completely out of ourselves. But if we’re present enough, life and prayer can teach us there is connection that can’t be contained in our minds, but is always waiting for the moment we step out of ourselves. Our minds can’t know what that will be like. Our deepest selves know already.
Dave Brisbin 3.19.23This is the third in a series of Sunday sessions of conversations. After seven Sundays working on a Red Letter Study—the direct sayings and teachings of Jesus from a first century Hebrew/Aramaic perspective—questions, concerns, and resistances were surfacing from people in our community. It seemed a good moment to stop presenting new material and take some time to consolidate and clarify the material we’ve been processing these past two months, so this Sunday, we held a third live question and answer session in place of a message/teaching to see what was on people’s minds. This is not a “bible answer man” scenario carrying the implication that there is one “right” way to interpret the Bible and one “right” Christian doctrine and understanding of that doctrine that makes everyone and everything else wrong. This is meant to be a real conversation about confusing spiritual and doctrinal issues that impact us on a daily basis, trying to clarify the reconstruction of Jesus’ Aramaic meaning being discussed at theeffect, and to remove as many obstacles as possible to each person’s ability to engage their own journey to transformative truth.When it comes to spiritual matters, all we can ever do is tell each other what we are convinced of and the reasons and justifications for those convictions. With no objective certainty in spiritual matters, the process of searching for truth itself brings increasing personal conviction that metastasizes as trust. Trust without certainty is a good definition of faith, because conviction-become-trust is what allows us to risk action in the presence of doubt. And sharing our journeys and convictions helps us confront uncertainty and move past it. That’s the point of having these Conversations, and the questions and comments this Sunday went far beyond the Red Letter material to issues that stand right at the heart of the Christian tradition. We still may have more to discuss, so we will finish up next Sunday, and see how much deeper we can dig.
Dave Brisbin 3.12.23This is the second in what will be three Sunday sessions of conversations. After seven Sundays working on a Red Letter Study—the direct sayings and teachings of Jesus from a first century Hebrew/Aramaic perspective—questions, concerns, and resistances were surfacing from people in our community. It seemed a good moment to stop presenting new material and take some time to consolidate and clarify the material we’ve been processing these past two months, so this Sunday, we held a second live question and answer session in place of a message/teaching to see what was on people’s minds. Right off the bat, this is not a “bible answer man” scenario carrying the implication that there is one “right” way to interpret the Bible and one “right” Christian doctrine and understanding of that doctrine that makes everyone and everything else wrong. This is meant to be a real conversation about confusing spiritual and doctrinal issues that impact us on a daily basis, to at least clarify the reconstruction of Jesus’ Aramaic meaning being discussed at theeffect, and to remove as many obstacles as possible to each person’s ability to engage their own journey to transformative truth.When it comes to spiritual matters, all we can ever do is tell each other what we are convinced of and the reasons and justifications for those convictions. There is no objective certainty in spiritual matters, but the process of searching for truth brings increasing personal conviction that metastasizes as trust. Trust without certainty is a pretty good definition of faith, because conviction-become-trust is what allows us to risk action in the presence of doubt. And sharing our journeys and convictions helps us confront uncertainty and move past it. That’s point of having these Conversations, and the questions and comments this Sunday went far beyond the Red Letter material to issues that stand right at the heart of the Christian faith tradition. We realized we still have more to discuss, so we will repeat the same format again next Sunday, and see how much deeper we can dig.
Dave Brisbin 3.5.23After seven Sundays working on a Red Letter Study—the direct sayings and teachings of Jesus from a first century Hebrew/Aramaic perspective—questions, concerns, and resistances were surfacing from people in our community. It seemed a good moment to stop presenting new material and take some time to consolidate and clarify the material we’ve been processing these past two months, so this Sunday, we held a live question and answer session in place of a message/teaching to see what was on people’s minds. Right off the bat, this is not a “bible answer man” scenario carrying the implication that there is one “right” way to interpret the Bible and one “right” Christian doctrine and understanding of that doctrine that makes everyone and everything else wrong. This is meant to be a real conversation about confusing spiritual and doctrinal issues that impact us on a daily basis, to at least clarify the reconstruction of Jesus’ Aramaic meaning being discussed at theeffect, and to remove as many obstacles as possible to each person’s ability to engage their own journey to transformative truth.When it comes to spiritual matters, all we can ever do is tell each other what we are convinced of and the reasons and justifications for those convictions. There is no objective certainty in spiritual matters, but the process of searching for truth brings increasing personal conviction that metastasizes as trust. Trust without certainty is a pretty good definition of faith, because conviction-become-trust is what allows us to risk action in the presence of doubt. And sharing our journeys and convictions helps us confront uncertainty and move past it. That’s point of having these Conversations, and the questions and comments this Sunday went far beyond the Red Letter material to issues that stand right at the heart of the Christian faith tradition. We barely scratched the surface, so we will repeat the same format next Sunday, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Dave Brisbin 2.26.23I’ve spent the past twenty-five years trying to understand, live, and teach the message of Jesus from an Eastern, Hebrew perspective. Unfortunately not always in that order—it’s still a work in progress that has created reactions ranging from relief to consternation to outright hostility, which has always amazed me considering the heart of the matter of Jesus’ message that I have been trying to convey.Can I be certain that the reconstruction of Jesus’ Aramaic message I’ve been teaching is “right?” Matches Jesus’ original intent? Of course not. And neither can anyone else. But a growing chorus of scholars are leading in this direction, and more importantly, in any language, any time, Jesus is all about love. That much is obvious. Not a fuzzy, sentimental love, but a love that is absolute, muscular, will take us to shocking places if we are willing to follow to its radical conclusion.The heart of the matter for Jesus is that if God is love, and that love is perfectly indiscriminate, falling on everyone equally, then it can never be even a little bit performance-based. You can’t be a little bit pregnant: if there remains the tiniest bit of performance-based thinking, that we need to earn the right to God’s love, we will always be wondering if we have, always living in the fear that we are ultimately alone. Jesus’ descending way is the only way to the Father because it produces the experience of the truth that makes us free…of the wondering.The sum of our life experience creates unconscious beliefs that take us one of two directions: to deeply believe that we are worthy of connection and love or not—on a sliding scale of course. But whatever side of that divide our beliefs fall determine whether we can afford the risk of becoming vulnerable enough to live connected to others and ultimately God. And that is the heart of the matter. To engage the only way, the descent that strips off the sum of all our beliefs, unconscious and conscious, so we can again see the truth: we are already worthy and in possession of all the acceptance and connection, the love that we haven’t earned. And never could.
Dave Brisbin 2.19.23If you had a private audience with the Pope—or insert your most revered religious figure here—what would you say? Is there a question you always wanted to ask, felt their perspective would be unique? Now what if you had a private moment with Jesus? All his attention fixed on you alone. How would you use that time? What would you want to know? Could you boil it all down to one burning question?Both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman had just such a moment with Jesus. Nicodemus comes by night to avoid being seen. The Samaritan woman comes to the well at noon, the hottest part of the day, to avoid seeing others. Fear and shame conspire to place them completely alone with Jesus for a precious moment. The gospels don’t record their initial questions, but there is a third questioner who we can imagine speaks for them. And for us. What must I do to obtain eternal life? The rich, young ruler is asking Jesus for life that is eternally alive, fresh, fulfilling, abundant in meaning and purpose. Isn’t that the question? The one you would ask as well?Each of these three questioners has an identity, a goal, and a compulsion that drive them, as do we. Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel, his goal is knowledge, and his compulsion is clarity. The young man is a person of authority whose goal is having a foolproof plan, and his compulsion is control. The woman is a Samaritan whose goal is connection, but her compulsion is codependence, that any relationship is better than none. Jesus can’t answer their questions until their underlying compulsions are cleared. Clarity, control, codependence. Their compulsive solutions to life are the evergreen problem, blockages to eternal life.Carl Jung said that until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. Our compulsions are not conscious, but they ensure our conscious questions will always miss the point. Jesus never answers such questions, but redirects us to begin making the unconscious conscious, to drop or sell what blocks our view of the truth that is always the answer we seek—regardless of the question our compulsions direct us to ask.
Dave Brisbin 2.12.23Who says there’s no humor in the bible? When Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again to see Kingdom, picture the scene: Nicodemus, face in a knot, thinking out loud—how can an old man crawl back into his mother’s womb? I know it’s not LOL funny to our ears, but worth a smile. Jesus offers living water to a Samaritan woman at a well with her pitcher: Give me this water so I don’t have to lug this pitcher back and forth every day. Archaeologists believe that well was over half a mile from her village. Humorous and practical at the same time.That both of these vastly different people—a rich, educated, powerful Jewish man and a poor, Samaritan woman with five ex-husbands and a live-in boyfriend—could completely miss Jesus’ meaning highlights the depth of their disconnection. Jesus pulls out the exact metaphor each needs in that moment to break them free. For the old man to become as newborn with the mind of a beginner. For the woman to be freed of the bondage imposed by life, culture, and codependence.All Jesus’ metaphors point to one elusive truth. That salvation and Kingdom are the same: a quality of connection and presence. And the only Way to that connection: to be blown with the wind of God’s spirit in the trust of a child without self-awareness, the submission of a servant without resentment. Living water, maya hayye in Aramaic, an idiom that means running water as from a spring, fountain, stream. Water that’s safe to drink. Always in motion, clean, clear, never stagnant. The key is motion. Life is motion. Spirit is motion. Why do you seek the living among the dead? They are not moving. The only way we can know God, Kingdom, salvation is to be in sympathetic motion with God’s life.And the only way to move with God is to drop the nets of security, sell everything of accomplishment, deflate ego and knowledge back to beginners’ mind, “sin no more,” as in break through the shame that keeps us separated from a truth that will make us free. That truth—we are breathing a love that can’t be lost—is the beginning and ending of a journey only negotiated in vulnerability. Are we ready yet? Willing?
Dave Brisbin 2.5.23For God so loved… First phrase of what may be the most famous verse in the bible. At least in Evangelical circles. Even the bottom of In-N-Out soda cups have John 3:16 printed on them. Why? For many Christians, this verse is the gospel in microcosm: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. Problem is, we won’t investigate a premise we think we already understand. But how much of what this verse originally meant has survived being translated from ancient Aramaic to ancient Greek to modern English as interpreted by modern Westerners and eventually…Americans? Every phrase in this verse can mean something radically different in Aramaic, but since the whole thing points to eternal life, we can start there. The concepts of both world and eternity are conveyed by the same Aramaic word: alma. Ancient Hebrews saw both the world and life around them as generations of never ending cycles of newness and diversity, so eternal life, hayye d’alma, was not life that goes on forever hereafter, but life that is eternally alive, new, exciting, abundant—herenow.This originally Eastern, Aramaic gospel is not about passively and mentally agreeing to believe in a savior who guarantees life after death, but actively trusting the child of God’s unity to the point of risking our first steps toward making sure the life we’re already living is spiritually alive. And the key to being able to take those first vulnerable steps lies in that first phrase: God so loved. When we hear so loved, we think how much. Quantity. But the Aramaic word, hakana, means thus, in such a manner. Quality. Answers how, not how much. How could it? If God’s love is perfect, infinite, it has no degree, can’t be measured. Anything that can’t be measured always looks the same no matter who’s looking.Filling in the blanks: God loved all creation by birthing his own unity in human form, that whoever trusts, follows, and fulfills that unity in themselves will not fall away, but will have life that is always new, abundant, and alive.That’s a gospel worthy of the bottom of a billion soda cups.
Dave Brisbin 1.23.23Think of the best teachers you’ve had in your life. Not just in classrooms. Friends, coaches, parents, bosses, leaders, anyone who showed up at the critical moment when you were ready to listen to a voice outside your own head. Didn’t they always seem to ask the perfect questions? Directing you where you didn’t even know you needed to go? This is the way of good teachers. Creating the best environment for change, providing tools, getting out of the way.Two followers of John the baptizer peel off to follow his cousin Jesus as he walks along the banks of the Jordan. Jesus sees them, asks: What do you seek? What a loaded question. You’re following me, do you know why? Do you know what you want? What you’re about, your purpose? That’s a lot to process in a first meeting. They can’t answer, simply ask: Where are you staying? Jesus’ classic non-answer: Come and you will see. Beautiful dialog. So simple yet real. Translation: What is your deepest desire and purpose? If you can’t say, come; we’ll find out together. Invitation as answer.Jesus enters Jerusalem, sees a man lying by a pool believed to have healing properties for the first one in when the waters stirred. Ill for thirty-eight years, Jesus asks the man: Do you wish to get well? What seems almost insulting, condescending, is actually the very same question: What do you seek? What is your deepest desire? The man can’t answer; makes excuses, justifies why he can’t get to the pool in time. But Jesus has moved far beyond physical healing: the waiting is over, the kingdom—wholeness, completeness—is here…just pick up your pallet—the form of your victimhood—and walk. Leave your nets—the symbol of your former identity—and follow the direction of wellness.Jesus is the best of teachers. Always asking the same first question. Are we ready to listen? Do we know what we really desire, our deepest purpose? If not, are we ready to leave our nets—everything we think we know, pick up our pallets—all our reasons why not, and come and see where Jesus is staying? Far beyond physical location, it is always exactly what we seek. Long before we can find the words.
Dave Brisbin 1.15.23Nicolas Herman was an uneducated peasant in seventeenth century France, impressed into the military where he was assigned the most menial tasks. When he was released, he decided to enter a Carmelite monastery and there became Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection, and was assigned the most menial tasks. But after years of practice, even working in a noisy kitchen, he found a presence of God that sustained and transformed any task, no matter how small, into a sacred act.A friend of his wrote down everything he remembered of his conversations with Br. Lawrence—recorded him saying that all the thoughts that crowd in on us spoil everything, so we must be careful to reject them as soon as we become aware that they are not essential to our present duties. When he was assigned a task, he didn’t think or worry about it at all beforehand, because when the time came for action, in God’s presence he knew clearly what he must do. He didn’t remember the things he did afterward and was almost unaware even when he was doing them. On leaving the table, he couldn’t tell you what he had eaten.With no worrying beforehand, no remembrance after, completely immersed wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he had learned to integrate mind, body, soul—thought, action, intent. Aware without judging, thoughts and choices flowed through an undivided presence. When Jesus was twelve, he came of age in a family pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Separated from his parents for nine days, they found him in the temple immersed in his sh’eilot u’teshuvot, a formal QA, testing with the elders. When his mother scolds him for scaring the gehenna out of them, he responds almost casually that of course he would be in his Father’s house, undivided in his Father’s presence—until the moment he leaves with them, just as undivided in their presence on the way home.Jesus’ concept of Kingdom is the rosetta stone, the decoder key to all his teaching. Get kingdom, get it all. But until we understand kingdom as the undivided presence of a poor Carmelite monk and equally poor Jew during his bar mitzvah, we’ll always be waiting for the next bus.
The first line of a book has always fascinated me. May not always be significant in content, but it establishes the author’s voice—manner, personality, mood—the nature of our link with the storyteller. Call me Ishmael…Moby Dick. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…A Tale of Two Cities. The first line Jesus speaks in the book of Mark is a simple proclamation and an appeal: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.These words establish Jesus’ voice and link with us and significantly encapsulate his entire life and teaching. But these words, strung together in English can only create a meaning that is the sum of what those words mean to us now at a time and in a culture and language utterly alien to the time of the telling. What happens if we take this simple first line and translate it back into the original Aramaic and reconstruct it through all we know of the ancient culture and worldview in which it was uttered?In Aramaic, zavna/time can mean a season or passing instant in which an opening appears, an opportunity to be seized—focused here not on a clock running out, but a person becoming ready to be completed. Malkutha/kingdom, not a place but the principles by which the king reigns, and Alaha/God, the essence of unity—so the kingdom of God can be understood as the presence of unity. Meta/at hand is really to reach, attain—to have already arrived, herenow. Tab/repent, not remorse, but to return or answer, change direction in mind and body. Haimanuta/believe is confidence, firmness, integrity, all that leads to trust. And sebharta/gospel, to hope, endure, declare. Putting these concepts together, a line in Aramaic can become a paragraph in English… Waiting is over. God’s presence is fully formed, herenow. The door to the very life God lives every moment is open wide. Wherever you’re going, stop, turn this way, through this door. Remain hopefully steadfast until you trust that the way is sure.A creative paraphrase. Absolutely accurate? Of course not. But much closer to an Aramaic Jesus. Close enough for now.
Dave Brisbin 1.1.23First apartment Marian and I rented was near a nature reserve, and a colony of turkey vultures roosted in the tops of the eucalyptus all around us. Most people complained about the mess on the sidewalks, but I loved them. Waiting every morning for the sun to heat the updrafts that would take them aloft, like business people waiting for the train, they went to the office every day, all day, back home with the lowering sun. Day after day, seasons, weekends, holidays made no difference. No sense of time or the arbitrary lines we draw to mark our calendars.On New Year’s Day, we celebrate an arbitrary line. A line drawn differently in different cultures at different times in history. In the West, we think of time as a series of line segments, but the new year we celebrate is really a circle. The universe is made of circles. Circles within circles. Stars, planets, orbits, rotations, all scribing the circles we call days, months, years, seasons. The earth has no more sense of time than a turkey vulture, but we do, and in the language of Jesus, when a circle is completed as on New Year’s Day, it is g’mar, perfected. 2022 is now a perfect year. Complete. Fulfilled.Hard to imagine any of us calling 2022 a perfect year because we think of perfection as without fault or blemish. No year is without blemish, but they all come full circle. None of us are without fault, but we can come full circle too. James says it best at the top of his letter: “Let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” When Jesus says, “Be ye perfect” and his brother James says,” be perfect and complete,” they are urging the perfection of homecoming after a difficult journey.Perfection is not about working a process to a perfect result, but about the effect that process has on us...even if the result is imperfect. Outcome is irrelevant to the perfection of Jesus and James. We are perfected when we come full circle, home to our eucalyptus, having learned to be more fully present and aware, to more perfectly embrace whatever and whomever shares our homecoming. No matter how imperfect.
Dave Brisbin 12.11.22Woke up out of a dream in which a couple agreed to adopt triplets, but as soon as the adoption was final, found out all three infants were blind. Doctors told of a procedure that could repair the optic nerves, but no guarantee. Husband was furious, accused the bio-father of fraud, wanted to annul the adoption or add contingency for successful surgery. His wife turned to him—said when you have a baby, you don’t know what’s coming and whatever arrives is yours and you can’t give it back. She reminds him that he’s built businesses from the ground up, that he should know that a life being lived without risk is not being lived at all. Then I woke up.How do our minds come up with this stuff? My wife wanted to know the end of the story, but I suppose that wasn’t the point. The non-ending leaves the choice midair. What would we do? What place does risk hold in our lives?We’re all at risk, even before we take our first breath. The question isn’t whether we can live without risk, but whether we can accept the risk of being alive. Security is an illusion we pile around ourselves in money and material until it dawns on us just how fragile we are. Maybe Christmas can help, understood as the story of small, risky beginnings—Jesus born a helpless infant to a helplessly poor couple, risking being small to reveal a big truth.We may be willing to risk big, hoping to acquire enough to become risk-free. But there is no such thing. Human control always fails. Jesus was willing to risk small, a child who never grew out of childlikeness. If we want to find something hidden by a child, we must get on our knees to see the world from a child’s height. If we want to find a big truth hidden by a childlike God, we must get on our knees, let humility empty our illusions of control. The story of Jesus’ birth is the story of our rebirth. Jesus, born into the vulnerability of a child, risked the smallness of never growing out of it. The story of our rebirth is to risk growing back in.
Dave Brisbin 12.4.22We’ve all heard of the patience of Job. Book of James called it to our attention in the West when King James translated it that way in 1611. But the word that James originally used primarily means endurance that is at least a bit stoic if not cheerful; when he means patience, he uses a different word. Question is, how cheerful or patient was Job?To refresh, Job was a righteous, blameless, and incredibly wealthy man with a large family who, for no reason known to him, is stripped of everything he owns and loves including his children and his health. His wife tells him to curse God and die, but though his heart is broken, his integrity is not. He curses his birth, but not God. Three friends come to comfort him, but end up only debating, maintaining that Job must have done something secretly wrong to have earned such punishment. As their arguments escalate, Job grows increasingly angry, sarcastic, biting as he verbally attacks them, shifting his focus to God, complaining, criticizing, even berating God for targeting him and letting the wicked continue to prosper. He feels and says everything we’d imagine he would, everything we ourselves would and have at times of our own greatest loss. When God finally speaks to Job, it’s from a whirlwind—the power, mystery, uncontrolled chaos and uncertainty of everything we can’t understand. In breathtaking poetry, God never addresses Job directly, neither explains Job’s suffering or defends his own justice. He doesn’t respond to Job’s plea of innocence or enter into debate. There is no debate. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Life can only be accepted as it is, not explained or understood.When Job replies, it is in full submission. But more than that, it’s in full release of his illusion of control—being righteous, pledging allegiance to God, assuming he knows how life works. Accepting what the moment brings is his first step toward trusting what he may never understand. Job had to travel kicking and screaming through pain and loss, through his own impatience to anything that would look like patience to James. Or King James. Or us.
Dave Brisbin 11.27.22The older I get, the simpler things look. I used to love complexity. All the words, diagrams, contingencies, choices. Now I love that my wardrobe has come down to one basic uniform—black shirt, jeans, alternating pairs of shoes. And I love that I’m caring less what anyone thinks about my fashion choices. I’m convinced that the things in life that remain complicated are less important than things that don’t. And becoming aware of the complexity to which I remain attached is one way of knowing where my stone is not yet smooth.Jesus was a master of simplicity. Pared everything down to the fewest possible words. An image or metaphor. We imagine God’s kingdom to be filled with laws, rules, doctrine, rituals, good works. Those are all parts but not the point. Jesus boils it down to one thing. Love. Of God and each other—which in turn become one thing in the act of loving. Seek that and all else will be added. Live that and all else is commentary. And when we do, what does that feel like? Just one thing.If I say the word we attach to that feeling, you’ll probably shrug, maybe roll your eyes, yawn. Think you’ve heard it all before, a cliché. How to get across the impact of this word? Maybe look at it’s opposite, the effect of its opposite. Have you noticed people are getting angrier? Anger is affecting every part of our lives, personally and societally. But anger is a top level emotion always driven by something deeper. Expectation, insecurity, envy, victimization sum into a sense of entitlement that fuels our anger. The belief that we’re owed something, the anger when we don’t get it is the complex mix that is the opposite of the simplicity of gratitude.The one thing to which Jesus is pointing feels like gratitude. Gratitude is what love feels like. We can’t be grateful and angry at the same time. Or insecure, envious, victimized. Gratitude embraces the humility of receivership, acknowledges a gift we could not give ourselves. We can’t manufacture gratitude. We become it when we let go of the complexity of entitlement. It’s that simple. And that difficult at the same time.
Dave Brisbin 11.20.22 Do you know how many creation stories there are in the bible? Two… Surprised? How many flood stories? Two. There are many “doublets” or repetitions of stories in the bible that scholars attribute to a near literary certainty that, apart from the epistles of the New Testament, the books of the bible weren’t written as an author would write a novel, but compiled as a film documentary would compile sources to weave a story.
These ancient Hebrews books as we’ve come to know them, comprise various sources that scholars have reconstructed using internal clues: the specific name of God being used, language dating from different periods, discrepancies in details. In the Genesis creation story, the two traditions are simply laid side by side with no attempt to harmonize; the differing details weren’t meant to be harmonized. Six days or one day, God hovering over chaos or starting with land and mist, man created last and all at once as a race or first with just one man and woman. We want to resolve these differences into one true story, but the differences themselves tell the truth of the story.
Until we lose our obsession with literal readings of sacred books, we’ll miss their intent. We can’t know God, how God relates to us until we see God as both transcendent creator speaking the cosmos and all life into existence from on high—and a craftsman getting hands dirty fashioning one man out of mud and clay, breathing life into his nostrils, waiting to see what he will call the animals in the garden…intimately connected. And we can’t know ourselves until we see that we are both the final pinnacle of God’s creation, royal figures, God’s image representing God’s rule on earth, and also vulnerable, fallible servants in the garden who don’t even know we’re naked.
We think only one thing can be true at a time. The ancients knew better. That life is a paradox of seeming contradiction that tells a whole truth. Until we can embrace the mystery at the heart of life, we can’t follow the Way of Jesus, the vulnerable relinquishing in the second half of life that leads us back to the Source. Our first home. In the garden.
Dave Brisbin 11.13.22 A businessman watches a fisherman come in with a great catch. Asks how long it took to catch so much. Only a short while. Why not stay out longer and catch more? It’s enough to feed his family for the day: he gets up early to fish, plays with his children, takes a nap with his wife, then plays guitar at night with friends. The businessman schools the fisherman to stay out longer, catch more, sell, save, buy more boats, build distribution companies, invest in stocks, and after twenty or twenty five years, retire to do exactly what he is doing each day right now.
Why doesn’t the businessman see the obvious? Why isn’t the fisherman tempted by the businessman’s plan? The businessman represents the first half of life with its focus on deriving meaning from acquisition. The fisherman represents the second half of life with its realization that lasting meaning only comes from within, not from circumstance. The fisherman takes what is needed each day from an inexhaustible sea, feels no need to own storehouses, trusts the sea and doesn’t fear the future. For the businessman, each day’s work is calculated to create a specific outcome. Against all contingencies, he must carve out and protect assets he hopes will avert the possible futures he fears.
The story is contrasting two phases of life. One is not wrong and the other right—both are necessary and complementary. We begin life in the simplicity of the child, grow into the complexity of the adult, and if we’re aware and willing, fall back into the simplicity of the elder. The fisherman may more represent the child than the elder—someone who intuitively loves simplicity—but for Jesus, the child holds the wisdom of the elder. For us, invested in complexity, this is hard to accept.
How many of us really admire the fisherman? Isn’t he a poster boy for lost potential? First half mentality can never see the wisdom of the second half, yet second half mentality includes the first half…as a tool for living physical life, not an identity. The difference between the businessman and fisherman is a vanquished ego. We can’t acquire that. It can only be relinquished.
Dave Brisbin 11.6.22 William Shatner, Star Trek’s original Captain Kirk, flew to space on a private suborbital flight a year ago, and like many astronauts, had a profound, worldview-shattering experience. Space was “unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth—deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Everything I had thought was wrong, everything I had expected to see was wrong.” Leaving the spacecraft after landing, he wept, and it took him some time to realize that he “was in grief for the Earth.”
He saw Earth as we can never see it from the surface: an isolated, fragile spot of warmth and life set against vast darkness. On the surface, if we don’t like one spot, we can move to another, assume inexhaustible resources, distract ourselves, and take our home for granted. But from space, the realization that all we have and are, all human history and experience, love and life exists in just one spot, on one little ball hanging in a vacuum, reveals…there is no backup.
Shatner received a gift, a view of home and life with an intensity few of us get this side of death. But even earthbound, peak events, great suffering, great love, imminent death can pull back the curtain. At the end of his life as king, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes, having looked for meaning in pleasure, wealth, accomplishment, wisdom, has the shattering insight that none of it mattered. That in the face of the death we all share, everything we have and are is contained in just one moment, one spot on a planet with no backup. If we can’t find meaning herenow, it doesn’t exist—because nothing does anywhere else.
The Teacher, from his shattering realization, wrote that God has set eternity in our hearts. The unremembered awareness that all time, all at once everything and everywhen exist within us and are only ever accessible now and here. Searching anywhere else is striving after the wind. Shatner said, “I hope I never recover from this.” That will be his choice. It is always ours as well.
Dave Brisbin 10.30.22 It doesn’t take a prophet or a genius to see that the world is on a collision course with something out there. That everything can’t continue at this speed indefinitely. It’s a scary realization, and when we get scared, we start looking for something certain on which to stand. Which means I’ve been getting questions again on whether we are in the end times, whether the scriptures that describe them are true and when they will play out.
Short answer: I don’t know. Longer answer: no one can possibly know, no matter their years of study or absolute certainty. Jesus tells us flat out that no one knows the day or hour when such end times will occur—not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. Couldn’t be more blunt, but Jesus gives a clue here that can help us make sense of apocalyptic passages. Fear drives us to imagine certainty, some illusion of control, missing that the purpose of these passages is not what—the certainty we crave—but how to live in uncertain times. Prophetic books tell us how to live to avert disaster; apocalyptic books tell us how to live after the disaster has occurred with continued hope and faith.
When Jesus says the Father alone knows, that he will not drink another cup of wine until he returns, that he goes to prepare a place for us and promises to return with the blast of a trumpet, his way lit by the lamps of heaven to snatch us and lift us up to his Father’s house—he is using images from the Hebrew wedding tradition to show us how to live in uncertain times. A Hebrew bride must live the year or more between her betrothal and consummation anticipating being carried away at any moment to her new life while relishing every moment of the only life she has ever known.
Both Israel and the church have always seen themselves as brides of God—all human history and each individual life lived between betrothal at birth and consummation at death, between heaven and earth, now and not yet. We can’t know when or what, and that terrifies us, but we have been given how. How to live without fear. It’s all we can know with certainty, but with trust it’s all we need.
Dave Brisbin 10.23.22 From third century Christian tradition…young hermit tells an elder: I know the objective of life, what God asks of us, and the best way of serving him—I’m just not capable of doing all that I should. The elder is quiet for while then says: You know about a city on the far side of the ocean, but you haven’t found a ship, loaded your bags, or crossed the sea. Why spend time imagining what it’s like to walk its streets? Knowing the objective of life and how to serve the Lord is not enough. Put into practice that which you think, and the way will be revealed all by itself.
Two hundred years earlier, the first Jewish followers of Jesus agreed. Calling themselves talmidey orha—Followers of the Way in Aramaic, they were making an emphatic statement. If their primary focus was on the Way Jesus lived and loved rather than the historical person himself, then their primary focus was on action rather than thought. A very Jewish trait. They were saying with their lives that they understood Jesus’ message to be a way of living, not just thinking or believing.
Jesus said that we will be known as his followers by the way we love each other, that if we live as he lives and love as he loves we will do the things he has done and experience the truth that liberates. He is telling us flat out that our action defines us as followers, not our belief or belonging systems. He said he himself is the Way and Truth and Life and no one comes to the father but through him. This is the ultimate exclusionary statement for those of us who still see gospel as primarily a creed, a specific way of thinking and believing necessary for God’s approval, rather than the abandonment of self it takes to live the Way Jesus lived as necessary to realize we are approved already. Really good news.
The way of the mind—our thoughts and beliefs—can take us right to the door of the connected life Jesus calls Kingdom. But only Jesus’ Way—the way of the heart, contemplative practice—brings us through. It’s been seventeen hundred years since the Way of the heart identified Western Christians as followers of Jesus. It’s time.
Dave Brisbin 10.16.22 A wealthy man asks a Zen master to write a text that will inspire and remind him of his love and devotion for his family. The master returns with a beautiful calligraphy that reads: The father dies. The son dies. The grandson dies. The man is furious, but the master calmly tells him that this is his blessing. If his son died first, it would be devastating. If his grandson died, unbearable. But if his family disappears in this order, he will be blessed and his family will continue for generations.
There is a natural order that we see written in life or just in our own minds, and we are very attached to it as the way things should be. Any losses we suffer hurt, but when they violate the natural order, as the death of a child, we are devastated by both the loss itself and the offense against the natural order. We anguish and rage in a tragic gap between the way things are and the way we think they should be, a limit situation where we run headlong into the limit of our ability to control an outcome or even the narrative in our head.
Call it moral distress—the conflict between what is and what should be, combined with the vulnerable powerlessness to bring the two together. Like burnout—responsibility without authority—we can only maintain so long before it eats us out from the inside with negative emotions, physical symptoms, and eventually cognitive distortions. We try to jump the gap by searching for rational answers or placing blame, anything to explain and relieve the violation…but there are no rational or emotional answers to the deep, existential questions raised there.
Jesus shows the way through the tragic gaps of life without losing identity or faith in the process. It’s the way of descent, becoming unattached, unidentified with the narratives in our minds that judge what should be. Those who were marginalized by life, the poor, those least invested in the status quo always followed Jesus first, were the most open to accept life just as it was with hope and gratitude. Because working for change without first accepting the limits of this day is just another tragic gap.
Dave Brisbin 10.9.22 Thirty years ago, living alone, I was trying to be a monk in the city. Maintaining silence in apartment and car, reading all I could find on spiritual life, up at 5AM, prayerfully running through dark streets, meditation cool down by the community pool, back up to my apartment to journal, getting ready for work. Day in and out. Put that way, sounds like I knew what I was doing, had a sense of confidence in direction and growth.
A 1993 journal entry written after run and prayer asks, Where are you, Lord? Where do I go to listen? What do I listen for? How do I listen? Do I strain? Do I relax? Is it obvious? Subtle? Does it frustrate you that I am so deaf? A snapshot of the condition my condition was in: that despite all I was doing, I was not experiencing what I expected, feared I was doing it all wrong, anxious even despondent over ever getting it right. Yet the same entry also contained the seeds of answers breaking conscious ground—that God was not somewhere else to be found, but right in front of my face, trying to get my attention. That it wasn’t a matter of where to find God’s voice, but of thinning out eardrums too thick to hear the still, small voice already present.
It would be years before such seeds grew into the full shape of a journey that was never about finding a voice, but thinning out distractions and attractions, expectations and fears that masked the always and ever Presence I was seeking. I didn’t need to understand what was happening as I showed up to all those runs and sits, only that I kept showing up. The fact of time spent in silence and solitude—allowing myself to diminish by choosing not to cling to my thoughts as the center of the universe, to let a wholly other perspective take center stage, was just the thinning out my ears needed to hear a voice that spoke without words.
To choose not to be distracted or dissuaded. To cultivate the daily experience of choiceless awareness was the shape of an inner journey that eventually convinced me I was already hearing God’s voice, but in a way I never expected, imagined, or even desired. Until I did.
Dave Brisbin 10.2.22 Remember the Karate Kid movie? Has to be the original from 1984. Kid asks the master to teach him karate, and the master tells him to wax his cars. But with this exact movement—wax on, wax off. When that’s done, sand the floor, paint the fence, all with very specific movements. After weeks, the kid is fed up with slave labor, screams at the master, and turns to leave. Then there’s this great moment where the master puts all those movements into context with the punches he throws, the kid deftly blocking each one with muscles hardened by the memory of each defensive motion.
Why didn’t the master tell the kid what he was really doing while he was doing all that work? Because the kid would have brought all he thought he knew about karate into the process and messed it all up. Only way to learn a pure motion is to separate the motion from the desired outcome, and only way to a desired outcome is to learn the pure motion. What a metaphor for life. What are we really doing when we do the things we do all day long? What really matters? What lasts?
We have to believe that what we do matters, or life becomes intolerably absurd. But when we live long enough, we begin to question the meaning of all we do. How does it matter? Why does it matter? We need a moment with the master to put it all together, give us the context of a thrown punch to see how our muscles have hardened to a purpose, but not the one we first imagined. The tasks we do all day long are only temporal. They and their effects will end. But within those tasks is a deeper task that always points to the unseen connection between everything and everyone. When we can see that deeper task within, all our tasks become reinfused with lasting meaning.
Like the kid, if we focus too soon on the outcome we think really matters, we won’t practice pure movements long enough to build character and container for real meaning. But if we don’t eventually question the meaning of our movements, we’ll never learn that they are just containers for a deeper task—the one that shows us who we really are.
Dave Brisbin 9.25.22 From the desert monastic communities of Egypt and Judea in the 4th century: a young monk asks his elder how he can come closer to God. Elder tells him to go to the cemetery and insult the dead. Dutifully he goes, and upon return the elder asks: did you go to the cemetery? Yes. Did you insult the dead? Yes. Did they respond to you? No. Now go back and praise the dead. Upon return: did they respond to you? No. When you can respond to the insults and praises of men the way the dead do, you will be closer to God.
The early church understood the value of unoffendability and unflatterability. Of learning that contentment, meaning, purpose, identity don’t depend on external opinion or circumstance, but a deep interior connection. Today, such values are not only lost, but our culture, both secular and religious, is built on noise, social approval, compulsive activity, and complexity. Re-establishing the deep interior connection Jesus calls being one with the Father means living salmon-like, swimming against the stream of our culture and our own minds.
Standing opposite the noise, social approval, activity, complexity of daily life, the Four S-es—silence, solitude, stillness, simplicity—are the launch pad for Jesus’ only Way to the Father. But their significance is much deeper than first glance. Silence is not just the absence of sound, but not thinking about the noise that is present. Solitude is not being alone, but alone with Presence, a sense of connection to something larger than self. Stillness is not just absence of activity, but detachment from the compulsive need for busyness. Simplicity is not absence of complexity, but no longer needing circumstances, opinions, possessions for personal validation.
Bringing these four states of being into our daily routine changes our fundamental relationship with life and each other in ways we can’t fully anticipate—only experience. Stepping away from internal and external noise, the need for activity, accomplishment, and possessions to show us who we are, builds a quiet confidence and humility, the ability to hear the utter silence of God’s voice.
Dave Brisbin 9.18.22 A nurse, retiring after 44 years while also moving out of the home in which she raised her children, was feeling the anxiety of losing much of what had identified her entire adult life. I was telling her how important it would be to jump into the deep end of her new hometown, engage in community and really connect, when she flashed on her mother-in-law who had retired to Las Vegas seven years before. She had recently died, and the nurse was astounded by how many people attended the funeral…hundreds, including local store clerks and food servers.
In seven years, in a city the size of Las Vegas, imagine the kind of impression she must have made with even the most casual encounters. How she broke through the daily noise of life to leave people feeling seen, heard, validated, encouraged, loved. I wish I’d known her. I want to be her when I grow up.
What does it take to overflow a funeral service? What does it take to have the kind of presence that leaves people better than we found them? First things first, it starts with awareness. Without awareness of our inherent connection with everyone who shares our moments, there is no presence. And in case we think awareness means thinking deeply about what we’re aware of, let’s stop and clarify. If we’re thinking about our awareness, we’re not fully aware. If we’re not fully aware, we’re not fully present. If this woman had been thinking, if I’m really nice to this cashier she will come to my funeral, the spell would have been broken, the connection unmade.
We can be aware of something without thinking about it. Without attaching words, naming it in our heads. To think about something separates us as from a picture in a frame. To be fully aware is to become what we are aware of. At first, most of us will need to consciously practice not thinking about our thoughts, but until we graduate mere consciousness, awareness always remains just around the corner. Awareness is not something we consciously do, it’s the state of being connected, a wordless presence that can’t be mistaken for anything less, even by store clerks and food servers in the midst of their busy days.
Dave Brisbin 9.11.22 How many people do you know who seem satisfied with their lives? Are you? Every ad and commercial you see is betting that you’re not. Betting they can get between you and your money by hammering your dissatisfaction with your haves or have nots, your looks, your health, your work, your ride, and a million other issues.
What does it even mean to be satisfied with your life? Should you be satisfied? Isn’t there always something to work for, something that needs fixing, a hole that needs filling? Wouldn’t life be meaningless, purposeless, boring if we were satisfied with the way things are? I read an article that compared our lives to trees that shed their leaves in the fall, changing their priorities for the winter by deciding what to protect. Leaves take a lot of energy to maintain, and in the winter when energy is scarce, there’s only enough to protect the tree’s inner essence, to survive until spring. The tree is a lesson in choosing what to protect.
I’m thinking that’s what being satisfied with life is. Knowing what to protect. How much of our energy is spent protecting our leaves—the outer, material accessories of life—at all costs and despite what changing circumstances should teach us about changing priorities? Of course it’s not so simple because some of these “accessories” are vitally important—family, job, career, vocation. But they are still leaves in the sense that without protecting our essence, how do they survive?
Being satisfied with life is not complacency. It is the successful balance of now and not yet: working hard to build what needs building and fix what needs fixing, but never at the expense of protecting our essence, which can only be experienced now, this moment. Realizing the most productive our work will ever be is when, disregarding outcome, we fully allow the working moment to be enough, an end in itself. Seeing significance in the smallest of things, and seeing our deepest identity apart from the leaves of our roles and accomplishments.
To allow a moment to be enough for us, to love it for itself while still amid the scaffolding of work undone makes us look a lot like trees.
Dave Brisbin 9.4.22 Jesus’ Way, the practice of presence, of stepping away from the verbal use and abuse of the mind, is impossible to put into words. Since we are putting words aside in order to experience real presence, words can never detail what we find there. At least not directly. One of the best attempts to describe a transcendent, contemplative experience is a poem of course, A Great Wagon by Rumi, a 13th century Sufi mystic. It’s the one with the famous line: Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Though that line gets all the attention, each line and metaphor points toward a going beyond everything we think holds life in place. Beyond law, morality, ethics, logic, theology, doctrine, material possessions, even the laws of physics and any illusion of certainty, there is a field. When we lie down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense. As humans, even after having such an experience of being, we will still wake the next day empty and afraid. But if we don’t fly back to our words, if we keep playing the music, even the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell. The poet then warns us three times: don’t go back to sleep.
It’s all about awareness, about waking up inside our waking lives. Most of us are sleepwalking, barely conscious of the unseen unity at the core of life, the perfect love that alone has power great enough to cast out fear. Fears that make us crave those word-based enemies of presence: law, logic, material possessions, whatever makes us feel powerful and certain. But waking up takes time and a persevering desire for more than physical life seems to hold. As Rumi says, the music of a desire as widespread as Spring begins to move like a great wagon. Drive slowly. Some of us walking alongside are lame!
Waking up is a slow process, and we all go back to sleep at one point or another. Life is too traumatic at times to always keep eyes open. But to lie in the grass of that field out-beyond even once, is to have found the awareness and desire to wake again, eyes open longer each time we do.
Dave Brisbin 8.28.22 Ever been frustrated by Jesus’ communication style? Get in line because even his first followers throw their hands up in the gospels and ask why he doesn’t just speak plainly. Why always in parables and figures of speech. Jesus is a poet. One of the best. He knows he can’t express spiritual truths directly, but only through stories and metaphors that point without limiting.
I’m sure this is a big part of the allure of Buddhism in the West: Buddha is more engineer than poet, giving us Three Universal Truths, Four Noble Truths, an Eight Fold Path, all interconnected and breaking down into further sublists. Something to hold on to. Jesus never gives us lists or interlocking structure. He points toward the experience of top-level concepts and principles, what it feels like to live them. Frustrating, because he is always challenging embedded thought, always introducing paradox and mystery, attempting to take us beyond. Beyond where we are, beyond where we think we can go, even beyond what we think proper.
Between Jesus’ poetic lines, we find him taking us beyond obedience—to realize that law can only frame the door to life; walking through is experiencing law being fulfilled in relationships that are no longer contractual, that live and breathe in the freedom to break the code whenever love requires. Beyond certainty—to realize that certainty is an illusion, that re-introducing mystery and paradox is to thrive in grateful unknowing, in faith. Beyond belief—to realize that ideas don’t transform us until we act on them, risk losing everything we believe will save us to experience what really does.
Our codes and beliefs, our need for certainty, our conscious minds are hardened targets. They have to be to sustain us through the fears of physical life. But Jesus is taking us beyond physical life, to the life that exists beyond our fears. Like Abraham, asked to kill his miracle son and promise, Jesus is taking us beyond all the defenses we build around what we believe will save us…to experience that we already are.
Dave Brisbin 8.21.22 Suffering is evil and wrong, isn’t it? The price we’ve been paying since Adam blew it in the garden? A sign of God’s disapproval, that something is wrong in our lives, that we need to repent and pray for God’s relief. How we view suffering has a lot to do with how much it hurts. I was taught to view suffering as evil, but what if I was misinformed?
Jesus makes a cryptic statement that you don’t hear many pastors or priests discussing these days. When people were asking Jesus for a sign to prove his power came from God, he tells them they will get no sign but the Sign of Jonah. How to understand? Jonah is the Hebrew prophet swallowed by a big fish while trying to escape God’s command to save a city and people he hated as enemies of Israel. After three days and nights in the fish, Jonah reluctantly goes to them. The people repent, saving the city, but Jonah sulks outside the city walls praying for death. The story ends with God asking whether Jonah is doing well to be angry, and why shouldn’t God—and he—pity these people who “do not know their right hand from their left?”
Jonah’s descent into the belly of the beast is the same as Jesus’ descent into the tomb. The sign of Jonah is the same as Jesus telling all who would follow him to pick up their crosses daily, to fall to the ground like planted grain, to die to our existence as human seeds in order to grow into fruitful human plants. But dying in any form is not pleasant. Only great suffering and great love have the power to strip away the defenses and illusions meant to keep us safe, but also keep us apart.
Suffering a death to everything we think keeps us safely in control is the necessary suffering that precedes our ability to begin to love as God loves—even those we don’t like, the enemy. If we allow, suffering leads to greater love, just as love always leads back to suffering. Suffering is half of the only Way to the Father.
We don’t get to see Jonah’s response, so God’s question remains open to him and all of us down through the millennia. Will we accept the necessary suffering life presents to open us to a love we won’t see until we do?
Dave Brisbin 8.14.22 Most of us have heard the phrase, “ugly duckling,” but most of us no longer know the story from which it comes. We may think it refers to a face only a mother could love, but The Ugly Duckling was a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale published in 1843. After a mother duck’s eggs hatch, there is one duckling unlike all the rest, who is verbally and physically abused because of his looks. He goes through a series of isolating and humiliating incidents until, when fully grown, throws himself into a flock of swans preferring death to further rejection. He’s amazed that he is fully accepted until he sees his reflection in the water and realizes he’s been a swan all along.
When Andersen was asked if he’d ever write his autobiography, he said it was already done. A tall, ugly boy with a big nose and feet, he was cruelly mocked and teased, but in addition to his musical and writing talents, there was evidence he was the illegitimate son of the king of Denmark. The swan was not just metaphor for inner beauty and talent, but also for royal blood.
Beyond ugly ducklings, there is Cinderella, The Frog Prince, and numberless stories on the same theme from ancient times to today. Luke Skywalker is secretly a Jedi knight. Neo in The Matrix is secretly “the one” who can wake humanity from slavery. Jesus is an ugly duckling too. A Cinderella born into abject poverty, raised in Nazareth—of which Nathaniel asks, “can anything good come from Nazareth?” He is unrecognized, despised, ultimately killed, but not before he finds his true identity, his royal blood and the power to wake humanity to the good news. What news?
That we’re all swans. The slipper fits. We’re knights, secret royalty. That the journey Jesus took to truth is a journey we can all take. That when Jesus says “you will do the things you see me do,” he means that whenever we wish, we can take up the human task of realizing that though we don’t yet see it in ourselves, as children of our Father, the king, royal blood flows in us as well. That even in the admission of our powerlessness, this good news alone can wake us from the slavery of our fears.
Dave Brisbin 8.7.22 What’s your first reaction to the words religious ritual? Positive? Negative? Typically, it’s a one-two punch of negatives: religion and ritual—both of which many people now denigrate, ridicule, as empty, meaningless, even cultish. Those criticisms are valid if ritual is performed thoughtlessly, without knowing the meaning of the symbols involved, as mere obedience or conformance to a group, to gain approval or status…but what if it isn’t any of those things?
A sacrament is a religious ritual that we define as the outward expression of an inward transformation. When a person offers a transformed heart, with understanding of how the ritual expresses their transformation to the community, it’s filled with meaning—a shared experience and celebration that binds people together. We need ritual, but we need to expand it beyond the confines of church. In my twenties, as some point I realized that I always fell into deep depression on Sunday afternoons. Like clockwork. Not until my thirties when I had started going to a church again, did I realize the depression was gone. Growing up, my family went to mass every Sunday. Got up, dressed up, drove on the same streets to church, pancakes after at Paris’ restaurant every time.
Here was ritual expanded beyond the religious experience, but not the spiritual. As humans we find connection in what is reliable and repeatable—acts regularly repeated in a set manner. In other words, a routine. Another word we don’t like. But routine is what our lives are made of. It’s what we do over and over that defines us to ourselves and others, not the exceptions no matter how exciting. Routine may feel like a four letter word, but it gives us the time and times we need to connect and bond with life.
Even so, routine is also meaningless if done thoughtlessly with no understanding of what it symbolizes in our lives. But routine becomes ritual if we bring our awareness and fully participate, and it becomes sacramental the moment our transformed hearts can see the deeper implications of our presence meeting God’s presence in the connection it creates.
Dave Brisbin 7.31.22 I was recently asked why we don’t do altar calls at our church. It’s not that we don’t do them, but we don’t do them publicly. As de facto sacraments, altar calls have become every Sunday rituals at many Evangelical churches in the past hundred and fifty years. Named from the practice of calling people to the front/altar of a church to declare their conversion, the ritual has become encapsulated in saying the “sinners prayer,” which includes admission of sin, request for forgiveness, statement of orthodoxy, and intention of repentance.
It’s a beautiful first step of vulnerability and intention, but which over time has culturally become the proof of salvation itself. If the saying of a prayer made of words, no matter how beautiful, could trigger the flow of God’s grace and approval where it was previously withheld, as Marcus Borg said, it would be “salvation by syllables.” Mere superstition—in the way carrying a rabbit’s foot brings good luck.
Jesus was very clear. He’s not superstitious. Though he carefully kept all the non-rabbinical rituals and practices of first century Judaism, he missed no opportunity to show and teach that obeying laws and practicing rituals can never magically gain God’s favor…we already have that and always will. But by engaging a radically different Way of living life, we come face to face with the truth of God’s pre-existing favor, freeing us from the fear of punishment right herenow. Salvation realized, not earned.
Doesn’t mean we stop doing altar calls, but any sacrament is an outward expression of an inward transformation. The ritual itself is meaningless. A transformed heart is what brings meaning to the ritual, and the ritual conveys that meaning to the community and binds us together in shared experience. We need that. But salvation is less an event and more a process of becoming, punctuated by events like our first admission of willingness to submit to a power greater than ourselves. Both are absolutely necessary. It’s a question of emphasis—which means we all have to decide, individually and communally, how best to keep that balance.
Dave Brisbin 7.24.22 A dear friend and colleague suddenly diagnosed with stage four cancer brings everything to a halt. Not just in her life, but in ours as well—at least for a time. And when we start breathing again, I know what I’m thinking, but wondering what she’s thinking in the dark hours. Her voice sounds strong; she’s talking about fighting and treatment plans, but also logistics and last wishes for her children and all of us.
She’s striking a strange balance between hope for life and admission of the possibility of death, the preparation for it. But isn’t that just a statement of the human condition? Don’t we all live out our lives, plan and dream, laugh and embrace, under the shadow of a death sentence? As long as there’s no date attached, no end in sight, we can pretend, but at times like these it all comes hissing in like a leak in a submarine.
Her family is now experiencing an intensity they haven’t in some time. We all do this. Why do we wait until the possibility of losing someone becomes imminent before we feel and express their value to us? With our own lives, with the moments that make up our time here—why do we allow the urgencies of life to masquerade as important and distract us from the only moment that exists? This one that we’re in right now. What is urgent is not necessarily important and what is important rarely feels urgent. Relationship and connection, like life, appear open-ended—and without deadline or urgency, they feel reschedulable. Until times like these.
None of us wants to think about death approaching out of the dark at unknown speed and distance. But the value of life can only be experienced in the acceptance of death. In accepting that there are no answers to the deepest questions of life, to stop searching for meaning in the darkness of what we can’t know, we can see again what we’ve always known in the light of each living moment. To stop trying to import meaning into our moments with thoughts made of words and see that each moment is already just enough for us is the gift we can receive at times like these.
Dave Brisbin 7.17.22 We are fixated on answers. Our collective intolerance of uncertainty feeds a deep need to find absolute answers to all our questions, to be right while pointing out those who are wrong, to pretend that life can be made risk-free if we just know enough of the right stuff. Our minds become the tip of the spear that we believe will save us from our fears. This may work well for the physical sciences and train schedules, but when it comes to matters of spirit, we need to think again.
Do you know how many questions Jesus asks in the gospels? It’s amazing that people actually count these things, but nice that we can look them up. Jesus asks 307 questions. More importantly, 183 questions are asked of him. Of those 183, he directly answers…three. Just three. For every question Jesus answers directly, he literally asks a hundred. He answers every question of course, but most often with another question. Sometimes with a story or an object lesson. But every answer is geared to stop questioners in their tracks, stop the logical flow to which they are addicted by challenging the often unconscious assumptions that drive the questions themselves.
Jesus is much more interested in questions than answers and is perfectly comfortable with questions serving as answers. Life is made of uncertainty. The questions we most profoundly want answered are unknowable in this life. Jesus knows that the life he lives and envisions for each of us doesn’t flow from answer to answer, but from question to more incisive question. Direct, declarative statements as answers don’t take us on journeys, and Jesus is all about engagement in a process of questioning that constantly refines the scope of what is true.
Every indirect answer Jesus gives, every story and non-sequitur, every question-as-answer is an opportunity to see into a world based on love instead of logic, where the rules of our assumptions about life are exposed as roadblocks to the life we long to live. Even when Jesus is simply asked where he is staying for the night, his answer, come and see, is an invitation to experience what can never be expressed in an answer made of words.
Dave Brisbin 7.10.22 What is the goal of our spiritual journeys? How would you answer for yours? Peace, love, enlightenment, wisdom, salvation? It’s unfortunate that we haven’t been clearer about Jesus’ answer to the question: that following his Way to the Father allows us to know the truth, and that truth will make us free. Freedom is the ultimate goal, because without freedom from the fear that is part of human nature, we will never risk dropping all our defenses—the only way to experience Father, love without degrees or prerequisite.
There’s a catch: what is this freedom? What does it feel like? How do we know we’re talking about the same freedom Jesus tells us comes from knowing truth? In our culture, freedom is unencumbrance from anything that would limit our ability to say and do whatever we want, whenever we want. Our movie heroes are the antithesis of the modern middleclass—burdened by mortgages, debt, desk jobs, families, grinding daily and weekly routine. Movie heroes appear and disappear, ride into town, save the day, then ride back out with us looking wistfully after. Unencumbered by any responsibility other than their own code of conduct, they can never put down roots, become tied to relationship, family, place. To tie them to anything would make them just like us.
The scriptures paint a very different picture. Over and over, spiritual freedom is not tied to unemcumbrance, but its opposite: slavery and servitude. To be set free by truth is to become a slave of God and everyone in our path—in that culture, an indentured servant or bond slave who voluntarily pledges life and freedom as repayment for a debt. Spiritual freedom is not unencumbrance, but the freedom to submit gratefully and fearlessly, to lay down our lives for another’s life and welfare, to know we are free because we can give our freedom away just as freely.
To be completely unencumbered is to be completely alone. The freedom to which Jesus is leading, comes from experiencing the truth that all that matters in this life is the connection our freedom buys when it allow us to lay down our defenses and experience what happens next.
Dave Brisbin 7.3.22 The 4th of July comes round again at a time when faith in our country has been deeply shaken. We are questioning our most enduring institutions right down to the Constitution and Founding Fathers’ motives and wisdom, with some saying we need to scrap the whole thing and start over. Second American Revolution. Considering the angst, seems appropriate to paraphrase Winston Churchill: the US is the worst country ever built by humans—except for all the other ones.
Our country is flawed, of course. Though I’m convinced history will show we have been a force for much more good than evil, if we are committed to rising above the triggering of emotion, obsessive thought, special interest, and personal bias, we can occupy liminal space, the threshold between camps, and see clearly enough to praise and criticize as needed to make us better. Rising above personal triggers—that’s easier said. But fighting this interior revolution must happen first if we’re to wage an exterior one with any hope of leaving people better than found.
Ancient Jews understood their journey as a nation as the journey of a single person, that the macro mirrors and maps the micro, and here, our Declaration of Independence may help map our own interior journeys. The Declaration speaks of political bands that should exist only as long as they serve all parties, of self-evident truths of equality, and unalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. That people will suffer as long as they can before they take up the cause of fundamental change…as it should be. Revolutions make things much worse before better.
Jefferson is channeling Jesus who told us to count the cost before going all in, but until we're willing to question everything and let go of all we say we believe, we'll never see which “bands” holding us in place no longer serve us in experiencing our ultimate unalienable right: a love that changes everything.
Our flawed founding fathers did exactly this. Even as we question their flawed convictions, let’s not dismiss their journey, the process by which we must become convinced ourselves.
Dave Brisbin 6.26.22 If you’re serious about following a spiritual path, you have two major roadblocks to overcome: your mind and your body. Your mind, storehouse for the dualism of your egoic consciousness, constantly talks to you—comparing, contrasting, judging. Your body, storehouse of your emotions, drives unconscious behavior patterns with childhood conditioning, memories, guilt, shame. Necessary for survival, but left unchecked, mind and body keep us in a narcissistic bubble, apart from others and the reality of the moment.
Admittedly oversimplified, the West has been in love with the mind, rational thought, for the past three hundred years since the Enlightenment, but in in the last fifty or so, has fallen in love with the body, with emotion. Emotion has become the sign of being authentic and in touch, empathetic and compassionate. Arguments now appeal to emotion, drowning out rational thought with feelings. Society needs a balance, but ancient wisdom tradition knows that true spiritual formation means intentionally detaching from thought and emotion, finding a deeper self and wordless connection to ultimate presence.
Emotions aren’t bad; they must be deeply felt and used as windows to unconscious drives and fears that help guide us to growth. But if we identify with them, think they are “true,” we become lost, acting out emotional triggers, hurting people while feeling justified and virtuous the entire time. We literally don’t know what we’re doing. The goal of ancient Christians was to unidentify enough to become unoffendable to the threat of negative emotion and to graduate past the “consolations” of positive emotions into the “desolations” of a faith that needs no external support.
In a society devolving into the chaos of pure emotion, that sees opponents not intellectually as misguided, but emotionally as evil, deserving disdain, hatred, and eventually violence, we start with what we can actually control—ourselves. To build awareness to the point we can see emotions for the tools to growth they are and choose what is loving regardless of what we feel.
Dave Brisbin 6.19.22 Physical survival depends on how well we manage and compete for finite resources, a zero sum situation in which there’s only so much oil in the ground, and our share always comes out of someone else’s. Winners and losers. So we can be forgiven for embedding a scarcity mentality so deeply in our psyches that we pin it on God as well—keeping us forever fearful and defended, the opposite of the vulnerable connection love requires.
Our concept of God is all-important. It orders our view of life and relationship, meaning, purpose, identity. It regulates our fear. Or not. Jesus knows this and works hard to draw his people away from the anthropomorphic images of God as Ab—father in Hebrew that carries images of the fierce tribal leader presented in early Hebrew scripture and the legal judge presented by the Pharisees and other first century contemporaries.
The names we use for God mirror our concepts of God, so instead of Ab, Jesus used Abba, which adds a feminine ending, a unity of transcendent father and immanent mother, a balance of power and intimacy with whom we can both be in awe and in love. Then in his model prayer, Jesus uses another name: “Our Father who art in heaven,” in Aramaic: abwoon d’bashmaya. In abwoon, AB, strong leader of the house, is joined with WN, the security of life that continues, presenting a genderless cosmic parent who causes the flow of birthing, creation. The D and B prefixes in d’bashmaya show God not living in heaven but identified with heaven as the visible face of God’s inner essence…the heavens, the universe, show us who our Father is.
Science tells us there are up to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe with up to 700 billion stars in even a small galaxy like our Milky Way. Most stars have planets, if like Earth, contain up to a trillion species with billions or trillions of life forms each. The universe tells us our God is insanely extravagant, abundant beyond belief. No scarcity. No zero sum. God is an inexhaustible, overflowing love of life. Can’t diminish it; can’t earn it. Admission is free and every seat is front row center. Once we experience that, we know there is nothing to fear.
Dave Brisbin 6.12.22 I’ve developed a three year rule: if you’ve been with someone for three years and still not sure you can commit, answer is no. Not absolute, but after three years, if you’ve been up close and paying attention undefendedly, you’ve seen enough to know a person’s nature.
It’s the same with God.
A mistake we make is thinking that Jesus’ Way is the way to heaven, the way to God’s approval. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus’ way is not a way to something, it’s the way to experience what’s already here. It is the only process by which we can become undefended enough, vulnerable and unself-conscious enough to experience and be convinced of God’s nature—pure connection, unity. Until we know that love without degree is who God is and the basis of our relationship, life will be too scary to stay undefended very long.
Jesus knows the first step to walking his Way is to realign our thinking, open eyes to new possibilities. This summarizes most of his teaching, but most incisively, at the last supper, hours before his death, he tells his friends he has a new commandment: to love each other as he has loved them—that everyone will know them by their love. It’s love that defines us, not intellectual belief, theology, doctrine, ritual: those aspects of religion are either ushering us toward the experience of degreeless love or just in the way.
The early church understood. Their daily lives were characterized by care for each other that reflected their experience of God. Followers in the first three centuries after the crucifixion wrote that “how they love one another” was the “brand” others saw on them, a people with a “divine admixture,” humans mixed with God. The Romans could not extinguish such a church even after three centuries of persecution, so they extinguished it in the fourth century, not by force…by making it their state religion. When power replaced love as the admixture, there was suddenly something to defend, and church lost sight of love.
Degreeless love needs no defense. Defendedness can only see degree. Never the love.
Dave Brisbin 6.5.22 Anything that can’t be measured always looks the same. Think on that for a second. All our minds really do is measure. Compare, contrast, create differences and distinctions. Without something to measure against, the measureless thing always looks the same: far out at sea—featureless water in all directions, cloudless sky, starfield. Always look the same.
God’s love has no degree. Can’t be measured by anything that can. Always looks the same to whomever is looking regardless of accomplishment. Knowing God’s nature and love is knowing that we can’t impress God with our accomplishments, can’t earn a place or a higher place, that each of us is God’s favorite and most beloved human because we’re here breathing and for no other reason. In a field of degreeless love, every point is mathematically dead center, and any other position is meaningless. Doesn’t exist.
But does that mean there is absolutely nothing to do once we realize our accomplishments don’t matter to God’s love? Absolutely not. Jesus’ Way, the only way to the experience of God’s love, is the hardest work you will ever do. But “doing” along Jesus’ way is of a different order: it also has no degree. We imagine going up to meet God somewhere on high, and we check our progress by measuring how far we’ve risen. But Jesus is showing us that we can’t go up to meet God because as long as we’re looking up, we’re measuring. If we don’t first go down from the ego’s imaginings of grandeur, we’ll never embrace the servanthood, humility, and vulnerability of the unassuming God Jesus personifies. This doing is an un-accomplishing, selling off our obsession with accomplishment until we can see a love that never measures a thing.
What we do along Jesus’ way—releasing, submitting, surrendering, trusting—is work that no one will ever see, congratulate, reward. It won’t matter. Once we stop measuring, the only reason to do anything is because it is our deepest purpose and pleasure to do so. When we can’t not do what God’s does all day long and twice on Sunday, we will at last know God and know what can’t be measured is why we’re here.
Dave Brisbin 5.29.22 In 1205, Francesco Bernardone, Francis of Assisi to us, had another worldview shattering moment. After a series of shattering events including being held prisoner of war and becoming deathly ill led him to renounce his father’s wealth and reconfirm his faith, he was praying in the crumbling chapel called San Damiano. In a vision, the painting of Jesus on the wooden panel cross spoke, telling him to rebuild God’s house, church, because it was falling into ruin.
Young Francis took the words as literally as most of us would have and began repairing the broken structure of San Damiano. He missed the metaphor that seems obvious now, but some moments are so shattering to our view of the world and our place in it, that they seem to require an immediate response. Francis did what was available and knowable, but after a few more such shattering moments, it wasn’t what he did, but who he became—in poverty, humility, humor, and connection to all living things—that reminded those in a wealthy and powerful church who Jesus was and what they were supposed to be reflecting.
To be honest, Francis didn’t change institutional Catholicism any more than Jesus changed institutional Judaism a millennium before. But both of them provided the model and permission for those within the institution to have equally shattering and transforming moments of their own. At the end of his life a millennium before Jesus, Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes that all the wealth, power, fame, and pleasure he has amassed as king of Israel is meaningless, striving after the wind. Death levels the playing field and wipes out physical accomplishment. True meaning flows to us only when we are present enough to enjoy who we are, what we are doing, and whom we are with at any given moment.
An Ecclesiastes moment is a world and ego shattering epiphany that whittles us down past obsession with accomplishment and control to the liberation of pure presence. Most likely, we’ll need a series of them to break through, because until we see all meaning contained in just one continuous moment, we are not free enough to live it abundantly.
Dave Brisbin 5.15.22 After twenty-nine weeks studying the Sermon on the Mount, can we say in one sentence what this masterpiece is all about? If not, we’ll be lost in detail and miss its intent. Speaking strictly for myself, the Sermon is a radical exercise in deconstruction: a ruthless and unapologetic tearing down, upside downing, of the world we think we know: life and love, ethics and spirituality. Once we see Jesus working to break us through the limitations of our own minds—the thought and behavior patterns that keep us from the experience of full connection herenow—we have engaged the process he calls the Way.
When Jesus tells us that even if we do miraculous things in his name, we still may not know each other, have no intimate experience that makes us one in kingdom—he is trying to break our obsession with accomplishment, ultimately the accomplishment of certainty. In the fear that makes up the working of our conscious minds, certainty is the greatest prize. But certainty is a unicorn; it doesn’t exist in this life. Knowing God doesn’t mean being certain theologically, legally, doctrinally, or any other way. It means spending enough time out of our conscious minds to become convinced.
So we can be convinced and uncertain at the same time? Conviction and certainty seem like synonyms but look very different hanging on a human. Certainty is an intellectual agreement that is only mind deep, reinforces intolerance of uncertainty and anything that doesn’t agree. Deep down, the mind knows the assumptions made, and fear remains. Conviction is a house built on bedrock, a choice informed by intimate experience, and though unprovable in the mind, creates trust that directs decisions and regulates emotion as sure as the steps of a mountain goat.
Jesus’ Sermon pulls back the curtain of manufactured certainty and forces us into the disturbance of realizing we just don’t know, can’t know the ultimate workings of life and God. But in the process of questioning everything we think we know, accepting uncertainty, we come to rely on a power greater than ourselves that convinces us we’re not alone.
Dave Brisbin 5.8.22 A woman who grew up in a painfully patriarchal Christian sect, told me she was uninterested in attending a Mother’s Day church service that simply gave roses to moms. She’s been trying to understand her place as a woman in a faith that seems to be all about men...subjugating women. Starting with God as Father.
We know all about our Father. Why is there no mention of our Mother in scripture? Scholars have speculated that ancient Hebrews prohibited all rituals of the polytheistic nature religions encircling them to keep Israel focused on this life and their one God. Hebrews were forbidden to communicate with the dead, embalm, mummify, or even touch a corpse. They prohibited the worship of any physical image of God including nature as goddess—mother earth. But if these intentions and their own patriarchal culture kept explicit mention of our Mother out of scripture, the essential balance of father and mother in God is as clear as we’re willing to see.
Hochkmah, God’s wisdom, is personified as female in the book of Proverbs, and the Hebrew words for spirit and kingdom, ruach and malkutha, are both feminine, meaning we could literally refer to God’s spirit as she and kingdom as queendom. Scripture often portrays God as female: in childbirth, nursing or comforting her child, a protective mother bear or bird covering chicks with her wings. In Hosea, God takes her people in her arms, picks them up and holds them to her cheek, feeds them and cares for them with affection. In the gospels, Jesus always leads with touch, connection, affection before teaching and instruction, showing us it’s only when we have experienced the compassion of our Mother in our day to day lives that we can begin to understand the love of our Father at all.
God is a perfect God only when justice and mercy, knowledge and wisdom, discipline and relationship, male and female, mother and father are equally honored and present. Without God’s matriarchy balancing us, anything we do, male or female, becomes just another patriarchy. Only our Mother guards our Father from the subjugation of others.
Dave Brisbin 5.1.22 It’s amazing how differently we hear things depending on our emotional and intellectual investments. Sometimes when counseling couples, I actually see words changing meaning in the air between one partner’s lips and the other’s ears. It’s all about what we’re prepared to understand. We hear what we’re prepared to hear. It’s the same with scripture.
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that not everyone who calls out, “Lord, Lord, we’ve prophesied and done miracles in your name,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. And to put a really fine point on it, he finishes with: “I never knew you: depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.” Focused on afterlife as reward, and accomplishment and performance as the prerequisite for God’s favor, we immediately hear Jesus talking about our day of judgment with God—heaven or hell. But final and permanent damnation based on a principle we may have not even understood? That would violate everything Jesus lives out and says about the nature of God’s love, acceptance, forgiveness. Whatever this saying means, it’s not that.
To know in Hebrew/Aramaic doesn’t mean understanding facts. God knowing us, we knowing God, is about intimate experience, as only long time together without defense or pretense can create. Jesus is telling us that our investment in accomplishment and grandiosity is the opposite of and blockage to the intimacy that changes us from the inside out—the knowing of one thing: the allness of God’s love. Until we intimately know that love, nothing Jesus says will make sense.
This saying isn’t about the afterlife and final judgment of God at all. Jesus’ kingdom is always here and now, and we are crying Lord, Lord, each and every day we desire to experience the fulfillment Jesus calls kingdom. Depart from me you who practice lawlessness is a direct quote from Psalm 6, but there, David tells us that those confronted with their dysfunction turn from their lawlessness, literally repent. Jesus isn’t judging here. He’s confronting. Trying to help us change direction and repent our way back into the intimacy of kingdom.
Dave Brisbin 4.24.22 Jesus gave us just one Way to experience the oneness of the Father, which when followed looks like presence, emotional regulation, and vulnerability. But this Way remains elusive because it’s nothing less than the complete deconstruction of our egoic consciousness—everything we think we are and have—in favor of a truth we can only see when everything false is removed. Very hard to do, and Jesus says few go by the narrow road to new life, rebirth.
Our churches haven’t been teaching this Way; it’s a tough sell. We don’t want to hear about a path that doesn’t ascend straight to prosperity or salvation, that curves down into the depths of ourselves, painfully purging until we can see where we really need to go. Everything in us wants a kinder, gentler way, a miracle cure or a savior we can passively accept. But without the healing that only a dive into our deepest fears can bring, we will always be looking for something or someone to do for us what we can only do for ourselves: become vulnerable enough to experience the love that casts out fear.
If we keep looking for cures and saviors, we become prey to those who would lead us. Jesus says we must be wary, that some leaders are ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing, referring to the overlarge woolen prayer shawls covering the religious leaders of his day. Of course not all the leaders of Jesus’ day or ours are charlatans or hypocrites, and Jesus says the only way to discern falseness is by their fruits, their effect on each of us. But that effect isn’t just a result of their leading, but also of our following—our willingness to stop waiting to be saved and begin partnering with God in the process of salvation.
Until we submit to the realities of Jesus’ Way, we will never see that we were born “saved,” that is, loved and accepted as perfectly as we can ever be. Jesus’ Way is the way of remembering who we are and have always been…beloved. Remembering our belovedness means letting go of everything that says otherwise, and until we do, no shepherd, no matter how good can lead us past the wolves.
Dave Brisbin 4.17.22 It has always struck me that the gospels tell us nothing about the resurrection of Jesus. The central event around which Christianity orbits is left entirely offstage. The gospels pick up the story after the resurrection has occurred and focus not on the event itself, but the effect it has on Jesus’ friends. The gospels are telling us, with their own gaze, where to look, what is important to see.
What we see is that none of Jesus’ closest friends recognize him when they first see him again. They watched him die. They buried him. Regardless of what he taught, they fully expected him to stay buried and stay dead. The gospels are showing us that the miracle of resurrection in our lives is not an external event, but a process of recognizing the miraculous. That we all see what we expect to see until something breaks the spell of rational limitation.
We see the resurrection as a huge supernatural event as well as a huge theological truth. But in the gospels, nothing huge, supernatural, or theological breaks that spell and brings the truth of resurrection home to Jesus’ friends. Just the opposite. The smallest, most intimate connections—the tone of voice calling Mary’s name, the breaking of bread at the Emmaus table—tiny details seen and heard a thousand times break through to prove identity in the only way we accept. In intimacy.
We only know someone when we’ve experienced them in intimate detail, and Jesus’ friends had to re-experience that intimacy with him to prove his identity to themselves. Same with us. As long as resurrection remains huge and transcendent, it remains distant, a thought in our heads. But the moment we begin to see the risen Lord in the most intimate details of everyday life, we realize, as Jesus’ friends slowly did, that we can’t seek the living among the dead. Life is motion; set belief is static. We will never find our God among motionless thoughts in our heads. Only among the living. That’s us, the living, the moving ones.
When we’re ready, we will find our risen, living God in each face we encounter and embrace or not at all.
Dave Brisbin 4.10.22 Our fears define us, make us see everything through the pain of our unmet wants and needs—or the compulsive need to hold on to what we think we already have. If we’re afraid of change, it’s because we’re invested in our status quo and see change as a threat to our powerbase. If we’re afraid of no change, we feel marginalized and oppressed, victims looking for a savior to fix our problems.
Einstein said we can’t solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. Seems obvious, but each of us is stuck trying to use conscious and unconscious tools created by our fears to fix problems also created by fear. This is really the point of Palm Sunday: when Jesus rides into Jerusalem, the people see him as either savior or threat based on their fears. But Jesus is neither and both, a true paradox, and he weeps that his people couldn’t remain in the tension of his paradox long enough to recognize what he was really bringing: the invitation to a way of seeing past their fears.
Today we would immediately say that Jesus is our savior, but can we resist the fear-based reaction to choose one side of the paradox long enough to see the deeper truth beyond the seeming contradiction? If we say Jesus is our savior, not a threat, we will miss how Jesus saves and from what. The truth of this paradox is that Jesus can’t be our savior until he’s first a threat…a threat to all our powerbases: everything we hold dear, take pride in, use to advantage. Until everything we’ve piled up in our lives out of fear is cleared out, we can’t even see what we need to be saved from.
Jesus is not riding into our lives to save us from oppression or fix our problems. He’s here to save us from the fear that keeps that oppression and those problems in place, and until we let Jesus threaten all we’ve built out of fear, he can’t save us from fear itself. The truth Jesus brings can and will make us free—by threatening everything made of fear on which we rely.
Jesus is my savior and my threat…but not necessarily in that order.
Dave Brisbin 4.3.22 When we were kids, my sister did a paint-by-numbers of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. You remember those…a canvas board with a printed outline of an image, jigsaw-puzzled into numbered patches to correspond with paint colors. She worked day by day, filling in the patches with the right colors, and when she was done, if you stood about a block away, the colors fused into a whole in your eyes the way digital sound fuses in your ears.
Contrast her experience filling in the patches with Da Vinci’s after a lifetime of preparation, an image in mind, planning composition and technique, grinding pigments, mixing colors, experiencing the flow of bringing something radically new into the world. The two are as far as night from day, east from west. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees had created a paint-by-numbers spirituality and righteousness. All legalists do. They imagine that our most profound experiences in life can be digitized, reduced to numbers that if followed in the right sequence will create a product, an outcome: righteousness, justification, salvation.
Jesus passionately and sometimes violently disagreed. Spent life and ministry trying to bring us from paint-by-numbers to artistic flow, from conformance to transformance. When he says unless we exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, he means that kingdom is not an outcome, but the experience of the flow itself. Painting by numbers tries to create an outcome without the preparation it takes to enter the flow of pure presence and creativity.
Jesus is brutally clear that there is only one way to the flow of God’s spirit, and that Way is hard—requires stripping away everything we cling to out of fear that blocks the flow. When he says the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and few find it, he’s not saying that most people are going to hell. He is saying there are no shortcuts, and few will take the time and disturbance to realize that both gate and way are a person and not a product, and never what we expect to find.
Dave Brisbin 3.27.22 Ever think about why you’re here? On this planet? Breathing? Maybe you have no idea, or maybe you have answers that will most likely have to do with accomplishment—things we do that give us a sense of meaning and purpose. But if Jesus and Brene Brown are right, we’re here to connect, to be at one with each other. All the rest is commentary.
Could it be that simple? Could human purpose have nothing to do with accomplishment, only how and whether we relate? Hard to process. We want to do something concrete, purposely control outcomes. But what would accomplishments mean in isolation, with no connection to share? Accomplishments are only meaningful in the context of connection. They end at our head stones, yet we chase them as ends in themselves. Truthfully, what we accomplish is important, but only as a meaning/purpose delivery device—a means for delivering connection.
An ancient desert Christian saying: “If you see a brother by his own will climbing to heaven, take him by the foot and throw him to the ground, because what he is doing is not good for him.” The ancients understood that climbing to heaven turns our spiritual lives into a task to be completed and heaven into an accomplishment—and the mental tools we use for climbing were forged in our fear of loss and may move earthly objects around, but not heavenly ones. Life is not a task, but an experience; heaven is never accomplished or acquired, only received…a gift we could never give ourselves.
Jesus and the ancients knew that climbing can’t acquire what can only be gifted; it moves us in the wrong direction. When you’ve fallen in love, did you have to work at it? Accomplish it? Complete the task by climbing into position? There’s a reason we speak of falling in love. It’s involuntary. We can work to avoid it, but we can’t make it happen. We can’t climb to heaven, ultimate purpose, either. We fall to heaven by letting go of everything that would break our fall. Until we let go and fall hard, we never realize why we’re here, never experience the connection that is heaven.
Dave Brisbin 3.20.22 I’ve been going on about Jesus as a poet. A great poet. And if that sounds strange and unfamiliar, how about considering that Jesus was a great psychologist too? Jesus deeply understands the human condition and human psychological development, and in the poetic language of his day and choosing, articulates a Way to psychological health and balance for which we all crave and pay big money these days.
Jesus’ three temptations in the wilderness beautifully symbolize the three “energy centers” of Thomas Keating or Maslow’s deficiency needs—security and survival, esteem and affection, power and control. In earliest childhood, we develop unconscious, emotional programs to meet these needs that then emerge into consciousness as our attachments and aversions: things we like and don’t like, cling to for happiness or cling to not clinging to. Compulsive thought and behavior patterns are driven by these attachments and aversions, which create triggering events when frustrated in any way.
Jesus’ time in the wilderness was his drilling down to identify and meet the basic needs that were driving his compulsions in truly transcendent Way. If you think Jesus was above such compulsions, consider why the gospels would preserve such a story with Jesus pushed to exhaustion and starvation by the effort. Jesus’ Way is not theology. It’s braving the difficult passage to truth that makes us free of the compulsions that enslave us and keep us apart from each other and God.
When Jesus says no parent, or God by extension, will give their child a stone if asked for a loaf of bread or a snake if asked for a fish, he is giving us first steps along the Way. Distinguishing between objects that may look similar from a distance—seeing which give live and which take it away—is how we build the awareness to see which of our cherished attachments and aversions are really meeting our most basic needs. No one gives up what they’ve clung to entire lives until they can see past compulsive snakes and stones to the freedom of sustained life that loaves and fish represent.
Dave Brisbin 3.13.22 Jesus is a very good poet. Like all good poets, he never tries to tell us what can’t be rationally told, but helps us sneak up on the feel of the experience. In short word-bursts full of image and metaphor, he shows us the effect of life lived as one with everyone and everything, while evoking the radical difference of the experience of getting there. He says, “the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field,” and we’re lost in a sea of literalism. The man already had the treasure. Why hide it again? Why sell everything to buy the field?
Sometimes another tradition can come to our rescue, say the same thing in words unfamiliar enough to cut through centuries of assumptions and show us the truth in our own. Ancient Chinese tradition tells the story of a young disciple despairing that he’ll ever understand his teachers’ meaning. Old master tells him: “If you persist in trying to attain what is never attained (it is life’s gift); if you persist in making effort to obtain what effort cannot get; if you persist in reasoning about what cannot be understood, you will be destroyed by the very thing you seek. To know when to stop, to know when you can get no further by your own action. This is the right beginning.”
The journey to spiritual awakening is unlike any other journey we take. It won’t feel familiar. If it does, we’re on a different path. If we approach spiritual awakening as a task, something to find and acquire, we have forgotten that we already know where the treasure is. Not out there somewhere, but in this field, within ourselves, hiding in plain sight. The journey is not about acquiring. It’s about selling.
Poet Jesus knows that through mental effort and study we can find the treasure’s location. But it won’t matter. Concepts are easy. Until we stop acquiring and begin the painful process of selling everything that is inconsistent with the treasure, we’ll never own the field. The treasure is nothing without the field. The field is where we live.
Dave Brisbin 3.6.22 One of the world’s top psychiatry journals published a study on the source of emotional disorders, and the takeaway was that “depression and anxiety are linked to an intolerance of uncertainty.” Intolerance of uncertainty. Says it all. Don’t know if we needed a study for that, but good to know the science validates common sense. We can’t even know tomorrow’s weather with certainty: uncertainty creates fear, and inability to accept fear as part of life causes us either to seek more and more information to answer endless questions or just pretend the questions are already answered—both of which create emotional disorder.
Irony is, as we’re working to eradicate uncertainty from life, it is uncertainty that is the engine of spiritual and psychological growth. It is only at the end of logic, the precipice of rational thought when one more step takes us into complete unknown that a quantum leap, spiritual awakening, radical change is possible. Buddhists call this the “great doubt,” the point of complete surrender to something entirely new, the breakthrough to “beginner’s mind,” seeing everything as if for the first time.
To come to doubt everything we think we know, the very assumptions we accept as reality, is what Jesus calls his Way, the only way to Father/Truth. Jesus is cultivating great doubt when he tells us to sell everything, pick up our cross daily and deny ourselves, hate father and mother and all familiar conventions of life, let the dead bury the dead—all images of that one step beyond the precipice, the surrender to something old wineskins could never contain.
Every person of faith described in scripture takes this same necessary step into uncertainty: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Paul, Peter, Elijah. Only after Elijah runs from the spectacular certainty of Mt. Carmel into the great doubt of the wilderness of Mt. Sinai, does he recognize God in a still, small voice. Beyond the certainty of wind, fire, and earthquake, there is an utter difference only utter silence can describe. Only those reborn as utterly unknowing and uncertain as they were the first time, will hear.
Dave Brisbin 2.27.22 A pastor came with us to Mexico to deliver food and supplies to one of the poorest areas along the US border. Our organization supplied five dining rooms that served before-school breakfasts, and the women who served the children every morning insisted on serving us lunch, because that was who they were. After lunch the pastor sat the women down and through an interpreter, led them through the “sinner’s prayer,” the ritual he believed brought them into the Christian fold and made them acceptable to God. The women dutifully did as he asked, but came to me later highly insulted. What went wrong?
With every good intention but without knowing them, the pastor judged what they needed according to his standard of faith. He didn’t know they were all devout Catholics or Protestants who rose in the dark every morning to hours of work preparing food, cleaning for the next day, loving those kids as their own expression of gospel. Without taking time to find out whether they wanted or needed his help, he went home feeling he did well, leaving me to repair relationships as best I could.
When Jesus tells us not to give what is holy to dogs or throw our pearls before pigs, what sounds so condescending and exclusionary is really just addressing what went wrong in Mexico. In Jesus’ culture, what was holy was the “ring,” the symbol for Torah and Law: since Israel was the bride of Yahweh, Torah was the ring that bound them to God. Pearls were the symbol of the wisdom gleaned from the study of Torah. Don’t push the law on someone who is opposed or antagonistic, or they will turn and tear you to pieces. Don’t teach wisdom to someone who is unprepared, or they will trample it, unrecognized and unassimilated.
Judging always keeps us at least arm’s length from each other. Discernment requires a dive into the experience of relationship to see what love requires. In Mexico, the women far exceeded our poor understanding of gospel. They needed our food and supplies, but not our pearls and rings.
We needed to know the difference.
Dave Brisbin 2.20.22 Does anyone ever really change another person? Fix them? Lord knows we try. And though we can persuade, manipulate, even force people to do what we think they should, that’s compliance or obedience, but not change. We can help people: support them, talk to them, change circumstances, create the best environment for change, but any one of us changes only at the moment we’re ready. And no one can make us ready.
All we can really give each other is support and information. Support can be material or emotional; information is conceptual. As good as those can be, the most important things in life are non-transferable because they are experiential. No one can give us the ability to play guitar, speak a language, ride a bike, trust, love, change, because no one can give us the experience of hours of immersion and relationship. We don’t change or fix others, and Jesus never said he did either. Instead of I heal you or I forgive you, he says your faith has made you whole, your sins are forgiven. Jesus recognizes when change has taken place, but knows he can only show the door, open the door, lead the horse to water. The rest is up to each of us.
When Jesus tells us not to judge, that the way we judge is the way we will be judged ourselves, is his poetic way of saying we need to grow our awareness past the sum of information that has been transferred to us—what we think we know that limits our perception of reality. To practice discernment instead, judgment based on lived experience, is to immerse in relationship with people and life that changes the way we see and judge. To take the beam out of our own eye before trying to take the speck out of another’s eye, is to turn the process of discernment inward and change the only person on earth we can possibly change. Ourselves.
When we take the beam out of our own eye, live the change we want to see in others, we create the best chance for others to change…just as God “changes” us. Not directly, but with the absolute acceptance of perfect love that silently draws us—the moment we’re ready to be drawn.
Dave Brisbin 2.13.22 The reality we believe is the reality we endure. What we believe about reality becomes our experience of it and shapes our lives so profoundly that we don’t see reality as it is—only what survives the filter of our worldview. Because this is true, every responsible philosophy and religion on earth teaches some form of non-attachment, stepping aside from entrenched beliefs to make us free enough to see and accept what really is. There is no peace until we do.
Jesus said, don’t judge or you will be judged, and the way you judge, your standard of measure, will be measured to you. Don’t judge, narrowly understood as condemning or at least condescending others, is deeply embedded in our cultural psyche, and yet, on more levels than we’re even aware, our entire world is built on judgment. But isn’t that necessary? Don’t we have to make judgments about people and situations in order to know who we can trust, how to choose alternatives?
We need to make a distinction here between judging and discerning. Judgment is a conclusion we reach based on internalized standards—the reality we believe. Discernment is a conclusion we reach based on real-time experience—recognizing reality as it is. We can judge long-distance; don’t need to be close to see what is acceptable to our belief system. But discernment requires a dive into relationship to experience a person as trustworthy or a situation acceptable.
Jesus’ saying sounds punitive: if we do wrong by judging, then someone, ultimately God, will wrong us back. Nothing could be farther from reality. Judgment separates; discernment connects. Judging breaks life into small pieces in conflict with each other, making love conditional and bringing into existence the world we must endure. No one does this to us. Nor God. We do it to ourselves. If the way we judge is not tempered with willingness to risk the intimacy of discernment, we will always live in the broken pieces of the reality we believe…and never see the oneness of what really is.
Dave Brisbin 2.6.22 A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it…from Frank Herbert’s Dune. But we won’t see the truth of this until we first see the process. Ancient Hebrews called God’s spirit ruach: breath, wind, and spirit all at once. Defined by motion. A process. Ancient Christians called God trinity, which they best defined as a blur of constant interaction, a relational process within God.
A belief about God is a mental snapshot that stops the process. This is where we miss the bus: thinking about God as something that can be thought about—God’s action as events completed in time. Living things are defined by motion, so God and life are in constant motion; they will never be understood by thinking about them. If we want to see them as they are, we need to change everything we think we know about seeing. Only by letting go of our thoughts, thought itself, accepting the flow, can we know what it means to be alive in God’s presence.
Jesus’ mega-metaphor for the Way to God is the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s not too much of a stretch to say he spent his entire life defining kingdom, so knowing what he meant is the first step to changing everything. Jesus says it’s not out there somewhere, but unseen within and among us. Not a thing bound in space and time but a quality of life to be lived. He says it’s like being born again, like a small child or a seed growing in a garden, like selling everything to buy a field with a treasure. Kingdom is the process of diminishing before growing, being vulnerable to be connectable, shedding everything that stops the process so we can experience the flow as we did before we learned to be ashamed.
If kingdom is a quality of life now, not a reward later—that changes everything. If what makes us vulnerable makes us beautiful—that changes everything. If we can live as we did before shame made us feel unworthy, no longer striving for what we already possess—that changes everything.
Unstops the process, kingdom, the flow of God’s presence herenow.
Dave Brisbin 1.30.22 What is the goal of the spiritual life? After all, if you’re going to spend the time and energy to engage spiritual formation, don’t you want to be really clear on the goal? After counting off peace, love, joy, salvation, redemption—all of which would be really good to have, it’s clarifying to see how Jesus answers: if we follow his Way of living and loving life, we will know the truth and the truth will make us free. Freedom. Surprising? Not when you consider that freedom is both the cause and effect of perfect love.
How do you know something is free, that you are free from it? Unless you’re a scuba diver, air is still free. And until I called your attention to it, you were as unaware of your breathing as of your hair growing. Contrast that with food, of which we think about constantly. Something is free when we don’t have to think about it, plan, work, save, pay, fight, or worry over it. The things from which we are most free are the things we worry about the least. But even if something is free, does that mean we’ll automatically stop worrying?
Jesus tells us God’s perfect love is free as an objective fact. We don’t need to worry. But how many of us are still trying to perform for it, earn it, worrying over whether it really does extend to us? We must be free enough from feelings of unworthiness to be able to take first steps toward an experience of perfect acceptance. Cause. Then once experienced, perfect love casts out fear, makes us more and more free from the fear of unworthiness as the truth of our acceptance sets in. Effect.
For Jesus, truth is not information, but a person—a God who is life and love…freedom itself. Experiencing God is the experience of freedom. Freedom is the experience of worrylessness, which is why Jesus is always telling us not to worry as the first step to freedom. Look at the birds and the flowers. Worry over what you eat and wear just as much as they do. If we can worry less over small things, we can experience the worrylessness of ultimate things. And if we seek the worrylessness of kingdom first, all else is added. What’s left for worry?
Dave Brisbin 1.23.22 Jesus is relentless. Never lets us rest in old ideas. Or even new ones that have become set and quickly growing old. Like a personal trainer always spurring us on to one more rep, he systematically deconstructs any thought or behavior pattern that, regardless of original value, has now become a limitation.
Whenever we feel we’ve arrived: at right action, right thinking, or right belief that is paying off in material wealth or social or religious standing, Jesus is there to say we have our reward in full, which means we’ve only found treasures here on earth. Wonderful, as far as they go, but treasures on earth are temporary, fleeting, ultimately unsatisfying, and if they represent the extent of our heart’s desire, then we are bound to them here on earth. Jesus is all about treasures in heaven, an Aramaic idiom for God’s presence, always here and now. Treasures found in God’s presence are forever beyond what moths and rust can destroy or thieves steal, and are what give fulfilment and balance to our necessary pursuit of earthly treasures.
Jesus is not relentlessly challenging our thoughts and behaviors to make us incrementally more lawful or moral or intellectually accurate. He is trying to break us through to a difference of quality, not quantity. You can’t be a little bit pregnant—you’re all in or out. And you can’t be little bit kingdom, a little bit in God’s presence. It’s a complete immersion, inward transformation, an earth shattering shift in perception and values that allows us to see what was invisible before.
Jesus’ metaphor of the clear eye that illuminates every part of ourselves is another expression of this relentless pursuit of a different quality of seeing and perceiving rooted in first matching our deepest desire to God’s. When we desire most what God desires eternally, what God is—connection, oneness, forgiveness, love—everything we think and do, even the pursuit of treasures on earth, is firmly planted on Jesus’ Way: not the way to heaven, but the experience of heaven itself.
Dave Brisbin 1.16.22 We call people passive-aggressive so casually these days, it’s likely we’re no longer sure what it means. Just as guerrilla warfare is an indirect way of opposing a much greater force, passive-aggression is an indirect way of getting what we want or expressing anger and frustration without directly confronting another person. But where guerrilla warfare is a conscious tactic to turn weakness into strength, passive-aggression is usually an unconscious expression of a person’s perceived powerlessness.
People who don’t believe they can make significant choices in life are naturally passive-aggressive in their interactions with others. From chronic lateness, forgetfulness, or losing things to constant complaining, blaming, keeping relationships chaotic and ambiguous, a person who feels victimized finds passive ways forward. Belief systems feed the passive-victim narrative: the belief in an all-powerful God, can make us feel like cosmic victims of fate or destiny, that God is the only actor with a real choice. A belief in original sin—that we are born hopelessly flawed and separate from God—makes us theological victims with Jesus as the only actor who can save us.
But Jesus is showing us a way of life that is the opposite of passive: a partnership with God in which God has already acted on our behalf, given everything there is to receive, leaving only the action of our own hearts to accept and live the reality of such connection and abundance. The opposite of victimhood.
A victim is never present, always reliving the past or imagining salvation in the future. A victim lives in unforgiveness, seeing no choice in the present to create change in circumstance or attitude. A victim is always waiting, never arrives. Jesus is all about arrival: the waiting is over, the abundance of kingdom is here and now, immediate and intimate. There is no possible place for passivity or victimhood in such a reality. Take a look around. Are you waiting for something? Then your heart is not yet acting along Jesus’ Way.
Dave Brisbin 1.9.22 Who can really set us free? Judge, jury, priest, pastor, lover, forgiver? We say Jesus is our savior. And we wait. But Jesus said if we followed him, we’d know truth, and that would make us free. Jesus, truth, law, circumstance? Who can really set us free?
In a movie, an old convict is released from prison. Gets a job bagging groceries and drives his boss crazy raising his hand every time he needs a bathroom break. Finally told he doesn’t have to ask, just go, we hear his voice tell us that after forty years, he couldn’t squeeze a drop without sayso. The state released him, but who can really set him free? In the other direction, Gandhi and MLK found an interior freedom that even the full weight of British and American empires could never crush with all the laws and soldiers they could muster. Who set them free?
In Jesus’ language, freedom and forgiveness share the same root that means to release, restore, return to original position or form. In the Semitic mind, to be forgiven is to be set free, and to be set free is to be forgiven. Jesus said that if we forgive our brother, then our Father in heaven would set us free. But if we didn’t set our brother free, neither would our Father forgive us. After all his teaching and stories of unconditional love and unlimited forgiveness, what is Jesus’ point here? That forgiveness is after all, performance-based? That forgiveness and freedom are withheld until we do the right thing?
Of course not. Jesus is merely answering our question: who can really set us free?
Have you ever been asked or asked for forgiveness, but even when granted, knew in your heart nothing had changed—you were still not free from either victimhood or guilt? No apology, restitution, or power in heaven or on earth can set us free until our own hearts are ready. If God is love, then God is forgiveness too, which means God is freedom itself. God can’t be anything other than the fact of what he is, and the moment we risk the freedom to extend forgiveness to another human is the moment we experience the truth: our release has already and always been granted, but we are the only ones who can set us free.
Dave Brisbin 1.2.22 The universe is a clock. A clock made of circles. Circles within circles. Stars, planets, orbits, rotations, all scribing out time in days, months, years, longer years. Ironic that we think of time as line segments when the universe thinks in circles. And in the language of Jesus, each time a circle is completed as on New Year’s Day, it is perfected. 2021 is now a perfect year. Complete. Fulfilled.
Along with thinking in little line segments, we also think of perfection as without fault or blemish. None of us would say that 2021 was without blemish, and neither would the Aramaic word g’mar, which would simply affirm that it came full circle. James says it best at the top of his letter: “Let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” When Jesus says, “Be ye perfect” and his brother James says,” be perfect and complete,” are they implying we can be without fault or blemish? Obviously not part of human condition or experience.
Jesus and James are urging us to beat our swords into plowshares, lines into curves, as we think along a different arc of perfection. Any year, no matter how grim, is perfected when it completes a circuit around the sun, and any life, equally grim, is perfected when death engulfs birth like a snake eating its tail. But the perfect result of James’ endurance takes us much further.
A hero is not one who completes the journey, but the one whom the journey completes…
The perfection of coming full circle is not just about geometry or geography. A great poet said it’s about arriving back where we started and knowing the place for the first time—knowing ourselves for the first time. It’s about the willingness to answer the call of a new experience or a new year and set out with no single destination or assurance of outcome. To show up day after day without an audience to scribe another arc along the circumference, holding to beliefs only we can see, knowing we’ve arrived only when we get there. That changes us. Grows us. Completes us as the circle is completed in a perfectly imperfect result.
Dave Brisbin 12.5.21 What are you trained to see that others miss? If you’re trained in art and art history, when you look at a painting you can see color, palette, composition, technique down to the brushstrokes. You can place a painting in its genre and era, maybe assess its importance and value as others pass by without a second glance. If you’re trained in architecture, you see a building very differently from others. If trained in music, sports, mathematics, fashion, horses, dogs, cats…if you choose to spend enough time with another person, when someone asks what you see in that guy, it’s obviously something others have missed.
We’ve all heard the adage that seeing is believing, but the truth is that we can all look at the same thing and see or believe different things about it. Or not see it at all. Some things need to be believed before they can be seen—we have to be prepared to see them, the real significance of them.
Billions of us raised in the Christian tradition have the Christmas story imprinted down to our bones—often imagining ourselves with the magi in awe at the foot of the manger. But the real question Christmas poses is whether we would have joined the magi at all. Would we have seen what they saw? Historically, there were no inns in ancient Bethlehem. The word translated as inn really points to the living space, the platform or second floor where a family slept. So Joseph, trying to lodge at the home of friends or extended family, had to bunk with the animals because there was no room in the living space. Which means that those in that house, those closest to Joseph and Mary saw nothing significant about them. Didn’t make room for them. Didn’t sit with them. Missed what the magi set out to see.
Those who saw something more than a poor infant lying with the household animals, were those who were prepared to see their heart’s desire in a place they least expected. It is always this way. We will always find our God as a child, as the not-fully-formed promise of something more. Are we prepared to see?
Every time we set out to meet our God is Christmas morning. The babe is in the manger. The star is in the east. And we are the magi.
Dave Brisbin 11.21.21 Some ideas are just too big to fit into our minds all at once. We can understand the meaning of the words, but not the significance. The number trillion is thrown about these days the way a billion was a few years ago, the way a million was a generation ago. You can count a million seconds in twelve days, but counting to a billion would take thirty-two years. Breathtaking, until you learn that counting to a trillion would take thirty-two thousand years…
Jesus’ concept of kingdom is like this: contradicts our worldview and experience of life so deeply that even understanding the words, the reality remains out of reach until we take the first tentative steps toward experiencing it. As encapsulated in the Lord’s Prayer—not a prayer to be recited but an expression of the intention to live life prayerfully—we are being asked to release everything we have used to save ourselves in order to be saved by what we’ve not yet considered. That kind of vulnerability and the trust it implies are too big to grasp with our minds and must seep into our hearts by another way.
Every concept Jesus teaches is an exercise in letting go of the small container of our minds and the limitations they represent. He tells us that our Father won’t forgive us until we forgive our brother who we should forgive seventy times seven times—a Hebrew expression of forever. Are we to practice unconditional forgiveness when our Father does not? The part that is too big to grasp until experienced is that all things are one, that forgiving and being forgiven are one and the same. We will only experience being forgiven the moment we free ourselves from our own unforgiveness.
This is what makes kingdom so big. That God has already chosen to forgive us and love us since before time began, and nothing can change that fact. Because God is love, forgiveness, and salvation, and can’t be anything else, God’s action is complete. Against the backdrop of absolute being, our action is the only question left. Once we’ve grasped that, the waiting is over, and kingdom is here.
Dave Brisbin 11.14.21 There was something different about the way Jesus prayed. His friends watched him, watched other religious leaders. They saw their Jewish teachers praying in the marketplace or temple court in full view of the people, saw gentiles praying loud and long, entreating their gods over and over with petitions. Then they saw Jesus, after a grueling day teaching and healing, disappear into the hills sometimes for days, or wake to find him already gone, returning later with the energy and enthusiasm for another grueling day.
The difference was so stark, it finally pushed them to ask, “Lord, teach us to pray.” What is it you do out there in the wilderness for hours or days on end? What is it you do that brings you back to us restored? He tells them not to make a show, to retreat into their secret place, to use few words since the Father knows what they need before they ask. Then he gives them five simple lines. How does that work? How do five lines of prayer take us deep into the secret space of our wilderness and occupy us for hours or days on end?
We have come to view prayer as made of words. We approach God through our minds, which can only understand something by contrasting it with something else, measuring its value against our needs and desires. But Jesus gives his friends a prayer that is more of a blueprint than a prayer. A way of approaching life that changes the way we see, what we can see, and occupies not just hours or days, but entire lives. Five simple lines, five steps along a path to connection with unseen spirit.
These five lines are possibly the most familiar lines in Western culture, yet we don’t know what they mean. Our Father, kingdom come, daily bread, forgiven debt, temptation and deliverance…in Jesus’ Aramaic, they become a process of clearing an interior space for God’s purpose to take hold, allowing us to find all we need in each lived moment, healing from past trauma and remaining undiverted, repeating the process over a lifetime of becoming. Jesus’ five lines are not a prayer to recite, but an intention to live life itself as a prayer.
Dave Brisbin 11.7.21 How do you measure your own righteousness? Kind of loaded word. Maybe “rightness” is better. Do you even think about your rightness spiritually? How you measure up, how you’re progressing, what God thinks of you? The religious authorities of Jesus’ day had it all worked out. They measured their righteousness in three ways: how much money they gave to the temple treasury, how much they prayed, and how often they fasted.
Of course, they made sure everyone knew how much they were giving, praying, and fasting by making a show of every act of ritual righteousness. After all, what good was being righteous if no one knew about it? If it couldn’t benefit you in some way? For a religious leader to act and teach this way naturally puts him or her squarely in Jesus’ crosshairs as he works to redefine how we see our rightness with God.
Some days Jesus would just hang out at the temple, sit and people watch. It’s easy to think of Jesus always on a mission, but a little verse in Mark describes him sitting opposite one of the collection boxes watching the activity. He sees all the big gifts going in, “sounding the trumpet” with their reverberating impact, then a poor widow dropping in two small coins completely unnoticed except by him. In pointing out her willingness to give to others even in the uncertainty of her poverty, Jesus is showing us the real nature of rightness in giving.
Once a gift is defined as a specific amount or percentage, it’s no longer a gift, but a tax. And once a gift is understood as proof of rightness to a God who will reward, it’s also no longer a gift, but an investment. The reward of God is the intimate connection that occurs when we lose our sense of ourselves as separate beings in the flow between us and another. God’s spirit is like the wind: always moving and never seen. God’s reward is the same, always flowing and as unseen as God and spirit. When we can give as the widow gave, in a moment of flow to the need of the moment, we will know just how right we are with God—the reward no one else will ever see.
Dave Brisbin 10.31.21 Most of us realize we’re imperfect. Some of us are even willing to admit it. When Jesus tells us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, some of us are immediately off trying to follow every rule…perfectly. Some give up after a while, and others don’t even try. But if we’re going to take Jesus seriously, how can we be imperfect and perfect at the same time?
Right before he tells us to be perfect, he tells us to love our enemies, because our Father causes the sun to rise and rain to fall on those who are good or not, righteous or not. In the way of the poet, Jesus doesn’t spell it out—layering image on image to bring us to an inevitable conclusion. The way the Father is perfect is that he causes the sun to rise and rain to fall on everyone because they are here breathing and for no other reason. Before we can be imperfect and perfect at the same time, we need to learn to love and hate at the same time.
Seems the hardest thing to do in life is to love what we don’t like, what we hate. Scripture gives us a clue: love our neighbor as ourselves. How do we love ourselves? We don’t generally feel any affection for ourselves, may not even like ourselves, but we feed ourselves and clothe ourselves, shelter, educate, entertain ourselves. When we can see our neighbor as ourselves, a fellow fragile human, even with no loving feeling, loving as we love ourselves becomes possible. But is our enemy our neighbor? Jesus answered with the story of the good Samaritan—whoever is in our path is our neighbor, even if our enemy at the same time. To love and hate at the same time is to see the deeper connection that makes us all the same.
The Father’s perfection is to see us all as one, as those on whom sun rises and rain falls. His perfection is an indiscriminate love, unaware of boundaries or borders, and any moment in which we lose ourselves in a connection so deep our learned boundaries fall away, is a perfect moment. Imperfect people having perfect moments, able to love what we don’t understand or even like. In the moment we can love and hate at the same time, we are imperfectly perfect as well.
Dave Brisbin 10.24.21 Jesus is not here to make us safe. Jesus is here to make us free. We can’t have both at the same time because freedom and security are inversely proportional—as one goes up, the other goes down. We give up freedom to feel safe, and the freer we are, the more exposed and vulnerable. Without Jesus’ priorities deeply set, we willfully miss his message in our obsessive desire for security.
Jesus is always exposing and deconstructing the legal walls we build for security at the expense of the freedom to simply relate to each other in love. As barbaric as an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth may sound to us today, it still makes us feel safe because it promises that any breach in the walls of our safety will be repaid in kind, that mutually assured destruction will be a deterrent to those who would threaten our security.
But Jesus says not to rise up against an evil person. If someone strikes you on your right cheek, offer the left; if sued you for your shirt, give your coat as well; if required to go one mile, go two; give and lend to anyone asks. These directives make no common sense and assault our sense of fairness and security. But Jesus as poet is not speaking literally. He’s figuratively pulling us kicking and screaming from behind the imagined security of our walls. When put back into cultural context, he’s talking about maintaining a willingness to remain vulnerably free to give in our relationships regardless of the insult, infringement, obligation, or burden placed on us.
In Jesus’ culture, the first mile was the mile of legal obligation, of coercion. There is no freedom in the first mile. Nothing of value happens in the first mile—only the security of obeying law. But the second mile releases obligation, and once free, we can choose to remain unfree, bound by law, or exercise the freedom to give what is no longer required. We can’t have both. We can either choose security or the breathless freedom to do the unthinkable: to love beyond law.
It’s all about the second mile.
Dave Brisbin 10.17.21 Is texting OMG—shorthand for oh my God—taking the Lord’s name in vain? Blasphemous, unlawful? Many Christians will answer yes and yes. But a group of Jewish high school students said they just use it instead of an exclamation point and don’t feel God is involved at all, that OMG stands for oh my gosh anyway. Now gosh and golly have been polite euphemisms for God since the 1700s—can’t expect high school students to know that.
Those who answer yes and yes will say that OMG breaks the third commandment: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. (Use of King James for scary emphasis.) But the context of the commandment points to legal contracts, which at the time were “signed,” sworn with their highest authority—God’s name. To break such an agreement was taking the Lord’s name in vain, making it worthless, and no society can survive losing respect for its highest authority. But Jesus takes this a step further, saying swear no oath at all, that yes or no is sufficient, recognizing that for an honest person no oath is necessary, and for a dishonest person, no oath is enough. Be honest, decent, true to your word, and law has already been fulfilled.
Is Jesus literally saying never make an oath? Quakers and Mennonites have believed so, refusing to testify in court or serve in the military where an oath is required. But Jesus is not forbidding all oaths. He’s forbidding vain oaths—those we don’t intend to honor. It’s a condition of the heart Jesus is after.
Is texting OMG forbidden? Following rules to the letter makes us feel safe, that controlling our behavior can control our outcomes. But Jesus is deconstructing the legal walls we use to make us feel safe and justified. Jesus is not here to make us safe. He’s here to make us free. And to be fully free is to be fully at risk, vulnerable. To be fully free is to stop hiding behind defensive walls that also limit and imprison: to come out and make peace with our vulnerability, knowing that only in vulnerability are we connected, and only in connection is it possible to be in love—free to be in Kingdom.
Dave Brisbin 10.10.21 Nearly thirty years ago, my fiancé and I asked our Pastor if he would marry us. I can only imagine how our faces looked when he said no because we’d both been married before, and he didn’t know that we had the biblical justification for our divorces. The church’s reading of Jesus’ sayings on divorce and remarriage was that the only legitimate reason for divorce was adultery, without which any remarriage was an act of adultery as well.
Already in church leadership and pastoral training, he further told me that a leader in the church had to be the husband of just one wife, which they interpreted from Paul’s sayings as being in a series rather than all at once. I remember wondering just when they planned on telling me all this. Having seen pastors send wives back into abusive relationships, which seemed risky and wrong, I’d rationalized it as making every attempt to save marriages. I didn’t realize how deep the scriptural rabbit hole went until I fell in myself.
The shock morphed into a full court press of study to find out whether Jesus really said such things, because how valuable is a faith devoid of common sense and the ability to protect those most at risk? I found a book on Christian divorce and remarriage in which four scholars commenting on the same scriptural passages, came to four different conclusions within the same cover. The light went on above my head that scriptural interpretation was at best an educated opinion, not a mandate from God. It was a hinge moment from which the entire trajectory of my faith has proceeded.
Ancient scripture was not written for us.
It was written for those into whose eyes the authors looked. Those who lived a common culture and language. We’re reading their mail, and the burden is on us to step into their world, especially if we are giving these passages the authority to govern vulnerable lives. When we put Jesus’ sayings back into their ancient context, they make perfect common sense, always protect the vulnerable, and always point to the Father’s love.
I can follow that for the rest of my life.
Dave Brisbin 10.03.21 Stepping off stage after speaking, a woman leads another young woman by the hand who sees only the floor in front of her feet as they approach. The first asks if I would speak to her friend. Without meeting my eyes, she slowly tells of a friend since childhood who married a Jewish man and converted to Judaism, then after a long depression had just committed suicide. She loved her friend very much and was afraid she was now in hell. Rejecting Christianity, committing suicide—two third strikes in a row. When she finally did look at me, the pain was heartbreaking, pleading for an alternative, a way of doing the math that didn’t add up to the answer she feared.
How would you have answered?
A question like this is only difficult from a legal perspective where breaking certain rules requires God’s eternal indifference. Indifference. After all, even God can’t stay mad forever, can he? Jesus literally killed himself showing us his new math: the sum of a relationship that never rests on law plus the sum of a law that never rests on rules—a quality of heart that rules could help form, but only lovingkindness beyond any sense of duty could fulfill.
Converting to Judaism was one young woman’s way of loving her husband, of finding unity in her home among future children, maybe an expression of codependence and fear, but not a rejection of God. In the altered state of her pain, suicide seemed the only way forward, but she didn’t want to die; she wanted the hurting to stop. If I can understand these distinctions and find compassion, what does it say of a god who cannot?
We all break the rules, but do we really break God’s heart? Jesus is showing us that rules are not absolute. They are temporary guides to hold us in place long enough—like a jello mold—until they are no longer needed for the shape of our hearts. Jesus broke the rules of his day to show us how lovingkindness was the only rule that mattered, that sometimes you had to break the rules in order to fulfill the law. Our God is a rule breaker. Always breaking in our favor when we deserve it least.
Dave Brisbin 9.26.21 Desperate for a different outcome, a mother asks me to visit her son in county jail on a drug charge. Visiting an inmate is much like the movies: huge sterile waiting space, walls an unnamable yellowish beige green, bolted down metal benches, stenciled black numbers over an endless wall of doors. Waiting. Lots of waiting. A flat male voice calling my name and two numbers. One for the door, one for the window. Through the door, long corridor with windows on both sides, bolted stools before each with small acoustic panels between that give a bit of break between visitors but no privacy. All the voices of all the conversations ringing through the corridor.
I sit before my window waiting again, struck by the energy in the rows. Women dressed their best—hair, eyes, makeup—parents, grandparents, children as if at family dinner on my side of the glass, all orange jumpsuits on the other. Laughter, pitched voices, Spanish, English, hands not holding the handset waving with the words. I catch a young woman leaning forward almost to the glass. The intensity, tone of voice, soft laughter…she was sitting across white tablecloth and candlelight with her man. Leaning right past window and handset, there was no offense, no charges, just her man. At that moment, she was completely orange colorblind.
Like the elder brother of the prodigal, coming home in disgrace to his father’s open arms, we can cry foul, unfair, unjust. What about the charges, the victims of his offense? It seems God is orange colorblind too—doesn’t see faults. Only love. But isn’t God supposed to be just? He is, in the macro, in groups where love has to look like justice, resolving conflict with the least amount of damage. But God doesn’t love us as a group. Past the group, to the one beloved, where there is no victim, love has to look like mercy and compassion, unbalancing the scales of justice always in favor of the beloved.
We can criticize, even ridicule the young woman. Say she is co-dependent, enabling, a doormat. And maybe she was. But I’d give anything to have my beloved look at me that way. Past the glass. Past my orange jumpsuit.
Dave Brisbin 9.19.21 Have you ever considered the power of your unconscious thoughts? Unconscious thoughts are like your bones. You cover your bones with muscle, skin, hair, and makeup, but though you never see them, it’s all about the bones. Your bones create your true form. Unconscious thoughts, core beliefs we have accepted since childhood, assumptions about life that family, education, and culture have hammered down are the skeletal structure on which everything we think we know hangs.
Unconscious thoughts create our true form, so even when we have consciously decided we want to change and follow a new gospel, changing our bones is not straightforward, quick, or easy. But following a way of life as radically different as Jesus’ Way to Kingdom requires just that: a fundamental change of our unconscious worldview. And primarily, we unconsciously view life and God through law—that obedience to law equals acceptance, and disobedience, punishment. It has been ever thus, and these legal bones outline the true shape of our view of world and relationship.
So if Jesus is to take us on a ride to Kingdom, he first has to help us jettison our unconscious baggage. He says that he’s not revoking the law but fulfilling it in love because the whole law comes down to love—of God and each other. He says that the law is only in force, necessary, until heaven and earth pass away, which in Aramaic means to cross boundaries or limits, to merge together. When we can see the spiritual unity of heaven beneath the physical diversity of earth—the unseen bones of all creation, we don’t need law anymore. With law written on our hearts, whatever we do fulfills the law’s intent, if not its letter.
The law exists only to help us make heaven and earth pass away, merge in our hearts—to see that love is the law…never rules. The purpose of a fish trap is to catch a fish; when the fish is caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of law is to catch God’s righteousness: unity. When unity is caught, the law is forgotten. Where can I find someone who has forgotten law? That’s someone I want to obey.
Dave Brisbin 9.12.21 With two great metaphors, Jesus shows us the effect a person has on everyone near, once they have come to see life through God’s eyes. Salt and light. As modern Westerners, salt makes no sense until we look back to see what it meant to ancient life before refrigeration and antibiotics. But light seems to make perfect sense right away. We think we know what Jesus means, which is probably worse. By thinking Jesus is only talking about the brightness and illumination, the goodness we associate with light, we’ll miss the depth of his meaning.
First, in the Genesis creation story, the earth is formless, void, and covered in darkness until God creates light on the first day. In Hebrew and Aramaic, the word translated as darkness doesn’t necessarily mean blackness, but chaos, disorder, non-functioning, unusable. God brings light: order, harmony, intelligence, support for life. The word translated as created also means to build, differentiate or allocate roles. God separates light and dark, day and night, land and water, male and female and makes them functional in supporting life. The sun is not created until day four, so harmony and functionality are primary meanings.
Second, the darkness precedes the light, is older than the light. Curved, mysterious forces like wind and water precede the straight, ordered rays of sunlight. Each one of us must take this path if we want to follow Jesus’ Way. Enlightenment is only achieved by first descending into endarkenment, being willing to sell off whatever straight-lined, intellectual order we think we control in order to experience the mystery and disturbance of unknowing necessary for seeing truth as it really is.
Like salt, light is also the ability to support life. Not just doing good things for others, but to make sense of life, give meaning, purpose, connection to life. We are this salt and light, but only if we are willing to first experience the darkness that comes before the dawn.
Dave Brisbin 9.5.21 In the poetic manner of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus starts by painting a portrait of the person who has become the Kingdom of Heaven…not entered or possessed it, but has actually come to embody God’s “reign,” God’s will being done on earth. His deepest purpose and pleasure: humility, connection, faithfulness—lived out in human form.
Jesus then transitions to show us the effect such people have on the lives and communities around them with two of his most famous metaphors. Salt and light.
When Jesus says a Kingdom person is the light of the world, that makes sense to us. There’s enough cultural overlap for us to see light as symbolizing an obviously positive effect. But what about salt? Why would Jesus choose salt alongside light? For most of us living a culture built on technology that includes refrigeration and antibiotics, salt has been relegated to table seasoning. But in the ancient world, salt was life itself.
The human body is about sixty percent salt water, same salinity as seawater, and humans and mammals can’t function without salt in their diet. Salt is one of the five basic tastes, but also has the ability to bring out other flavors and add zest to food. Salt kills bacteria. Ancient people didn’t know about bacteria, but knew that salting meat, fruits, and vegetables preserved them and rubbing salt in their wounds healed them. If soil is too acidic to grow crops, salt can be used as fertilizer to balance pH. Salt was so critical to ancient life that it was used as currency—traded equally for gold, silver, fine linen. Treaties were ratified with salt. Temple sacrifices and anointing oil were salted as the symbol of faithfulness, purity, fertility.
To purify and preserve life, fertilize new life, add zest and security to life. Jesus’ first followers would have immediately followed his metaphor.
Who is salt in your life? Who binds your wounds, both physical and emotional? Who encourages you and open doors of new possibility? Who makes you laugh and leaves you better at each encounter? And who would say this of you? When we become Kingdom in ourselves, we become salt in others at the very same time.
Dave Brisbin 8.29.21 Ever watch a movie where you were missing every third word, maybe because of accents, fast dialog, or low volume? At first you listen harder. Then your mind tries to make meaning by contextually stitching the edges of what you did hear together. Eventually you just give up and watch something else. This is essentially what happens when we read ancient scripture and especially the teachings of Jesus concentrated in the Sermon on the Mount. It’s not that we don’t have the right words in our modern translations—the bible is the best preserved and most researched ancient text in the world. We have the right words; we just don’t know what they mean anymore.
We read a line like the first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We don’t realize that the four key words and phrases—blessed, poor in spirit, for theirs, kingdom of heaven—all have idiomatic, cultural, or layered meanings dramatically different than the literal understanding in English. Taking those off the table, we’re left with “are” and “is” as the only words we actually understand.
It’s one thing to know that we don’t know every third word of dialog and remain confused; it’s much worse to think that we do. When we mentally stitch meaning together, we do it through the lens of our worldview, our most basic assumptions of the way life and the world work. And for us as Westerners, that is legal and literal. When we apply a legal and literal understanding to a masterpiece of Eastern spirituality, at best, the Sermon becomes irrelevant—an impossibly absurd set of commands and concepts. We give up and go watch something else. At worst, it becomes abusive, as non-literal, spiritual concepts are turned into religious doctrine and law.
The Beatitudes and the entire Sermon on the Mount are not rules to try to obey or impossible standards that can’t be obeyed—serving to make us passively dependent. They are a wake up call to a new reality: that a God who is humble, connected, and undiverted is calling us to the same attitudes that will absolutely change our worldview.
Dave Brisbin 8.22.21 Remember those Russian nesting dolls? Matryoshka dolls, one inside the other, smaller and smaller, but each containing the whole doll. In terms of Jesus’ teaching, the Bible is like this: open the Bible and find the New Testament, and inside that, the gospel of Matthew. Inside Matthew is the Sermon on the Mount, and inside the Sermon, the Lord’s Prayer. Each one smaller, but containing the whole.
If you were stranded on the proverbial desert island with just the Sermon on the Mount, you’d have not only all of Jesus’ teaching, but the core of all the prophets before him. The first Jewish followers understood the Sermon as the foundation of the Way of Jesus and of theirs as well. Used it as a catechism, memorized it, internalized it, passed it on by oral tradition for thirty to fifty years until finally written down in Matthew.
The Sermon hasn’t changed since Matthew, but our view has. The church hasn’t known what to do with the Sermon for some sixteen hundred years, since we stopped looking at it in the way it was first delivered. If we’re willing, it can be our foundation again, clarifying and focusing again in a way so needed today as more and more people needlessly leave Jesus in search of authentic spirituality…because the church doesn’t know what to do with the Sermon.
The Sermon can reclaim its proper place in our lives if we’re willing to see it again through the eyes of poet Jesus: not defining literal truth as much as evoking a life of radical change, as a balance between knowing and loving, unlearning enough to know how to love enough to see what is uncontained in words.
The Sermon only makes sense within the context of the Kingdom of Heaven, the reign of God’s unity right herenow, the quality of life of someone who has become Kingdom—not a code of conduct to obey, but the gradual acceptance of a gift we could never give ourselves. We don’t enter or possess this Kingdom, that is poet-speak for realizing Kingdom in ourselves as we intentionally live our Way into seeing life through Father’s eyes.
Dave Brisbin 8.15.21 Some six hundred years ago, in what has become a classic of Western spirituality, the anonymous English author of The Cloud of Unknowing is trying to show us the only way we can approach God: “No one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with knowledge, but each one, in a different way, can grasp him fully through love.” This love, understood as pure presence and connection, can only be experienced in the silence beneath words and the rational thought that speaks them.
But even this pure experience must still take place within the context of scripture, ethics, and the needs of our own human relationships so that our experience of love doesn’t become so subjective and inward that it actually becomes abusive. It’s a balance between knowing and loving that takes us to God’s presence, a balance between the concepts and teachings that limit error, and the love-as-presence that is unlimited enough to embrace God as God really is.
Jesus as poet and teacher shows us this balance especially clearly in his Sermon on the Mount. At the same time he’s using the tools of poetry: metaphor, hyperbole, figures of speech, imagery, humor to evoke the experience of presence, he’s also laying out concrete commands that ground us in human relationship: how to pray, loving the enemy, letting go of judgment and worry. It’s the balance between knowing and loving in a poetic package aimed at an audience with no real ability to write. The Sermon is poetry meant to be easily remembered in its original language—to be repeatedly spoken or sung out loud, memorized and passed on in an oral tradition like the Songlines of Australia’s Aborigines. A portable spirituality that we can never lose because we ourselves have become the book.
Poetry aimed at the ear and not the eye, at hands and feet rather than head balances us between passive thought and love in action—between love as free and immersive as the air we breathe, and the desire to steadily work our Way to the vulnerability and gratitude that are the only Way to embrace an unseen gift as it really is.
Dave Brisbin 8.8.21 Have you ever thought of Jesus of Nazareth as a poet? I just asked a roomful of attendees on Sunday morning and got no takers. Truth is, we were not taught and don’t think of Jesus as poet. Jesus remains more or less an extension of ourselves: sharing enough of our values, attributes, and worldview to be comfortable. Truth is, Jesus was outrageously uncomfortable to his own people; how much more should he be to us?
The Sermon on the Mount, probably used as a catechism for the early church, reads almost as if in code to our ears. Illogical nonsense. Why? Because the Sermon is poetry and doesn’t play by literal, logical rules. And even if it’s not technically poetry, it functions as poetry just the same. Metaphor, symbolism, hyperbole, imagery, story, parable, unresolved paradox… Jesus is speaking as poet with the same mission as a poet: to point toward truth that can’t be directly uttered, to recreate sensations, evoke responses, and elicit the desire to engage our own experience, build our own conviction.
When we say that Jesus was a contemplative and a mystic—one who approaches God primarily through presence and not intellect—where can we find that recorded in the gospels? You won’t find the word contemplation anywhere in the bible, but it is evoked everywhere. When Jesus points to birds in the air or a child at play, the almost frenetic activity completely focused only on the moment at hand is the mindfulness of contemplation, and the lesson not to worry, take thought of tomorrow because this day is sufficient, brings the stillness of contentment home. When prayer is moved out of the marketplace into solitude, out of words and into silence, when we pray for the simplicity of the bread of our need this day, we are called to all that contemplation is.
Jesus as poet frees us from our minds to become poets ourselves, if not in word, in deed and attitude. Until we start to read Jesus as a poet, we will miss the core of his teaching in a fog of literalism. And miss seeing the world through his Father’s eyes.
Dave Brisbin 7.25.21 What’s the most important verse in scripture? That could be endlessly debated and ultimately impossible to answer unless asked this way: what is the most important verse in scripture to you? And once it becomes personal, it most likely becomes a moving target as well. Different verses have been signatures for me, changing over time, and recently, Luke 23:34 has been persistently growing in importance: Forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they are doing.
Not particularly warm, and mildly condescending at first glance, but this tiny prayer from Jesus on the cross as he’s being tortured and executed, is huge in implication. It points to a willingness to remain fully vulnerable—undefended, open, compassionate—that under such circumstances is almost beyond belief. And it points to the real meaning of the cross itself: not appeasing an angry God with a blood sacrifice, but displaying perfect love in human form…because love is vulnerability, undefended openness in action, or it’s not love at all.
Christians often think of Jesus as God to the exclusion of his humanity, but scripture is clear that Jesus was fully human, and Jesus tells us himself that we humans are meant to do what he has done: display perfect love through our vulnerability. But how to maintain vulnerability in the face of the attacks of another? Jesus tells us in the second part of his prayer: recognizing our shared humanity in the limiting fears, compulsions, and core beliefs on which we unconsciously act. That until we are aware enough, we literally don’t know what we are doing as we do the harm we do.
In Aramaic, freedom and forgiveness are the same word. To be released is forgiveness, and to forgive is to set ourselves free of victimhood and fear. But we can’t forgive without becoming vulnerable again. Ultimate freedom is found in the vulnerability of forgiveness, which we'll never know until we do the work awareness requires and begin to know what it is we are doing.
Frank Billman 7.18.21 We all have those times in our lives when we get hit hard with tragedy or difficult life events. Sometimes they come in waves and leave us breathless and wondering how to even begin to process them or move forward. In those difficult times we can find ourselves getting overwhelmed by sadness, despair, grief and depression. So how do we deal with this? How do we find our hope and our connection with God? It takes a conscious choice and action that is often uncomfortable in order to find our way back to a place of hope and even spiritual connection.
Three things that help are 1) Keep showing up to our daily routine. Many times it’s hard just to put one foot in front of the other and attend to our daily needs and routine but this is critical to finding a path out. In the 12 step program we call it taking opposite action. I don’t necessarily feel like doing these things but I do them because it’s the right and appropriate thing to do. 2) Keep showing up to our community. We need to feel the strength, love and encouragement we get from the people in our community. They help us remember what is truly important in life–our friends and our relationships with each other. 3) Keep showing up to God. I can only find God’s peace when I seek His company. He is truly the key to my peace and my happiness. If I seek His presence regularly during these times they become more bearable and eventually I find through His grace the acceptance needed to heal. None of this is a quick and easy process but it’s the path to dealing with life when it feels like it’s too much to bear.
Dave Brisbin 7.11.21 We are fast on track to becoming a post-Christian country. Recent stats show that only 36% of the youngest among us, Millennials and Gen Z, have any church membership as opposed to Boomers at 58% and those born before 1946 at 66%. There is a generational changing of the guard, and for the first time, less than half the population are members of a church. Only one in three self-identified Christians actually attends church, and between four and seven thousand churches are closing every year.
Mere statistics can't convey the very human anger, disgust, disillusionment, or apathy that accompanies these numbers, and many church leaders blame “cultural decay” or “changing values" for the decline. But others say those are just symptoms—that the cause is the loss of our first love, our passion for our faith. But why have we lost our passion? Is there a deeper cause for that as well? Viktor Frankl taught that all human life is pointed at meaning. With meaning, life is passionate and alive, because ultimate meaning is love.
By the first century, Judaism had become a legal institution and had lost the ability to guide its people to ultimate meaning in life. Jesus rose up to revive it by breaking through institutional walls and back to meaning. By the fourth century the Church had become a state religion that simply demanded conformity to its own orthodoxy. The Desert Fathers and Mothers rose to revive it by creating their own communities pointed at meaning. By the twelfth century the church was the most powerful political force in the West, but Francis of Assisi rose to quietly start a revival, a movement that exposed the meaninglessness of the church’s power and gave meaning to the Reformation to come.
Five hundred years after the Reformation, the church has now been institutionalized for centuries, again demanding its own orthodoxy rather than guiding people to meaning. In the panic of seeing Christianity fade, there are many calls for revival, but most often they are calls to double down and shore up the traditional institution. The youngest among us have already declared with their feet that such institutions don’t answer their deepest questions of meaning.
A real revival, one that can revive a fading church, is one that goes all the way back to Jesus or at least Francis, freeing people to find their way to meaning, to love, in all their circumstances. Only such people can create a church that inspires the passion of the search for ultimate meaning.
Dave Brisbin 7.4.21 Fourth of July, 2021. 245th anniversary of what? Start of the revolution? Birth of the US? Signing the Declaration of Independence? The revolution started a year before, the Constitution wouldn’t be adopted for another twenty, and the Declaration wasn’t fully signed until the following year. But on July 4th, 1776, the rough draft of the Declaration was approved by congress...we like our history neat and tidy, but truth is messier. Jesus was a revolutionary too. When did his revolution begin? At his birth, death, baptism, ministry, resurrection, Pentecost? Truth is much messier. Jesus wasn’t trying to overthrow his religion or society, but reform both by fostering interior revolutions in as many individuals as possible. But those willing to follow Jesus through their own revolutionary transformations, changed the Roman world as they grew in number—a slow-motion revolution for 245 years until Christianity became the state religion of Rome.
But the moment Christianity became a state religion, the revolution ended. Allied with Roman power, wealth, status, the church could no longer teach and foster interior revolutions—the radical transformation of a person’s heart—but would teach and demand conformity to the institution it had become. It was the moment that the purest of heart fled to the deserts of the eastern empire to continue the revolution by starting the monastic movement in the Christian tradition. And a thousand years later, a little man in Italy named Francis restarted a revolution within himself that through his followers changed their religion and society for a time, until they too became an institution. Eight hundred years later, we need another restart. To follow Jesus is to follow the Way of interior revolution: becoming willing to overthrow the institutions we have built in our personal lives. But the shape of exterior revolutions give us clues to the shape of our own, and the words of the Declaration of Independence perfectly articulate both the blockage to and the boldness needed to reclaim our unalienable right to the love that safeguards those we hold to be self-evident: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Dave Brisbin 6.27.21 A priest says that some of the most egotistical people he knows are clergy. A friend asks why people who believe in a loving, abundant God are not living happy, healthy, abundant lives. Digging down, the reasons are related. True transformation is the merging of enlightenment and maturity, our state of consciousness and our stage of consciousness. The two are connected, but not the same. We can gain insight, understand deep, spiritual principles long before we have the maturity to live out the life of service that is the effect of those principles. We can have a peak or conversion experience at any stage, but our insights are always received at the current stage of development, will have to funnel through the ego, processed and filtered by its vision of reality at that stage.
Stages take time and repeated action to develop, and at lower levels, we are all egotistical: stuffed in the shell of our own personal needs, using the tools of fight and flight to minimize risk and maximize advantage. In the holy name of avoiding pain, we believe we need control, but pain hurts largely to the extent we try to control it. And ironically, suffering (in its original meaning of allowing or enduring) our pain is to crack our ego open to new stages of consciousness that will show us the truth of ourselves as part of a larger organism to which we are in service. Everything Jesus shows and teaches is designed to crack open our egos, let go of the obsessive need for control that keeps us within egotistical shells. Yet if we’re not careful, even these deep insights, funneled through shallower ego stages, become mere religious attempts at control of ultimate outcomes, and the religious among us can remain the most egotistical. And bound egotistically, whatever insights we receive won’t crack the shell that keeps us from the truth of the abundant love and life God offers—that it can only be seen when we’re finally out of control.
Dave Brisbin 6.20.21 What does everything we experience in life teach us about life? What does everything that our fathers, our culture, and institutions demand from us show us about the way life works? That any approval we receive is always based on performance? That the basis of life is legal and transactional? That not only is there no free lunch, there are only so many lunches to go around, and we must fight for finite resources if we want to survive. In other words, life teaches us a scarcity mentality. And we learn that lesson so well that it colors every aspect of life, including our concept of spiritual growth and God.
But Jesus is painting a very different picture because he knows if we apply our transactional view of life to God, as long as we’re fighting for our own piece of God or salvation, love or acceptance, we’re defeated before we begin. Jesus tells us he came so we could have life and have it abundantly. His stories of huge catches of fish that threaten to break nets and sink boats; feeding thousands from a few loaves and fishes leaving baskets full of leftovers; tiny seeds that grow into great trees for nesting birds and yielding crops a hundred fold all point to an abundance beyond belief. The first two Aramaic words of his prayer, abwoon d’bashmaya—our Father in heaven—tell us that heaven, all creation, is the outer face that reveals God’s inner essence. With science calculating up to two trillion galaxies in the known universe and up to 700 billion stars per galaxy, most with planets of their own and up to one trillion species of lifeforms per habitable planet, the heavens show us an insanely extravagant God for whom scarcity is unknown. God is extravagance personified. Like rain and sun, he pours everything he has and is on every one of us all the time, whether we have performed well or not. Realizing that abundance, not scarcity, is the ultimate reality of our lives changes our starting point, ending point, and every point in between.
Dave Brisbin 6.13.21 As good Westerners, we approach spiritual formation with our minds. We see faith as correct thinking, a mental agreement with correct thoughts about God, theology, doctrine. But over the years, I’ve learned not to trust thoughts in my head. I know at best, they are incomplete and inaccurate more often than I’d care to admit. But this is no longer cause for concern: I don’t expect my thoughts to be complete and accurate anymore, and I don’t need them to be. When it comes to spiritual issues that by definition stand outside anything that finite thought and language can express, everyone’s thoughts are incomplete and inaccurate. Book of Proverbs tells us not to lean on our own understanding—to trust God with all our hearts, yet Paul tell us to become transformed by the renewing of our minds…so are we back to correct thoughts?
If we’re ever to understand the Way of spiritual transformation that Jesus taught, we need to come to terms with how our minds are renewed. When we lay Paul’s teaching in Romans and Philippians side by side, we see that renewing our minds is connected to presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, which he spends fifteen verses illustrating as life lived in intimate relationship. We accomplish this by forgetting all that lies behind: lessons learned in pain that only create more pain now, accepted beliefs that only cause more division and dysfunction now. Focusing instead on whatever is lovely and pure, honorable and good in this present moment, heals anxiety with gratitude for God’s presence. Paul is not talking about correcting our thoughts, but that we know our thoughts are correct by their effect on every moment of our lives. There comes a time when there are no more thoughts to think, no new ideas to discover—only the infinitely varied expression of the truth found in our daily lives. To drive our stake in the ground there, at the point of the Father’s love, is the renewal and transformation we seek.
Dave Brisbin 6.6.21 Jesus said that no one can see Kingdom—the quality of life lived in awareness of God’s presence—until born again in spirit. In the same breath he says those born of spirit are like wind, which you can hear but never see or know where it’s coming from or going to. Not very helpful if you’re trying to get there. And that’s the point. Spirit can’t be controlled. The more we try to control it, the more we deny its presence. There is spiritual work, but that is about subtraction, not addition, about removing obstacles that stand in the way of an otherwise uncontrollable encounter. Like the farmer, we can create the ideal circumstances for a harvest, but the plants grow while we sleep. So what is the greatest impediment to our gradual Pentecost of spiritual breakthrough?
Legalism…understood as performance-based approval by any human group: church, society, business, family. It is the reality of the world in which we live, so we can be forgiven for imputing it to God as well. But as long as we’re thinking legally in spiritual directions, we will never see Kingdom, because legalism is just another form of control. We only need control when we’re afraid, and while legalism appears to guarantee security, it perpetuates the fear that is the opposite of the trust of Kingdom experience. A person born of water, performing in the physical world, is entitled to compensation and reward. Those born again of spirit are simply grateful for gifts they can’t see and know they could never give themselves. This radically different way of looking at life is only visible as cracks form in the physical world around us. The way to Pentecost begins as the world begins to crack and reveal a deeper truth: that Kingdom lived between heaven and earth is a balance of performance and powerless dependence. Life and age will begin cracking the world open for us, but our spiritual work brings a sledgehammer to finish the job.
Dave Brisbin 5.30.21 Two questions last week: How do we come to know God, see life as the Father sees it? And how is Jesus the only way to the Father? Great questions, and related—two parts of the same question. Knowing God is central in scripture, but knowing in the Hebrew minds that wrote scripture was not intellectual; it was intimate experience. To them, knowing God couldn’t be separated from the process of experiencing intimacy. Jesus’ Way is the process of experiencing God, seeing our lives through God’s eyes. Jesus can’t be separated from this Way because he lived it, became the shape of the Way—the only Way to experience unseen God in a physical life. And this muscular spirituality that Jesus lived and taught can’t be separated from the physicality of life. If we can’t find God, find the spiritual in the midst of the physical, we aren’t seeing with the Father’s eyes.
Life on earth is all about we as individuals interfacing with all the other individuals we encounter, looking at life through the separation our individuality creates in our minds. Life in heaven is the experience of everything as just one thing, all connected. Seeing with the Father’s eyes is seeing past the illusion of separation to the unseen oneness beyond, literally merging heaven and earth. But as long as we’re breathing here, heaven and earth don’t mix any more than oil and water. They remain distinct…only and until they mix in us. Only in our hearts, in a moment of intimate experience, do heaven and earth mix like paint colors on an artist’s palette. Scripture seems to be showing us five ways to mix our colors, see unseen unity in a world of diversity, and they all have to do with the simplest of daily experience. It couldn’t be any other way. There is no other way. We won’t know or see God out there somewhere. The colors don’t mix in the air. Only in us, in the physical, intimate experience of unseen connection in each moment and each other do we see through Father’s eyes.
Dave Brisbin 5.23.21 Jesus says that if we believe in him, we will do the works he did and greater works than those. Most commentators say that those works are Jesus’ miracles and the greater works are not in quality but quantity—that Jesus’ followers had more time to do more works for more people. But the bible is a spiritual book conveying spiritual truths and principles, and if we take it too literally, we can miss its primary points. Of all the works Jesus did, what did he primarily do? Ask us to do? He tells us over and over, but most clearly in his simple commandment to love each other as he loved us, that we would be known as his followers by our love. Love. Not doctrine or theology or any other litmus test we can imagine.
And to make sure we understand, Jesus shows us and tells us that it’s love of the enemy—in his language, someone of a different tribe, someone you don’t see as your own—that defines the love he’s talking about. Pentecost marks the entrance of Jesus’ closest friends into the freedom of spirit that allowed them to love tribelessly. Baptized in water, they were still thinking in physical and literal terms and living in fear. But at Pentecost, they are baptized again in fire, born again in spirit. What changed their limited, tribal thinking to encompass borderless spirit? The road to Pentecost begins at Calvary—the trauma of the loss of our exterior object of faith. For them, it was Jesus himself. For Abraham, it was Isaac. For the Hebrews, it was Moses. Jesus said it was to their advantage that he go so the spirit would come. An idiomatic way of saying that as long as we are focused on physical objects for our faith, we’ll never see our Helper. Jesus spent his life breaking through ethnic, social, and religious barriers to show us the extent of his love. After he is risen, he passes through walls as if they are not there. He occupies a borderless place between tribes from which he can love indiscriminately and see the oneness of spirit that connects us all. That is work we can do if we wish to follow.
Dave Brisbin 5.16.21 Imagine living in a world where you didn’t understand the workings of nature…where thunder, lightning, earthquakes, eclipses were literally the voice, hands, and face of God? Where impossibly dark nights exploded with stars and the only entertainment were the chants, drums, and dance around community fires at night. Where you never saw your own reflection in a mirror and only knew the faces of those around you? How would you experience life and identity in such a world? Slow, earthy, magical, communal. This is the world from which our scripture comes and when Jesus describes people born of spirit as the wind blowing where it pleases, that we can hear the sound of it but don’t know where it’s coming from or going to, we understand the words, but not the radically different world that gives them deepest meaning. The ancient Hebrew world was amazingly parallel to indigenous cultures today, and we can crawl through a window to that world most easily by looking at those cultures still alive now.
In Hawai’ian, the word “ha” means breath, wind, and spirit all at the same time in just the way that Hebrew ruach and Aramaic ruha do. We can’t say them without making the sound of breath and wind, being connected to them. The Hawai’ian word “alo,” means in the presence of, so aloha means in the presence of breath, wind, spirit—a description of life. To the ancient Polynesians who first discovered the Hawai’ian islands on tiny koa canoes across thousands of miles of blue water, the incessant trade winds always blowing east to west were the breath of God that made life possible. We can’t understand Hebrew or Hawai’ian spirituality without understanding breath and wind and the culture that experienced life in breath. And if we don’t understand life in breath, how can we understand Jesus’ words? As we continue to prepare for our own Pentecost—a breakthrough to trust in unseen spirit experienced as a great wind rushing through the upper room of Jesus’ first followers—there are five principles of Hawai’ian spirituality that define their world, describe Jesus’ world, and can help us make sense of our own, help us learn to see the wind.
Dave Brisbin 5.9.21 Mother’s Day. A few years ago I was asked: I know God loves me, but how do I know he likes me? Made me smile immediately, as it cut right to the heart of things.
Love can means so many things to us, but like is pretty specific—implies affection, genuine delight, pleasure, desire to be with, playful attention, fun. God’s love may hold the fabric of the universe together, but God’s like is what makes us feel loved. Knowing we are liked is one of our most basic needs and is usually what we experience first from our mothers. If we’re not sure God likes us, it’s because we’ve never experienced him as mother, maybe never admitted the possibility of such a thing as Mother God to ourselves or each other. Yet scripture teaches just that. Though God is referred to as Father, there is a perfect balance between ideal masculine and feminine qualities conveyed throughout both Old and New Testaments.
Hochkmah, God’s wisdom, is personified as female in the book of Proverbs, and the Hebrew words for spirit and kingdom, ruach and malkutha, are both feminine, meaning we could literally refer to God’s spirit as “she” and kingdom as queendom. God is often portrayed in feminine terms as in Hosea where God takes his people in his arms, picks them up and holds them to his cheek, draws them with affection, feeds them and cares for them. In the gospels, Jesus always leads with touch, connection, affection before teaching and instruction, showing us it’s only when we have experienced the touch of Mother God in our day to day lives that we can begin to understand the love of Father God at all. God is a perfect God only when both justice and mercy, knowledge and wisdom, discipline and relationship, male and female, mother and father are equally honored and present. The perfect parent is dad acting like mom and mom acting like dad…acceptance and change balanced in a love that contains liking as well.
Dave Brisbin 5.2.21 What kills our ability to trust our lives to the action of unseen spirit? Our fears, of course. We fear death because of the ultimate unknown it represents: whether anything we imagine ourselves to be continues. We fear God’s judgment and hell because we’ve been taught to look at God legally and hell literally. But that is not what Scripture teaches. Corrected by context, Scripture presents a heavenly God, connected, always unbalancing the scales of justice in favor of the beloved—the living definition of grace. And of the five words in the bible that have been translated as hell in English, none of them mean the hell we imagine—a word borrowed from medieval Germanic tribes and a concept borrowed largely from Dante’s fourteenth century poem, Inferno. The closest the bible comes to our notion of hell, the Aramaic word gehenna, like Catholic purgatory, is a temporary place for the wicked dead where the fires are more for purification than punishment. When purified, even the wicked move on.
Does this mean there is no hell? Of course not. But it does mean that if God is not a legal God, then hell is not what we think it is. Hell is not so much a thing as the absence of a thing—the way cold is absence of heat and dark is absence of light, hell is absence of…heaven. We’ll never have a healthy understanding of hell until we understand heaven. Scripturally, heaven and God are the same: to know the consummate oneness and connection of God is to know/enter heaven, right here and right now. The oneness of heaven is the reality of our universe, but our conscious minds create the illusion of separation; our minds create hell and keep us there as long as we identify with our minds more than each other. But once we’re fully involved in life, we stop fearing death, and once we’re fully involved in heaven, we stop living in hell. We have learned to imagine heaven as a place of ideal circumstances. But what if it’s not? What if heaven is the learned ability to see our circumstances as ideal? Connected. Unified. Anywhere. Anywhen. What if, at the end of all our searching, we find that heaven is portable? We don’t go there, we carry it with us wherever we go.
Dave Brisbin 4.25.21 I’ve been getting a lot of questions about death lately. Things seem to come in cycles, and this apparently is that cycle. In the past week, I was asked about death from an eighteen-year-old girl and a sixty-eight year old man, so it’s on all our minds. What happens at death? What happens after death? What does the bible say about death? But between all the questions, what is it we really want to know? The central, mother of all questions? We want to know whether we continue as ourselves beyond death…right? Will we be known and know others as we are now. Eric Clapton famously sang: would you know my name, would it be the same, if I saw you in heaven? All the rest is commentary. We want to know if we’ll recognize each other, historical figures, ourselves, or will we, as Buddhists suggest, return as a drop to the ocean—our consciousness absorbed back into the great universal, collective consciousness?
Why do we fear death? It’s a question of identity of course. Everything we think we know about ourselves, who we are, our sense of ourselves as individuals at all, is contained in our conscious minds. Our egoic minds. And it’s not just the body that ends at death, but those minds as well. Who are we if everything we know about ourselves is taken with our mind? Of course we can never know for sure in a way that will satisfy our minds’ craving for certainty. Scripture doesn’t tell us, once we’ve adjusted for cultural and idiomatic sayings, but there are fascinating clues. Especially telling is an encounter Jesus has with a group of Sadducees, a powerful first century Jewish sect that didn’t believe in afterlife at all. Jesus’ answer to their mocking verbal test gives us possibly the best look behind the curtain we’ll get. Ultimately it is up to each of us to become convinced of what we’re convinced of. But to become convinced of a view of death that allows us to live life fully and abundantly, even as death become clear and present, requires more than just mental agreement with the beliefs of another. Jesus’ Way of living honors life’s paradox not by questioning our death, but by questioning our identity. Once we have experienced that who we are is not anything that can be taken from us, that our identity runs as deep as the Father’s love, we realize we are what cannot be taken. And with that knowing, we can face any question.
Dave Brisbin 4.18.21 Have you always worked for a guaranteed, monthly or hourly salary or have you worked freelance or project-to-project or owned your own business? If you’ve done both at various times, you know how different the experiences are. Working for a salary makes life much more manageable, predictable and smoother than always wondering where the next job or customer is coming from, storing reserves when business is good to cover when it’s not. But the predictability of a salary is also a cap, a limitation on how far or how fast you can progress, and for all the unpredictability, freelancers experience a different rhythm of vulnerability and gratitude that keeps them closer to earth and edge.
When the Hebrews were freed from the slavery of Egypt, they were also taken from a land that had a massive river system that annually flooded the plains with rich silt that fertilized soil and could be harnessed and directed for irrigation, creating a salary of sorts, a thriving agriculture. The Hebrews became desert nomads, living a freelance life, gathering food as they could from day to day, and even when they occupied their new land, it had no natural source of water that could support agriculture. They only had the rains. And though the rains of Israel are cyclic: early and late rains falling in Autumn and Spring, they couldn’t be controlled. They fell from the sky of their own volition, and could only be experienced, never managed. This is exactly the model God intended for his people—cycles of vulnerability and gratitude amid the uncertainties of life. As we approach Pentecost, the celebration of spiritual liberation from our limiting fears, does that mean that life is suddenly experienced with a new certainty and predictability that salaried life implies? When we read the scriptures carefully, we realize for all their newfound boldness, Jesus’ first followers had no more clarity or certainty than they had before. But what they had gained was trust. Trust that amid the uncertainty of life, the rains would still fall at their appointed time, and if they did the hard work of preparing soil and seed, when the rains came, the cycle of vulnerability to gratitude would be complete. This is true spiritual liberation—trust in the midst what can’t be controlled.
Dave Brisbin 4.11.21 We’ve made a big deal about counting to 40 during Lent—forty being the biblically symbolic number of preparation into rebirth, preparing for the new life Easter represents. Lent ended last Sunday with Easter, but even then we were already a week into another count, this time to 49. Jews, ancient and modern, begin counting each day from the second day of Passover through seven weeks of seven, 49 days, with the fiftieth day marking another major festival, the Feast of Weeks. These two festivals, Passover and Weeks mark first the physical liberation of the people from the slavery of Egypt and then the spiritual liberation of the people as they were given the Law that established a new government, culture, and relationship with God. There is a necessary gap, a period of adjustment that occurs between the two liberations—a gradual graduation from the comforting but limiting reliance on physical connection to limitless expanse of pure spirit.
The New Testament overlays on this structure, and after counting to 49, the following day, the fiftieth day, is Pentecost, the day that Jesus’ first followers were freed from the comfort and mental certainty of their physical relationship with Jesus to the full realization of the power of their relationship with unseen God. Just as Jesus told Nicodemus, that we all must be born of both flesh and spirit in order to see the Kingdom of God, the two births, the two liberations are separated by a gap, a period of adjusting to a new, non-physical, non-rational relationship with a God who can’t be named. Jesus says it’s like the wind, which we can’t see or know where it’s coming from or going to, but its effects change everything about everything. In the church, we begin counting our seven weeks of seven on Easter Sunday, and seven being the number of spiritual perfection, seven times seven is that spiritual perfection squared. It’s another time of preparation for our graduation from the comfort and seeming certainty of our physical logic and rational thought to the limitless freedom of a direct relationship with the unseen wind of Pentecost, the spirit of our unseen God.
Dave Brisbin 4.4.21 Easter Sunday. What is the most important single thought to take away from this Easter? After all the Easters you’ve lived through, what single concept will bring you closer to the new life and fresh wind of Easter? We typically focus on the supernatural miracle of the resurrection, of course, but notice that the gospels don’t. They focus on the effect of the resurrection on Jesus’ closest friends. The gospel stories pick up after the resurrection has occurred offstage and follow Jesus’ friends through each of their experiences of resurrection, but not the resurrection itself. The gospels are telling us where to look with their own gaze, telling us what is important to see. And what they show us is that none of Jesus’ closest friends recognize him when they first see him again. They watched him die. They buried him. And regardless of their time with him or what he taught, they fully expected him to stay buried and stay dead. They, as we, see what we expect to see until something breaks the spell of our self-imposed limitations.
For us, the resurrection is a huge supernatural occurrence as well as a huge theological truth. But in the gospels, it’s nothing huge or supernatural that breaks that spell and brings the truth of resurrection home to Jesus’ friends. Just the opposite. It’s the smallest, most intimate gestures and interactions—the tone of voice calling Mary’s name, the breaking of bread at the Emmaus table—small details seen and heard a thousand times break through to prove identity in the only way possible. In intimacy. We only really know someone when we’ve experienced them in the most intimate details, and Jesus’ friends had to re-experience that intimacy with him to prove his identity to themselves. It is the same with us. As long as resurrection remains huge and transcendent, it will remain distant, a thought in our heads. But the moment we begin to see the risen Lord in the most intimate details of every day life, we will realize, as Jesus’ friends slowly did, that life is motion, and we will never find our God among the dead, motionless thoughts in our heads. Only among the living. That’s us, the living. We will find our risen, living God in each face and embrace or not at all.
Dave Brisbin 3.28.21 Palm Sunday. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday, he brings with him a trail of clues to answer the question everyone is asking: Who is this Jesus of Nazareth? His public life’s work, his teaching, even the colt of a donkey he rides are answering this question for anyone who’s really paying attention, yet no one is seeing who really rides that little burro. We all see only what our fears—expressed as wants and needs—allow us to see. And what the people and followers of Jesus see is a savior who will deliver them from oppression and anonymity. But what the authorities see—both Jewish and Roman—is a threat to their power bases in which they are so invested. As with every time Jesus rides into our lives, he presents a paradox: is he a savior or a threat? If we’re afraid of change, relying on whatever status quo we’ve invested, then Jesus is a threat to our power base. But if we’re afraid things will not change, if we’re oppressed or marginalized, then Jesus is savior come to fix our problems.
Now we would immediate say that Jesus is our savior, but allowing paradox to do its work in us, is for us to allow the paradox to stand long enough to do its work. Can we resist the knee-jerk reaction to choose one side or the other, make one side right and the other wrong long enough to see the deeper truth beyond the seeming contradiction? If we say Jesus is our savior, not a threat, we will miss how Jesus saves and from what, because the truth of this paradox is that Jesus can’t be our savior until he’s first a threat…a threat to all our powerbases: everything we hold dear, take pride in, use to advantage. Until everything we’ve piled up in our lives out of fear is cleared out, we can’t even see what we need to be saved from. Jesus is not riding into our lives to save us from oppression or save us from our problems. He’s here to save us from the fear that keeps that oppression and those problems in place, and until we let Jesus threaten all we’ve built out of fear, he can’t save us from the fear itself. The truth will make us free from fear, but only if it first threatens everything made of fear on which we rely. Jesus is my savior and my threat…but not necessarily in that order.
Dave Brisbin 3.21.21 Fifth Sunday of Lent. With Lent winding down, we remember that we have been approaching this Lent not as a negative time of giving things up as penitence for sin as much as the positive, affirmative action of introducing the elements that would clear out our distractions, purify our intent, and mirror Jesus’ time in the fortyness of his desert wilderness. What did Jesus positively have in the desert? Nothing material, but the desert provided all he needed spiritually—the four esses: silence, solitude, simplicity, and stillness. Isn’t it interesting that the absolutely essential elements of spiritual formation, of human meaning, purpose, and identity, are also the most endangered species in our modern, urban life? Think on it: our lives naturally produce the exact opposite of the four esses: noise, community, complexity, motion. Now it’s not that the things our lives produce are bad—they are beautiful and essential as well—but left unbalanced, they delude us into thinking they are all we are, and we forget our deeper selves.
Even in Jesus’ day, he needed to leave his small village with its noise, community, complexity, and constant motion to find the environmental qualities that would force his focus inward toward his Father. And when the desert’s four esses had become his own, he strode out of the wilderness carrying those four elements wherever he went like an astronaut in a pressure suit. These qualities, these four esses were both the impetus toward and result of Jesus’ encounter with his Father, why he could say with authority that he and the Father were one, and why everyone who encountered him was struck by the depth of his presence and the simple truth in his teaching. If we want to follow Jesus to the oneness he occupies with Father, we will need to be willing to place into our lives this silence (turning off extraneous noise and devices), solitude (alone with God time), simplicity (keeping just enough), and stillness (interior balance in a busy life). God’s address is always right on the corner of silence, solitude, simplicity, and stillness. If we want to knock on his door, we need to go there first.
Dave Brisbin 3.14.21 Fourth Sunday of Lent. A woman tells me that covid issues have divided her family to the point she feels her once close family is now like roommates passing in the halls. She was devastated and wondering how it could have happened? Good question. How have the medical and political issues surrounding the pandemic been powerful enough to divide us all the way down to families and marriages? Last few weeks, we’ve been talking about paradox as the means to deeper truth, and here’s a case in point: what paradox is more central to human experience than life and death? How do we live life well always knowing we’re going to die? Characteristically, we’ve been doing it by simply not thinking about death…our society has dealt with the paradox by choosing sides—life, youth, materialism—quickly removing dead and dying to hospitals, morgues, nursing and funeral homes, extending life at all costs, pretending we’re not part of the circle of life. Recent science has even shown that our brains physically reject connections of death as pertaining to ourselves: don’t fire electrically, don’t register the surprise/shock of that reality.
As individuals and societies, we treat paradox as simple contradictions to resolve, choosing a side, so never finding the deeper truth that always presents as surprise. A surprise is the greatest gift life can give us, shocking us into new, more real reality. Why has covid divided us? Created roommates where there used to be family? Because it has stripped off our avoidance of death, made us face our own mortality as well as that of others. And that has made us afraid, and fear divides. But Jesus shows us in parables and sayings related to the Hebrew wedding tradition that death is the surprise that makes life alive—eternal. That holding life and death, the now and not yet in equal embrace reveals the priceless fragility of life even as we anticipate the ultimate surprise that death represents. And if we’ll respect the central paradox of the gospels, we’ll see that resurrection is the surprise that takes the sting, the fear out of death. No longer fearful, we find the truth that makes us free to live life well, even as and only when lit by the surprise of death.
Dave Brisbin 3.7.21 Third Sunday of Lent. Tyranny of the Finite…love that term. Means that as finite creatures, we can’t be everywhere at once, and don’t have enough time to be everywhere eventually. Means we have to choose—and choice means stress, anxiety…after all, saying yes to one thing is saying no to something else, and we could make the wrong choice. In fact, stress and anxiety are how we know we have a choice to make. Make the choice, commit to the choice, stress relieved. This fact of life has taught us to view life as binary, dualistic, sets of opposing elements about which we must choose, if only to relieve the stress. But even as we do, if we want the deeper truth life is meant to teach, then working through the continual paradoxes life presents becomes much more important than the choices themselves. The process is the goal, not the outcome, and we can meet God equally on any chosen path. If we so choose.
How do we work through the paradoxes life presents? Fortunately, Jesus tells us. When a young man comes to him, suspended between the horns of the dilemma that his wealth, power, and piety have not relieved the anxiety of his sense of meaninglessness, Jesus tells him, there’s one thing you lack: sell all you have and follow me. When the man realizes he’s not ready for that, Jesus remarks it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than a rich person enter the kingdom. This wonderful image can mean many things, but what it ultimately means is that if we’re willing to let go of all we think we possess, the freedom of truth will not be denied. But only if. The eye of the needle is too small to let anyone with baggage pass through. When we become continually ready to shed our skins, living in a constant state of childlike, beginner’s mind, we are then ready to follow Jesus through the eye of the needle to the radical freedom that only those who are unencumbered and unattached to their worldview will be able to embrace.
Dave Brisbin 2.28.21 Second Sunday of Lent. Why do Jesus and Paul teach the way they do? Why do they both tell us that the Way to new and abundant life is by focusing on what is invisible, conquering by yielding, resting under a yoke, becoming free by becoming a slave, reigning by serving, being great by being small, becoming wise by being a fool, triumphing through defeat, living by dying, being strong by being weak? Maddening for people focused on the security and control implied in single, accurate, even formulaic answers. But a true encounter with God, a momentary view of life through God’s eyes, is necessarily at odds with the view from a human vantage. God always presents as a paradox between what we think is true and what is now possibly really true. As long as we’re breathing, we will need our human point of view, and until we’re ready to wrestle with how God’s reality fits into human lives, paradox will simply present as a contradiction. And unlike paradox, contradiction needs to be resolved.
A contradiction is a set of opposing elements of which only one can be “true.” A paradox is a set of opposing elements designed to lead to a deeper insight, a truth that doesn’t resolve the paradox, but makes resolution moot. A paradox is not meant to be resolved; it’s meant to be wrestled. Twenty years after a transcendent encounter with God—the vision of a ladder between heaven and earth—Jacob is still only half-baked, halfway through the fortyness of his journey. But when he wrestles all night with the spirit of God, he is wounded, but through the wounding of his own self-sufficiency, God changes his name from Jacob, the schemer, to Israel, the one who has wrestled with God. A good teacher like Jesus or Paul knows that any encounter with God can only be authentically expressed as a paradox, left unresolved, because any single answer is just a picking of sides in a contradiction. A full stop to further truth. A good teacher knows that the process itself is the goal, that the wrestling, not a resolution, is the Way through the fortyness of any paradox we face: especially the fortyness of Lent leading to the central Christian paradox of how Jesus has died, yet lives.
Dave Brisbin 2.21.21 On the first Sunday of Lent, after having been through how many Lents? How many Easters? We’re pretty sure we know what Easter is all about. Just ask us, and we’ll rattle off all our theological truths about the resurrection. But when you bring the certainty of your beliefs to Jesus, you’re in for a shock. What would Jesus say? Probably to sell everything you have and come and see how the big Easter you hold in your mind is blocking a life-sized Easter that can actually fit into your daily moments. Every follower of Jesus, every hero of faith in scripture who received a spectacular revelation, a mountaintop experience with God, was immediately plunged into a forty-ness, a wilderness period represented by the number forty that was a time of consolidation and assimilation, of bringing the hugeness of the experience down into the DNA of daily life. It's the inevitable process in which the great doubt sets back in, but through the action of faith, the great truth distills down for use in real life, if it’s to be used at all.
From Noah and Moses to Jesus, Peter, and Paul, the shape of the journey is the same. And in the story of Elijah, we see the full shape of his journey from the spectacular miracles on Mount Carmel to the humble silence of a cave on Mount Horeb. And what stood between those two mountains? Forty days in the wilderness... Forty days or years is not literal here; it’s the long-as-it-takes time to grow the “shepherd consciousness” of Moses, the humble anawim spirit that can recognize God in the smallest of things. When Moses is still and small enough, he can see God in a burning bush, and when Elijah is still and small enough he hears his God in the kol d’mamah daqqah, Hebrew for the still small voice or better, the silent sound, sheer silence of God that draws Elijah out of the cave of his wilderness. Lent is the church’s ceremonial re-enactment of the wilderness that precedes the new life of Easter, an opportunity to grow deeper into our own still, small selves and an Easter we’ve not yet imagined.
Dave Brisbin 2.14.21 Poor Thomas… As one of the twelve Apostles, the inner circle of Jesus’ first followers, he follows Jesus for years, exhibits his bravery and boldness in following where others feared to go, and according to tradition, carries the gospel as far as India before he was martyred there in 72 CE. Pretty good resume. And yet because of one mistake—saying he wouldn’t believe the report of a risen Jesus until he’d put his hands in the wounds—he’s gotten this bad rap and a demeaning nickname for two thousand years and counting. Extremely unfair, especially when you consider that every one of Jesus’ first followers also doubted his resurrection until they’d had a personal experience with him. Thomas was the only one honest enough, bold enough, to admit he needed a personal experience to bring it home. But further, did Thomas really make a mistake at all?
Jesus teaches in such a way to first break down the assumptions and belief system of the questioner, because without first instilling the “great doubt” in a questioner’s mind, no further enlightenment can take place. Yet we in the West have been taught that doubt is bad, a sin, the opposite of faith. Nothing could be further from the truth. Faith is not thought; faith is action. And the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty, the mental illusion that stops any further action of faith. The doubt and uncertainty that are an essential part of human life are the motivators that make our faith possible. Faith only exists in the presence of doubt, is the ability to act in the presence of doubt. Doubt is part of the divine dissatisfaction that propels us not to certainty, but to the personal experience that convinces us of the truth that makes us free. This is the Way of Jesus, the Way he teaches us to experience truth, and the only Way to the Father… Thank you, Thomas.
Dave Brisbin 2.7.21 A man calls to ask how he can know God’s love is real and not just a thought in his head that he made up or would like to believe. He’s asking the central question without which life remains very scary. I remember asking the same thing about prayer. Was I just talking to myself? How could I know if my prayer was real? By outcomes? By feelings? Maddeningly, Jesus doesn’t tell us. Always comforting but never comfortable, Jesus never gives us the intellectual certainty of a direct answer. He’s not being coy. He knows even if he gave us the “right” answer, it would still just be another thought in our heads. If we think it, we can unthink it and would never know if it was real. Eastern teachers, whether middle or far Eastern, know this about spiritual matters: that the answers we crave can’t be transferred. They must be personally experienced to have the conviction of reality.
Far Eastern teachers have used koans for millennia to show the inadequacy of rational thought. These paradoxical and unresolvable little stories or questions make no rational sense and are meant to muddle the mind and create the “great doubt” that can lead to sudden intuitive leaps. Jesus teaches in exactly the same way, and when you analyze the conversations preserved for us in the gospels, you see one overarching theme: motion. Even when just asked where he is going, Jesus says: come and see--move with me and you will know beyond mere understanding. God’s spirit is ruha in Aramaic and means breath, wind, spirit all at the same time. It’s all about motion; three things defined by motion, that don’t exist without motion. Jesus is telling us that God’s love is a moving target, and the only way we can know if it’s real and not just a thought in our heads, is to move with it. It will be in the motion of love through us to another that we will become convinced that God and God’s love is as real as real gets.
Dave Brisbin 1.31.21 If Jesus were here today, would he be a Republican or a Democrat? Really? What I first thought had to be a rhetorical or facetious question was being asked in all sincerity. And the quick answer: that he would be neither or both, while possibly technically true, would be an evasion, ignoring the complexities and subtext of the question. Such a question deserves to be answered with the seriousness with which it is asked, because at a time when politics have been equated with morality, with opposing positions not simply wrong, but evil, we really want to know. If we revere Jesus, or just believe our opposition does, we’re going to want Jesus in our camp, and some of us are absolutely certain he already is. But if Jesus had any political beliefs, they are not recorded in the New Testament, which means they are not important, non-essential to his message. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have any.
Jesus was a fiercely loyal Jew to the end. He said he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, yet he never refused compassion and assistance to anyone whether from his own camp or any other. He was the first to criticize his own people, then added insult to injury by praising their most hated enemies. Jesus had a side, but his identity was with his unseen Father first—and from that vantage, what he saw far transcended his politics. Over a thousand years before, Moses set up the Tent of Meeting a half mile outside the camp of the Israelites; if you wanted to meet God, you needed to go outside the camp. Just when we think we’ve got Jesus figured, domesticated, co-opted, he rocks us back on our heels. Always comforting but never comfortable, if you want to meet Jesus again for the first time, you will need to go outside your camp. If you’re asking whether Jesus is a Republican or Democrat to justify a position, prepare to be frustrated. His answer will not scratch your itch. And if you’re looking to Jesus in all sincerity as your north star, he will lead you—but prepare to be led well outside your camp, your party, and anything else in which you huddle for security.
Dave Brisbin 1.24.21 Friend of mine, increasingly frustrated that his actions and attitudes weren’t matching the conviction he believed he believed, had a sudden breakthrough one morning: that he was trying to create meaning out of life and something of himself through a sheer force of intellectual will. That he wasn’t taking God seriously—just showing up each morning and letting life teach. As a reminder, he took a Mason jar and labeled it “will/ego” and put on the top shelf of his pantry, so every morning when he goes to get his coffee, he can look up at the jar and say, “not today.” Beautiful little ritual containing a huge truth. Before we can answer abstract questions of meaning and identity, we first need to ask concrete questions of purpose. Why am I here? What is the goal of my life? Questions that define a direction, indicate next steps.
This is exactly what Jesus teaches. He doesn’t give us expansive theology, philosophy, or doctrine—great abstract thoughts. He gives us purpose and direction because the big questions of life can’t be answered by sheer force of intellectual will and never all at once. Meaning as concept can only ever be extracted from purpose in action. Why are we here? To learn to live in connection and love. Jesus tells us if we continue in that purpose over time, lose our lives, our sense of self, in that purpose, we will experience a serial surrender of ego and will that will allow us to know the truth—that everything and everyone really are connected. And the conviction of that truth will make us free—the goal of our lives: freedom from the fear and compulsions that prevent us from living in love. Jesus knows, two thousand years before modern neuroscience could tell us why, that this process of serial surrender is the only Way to the Father, the source and embodiment of that freedom, our Good News.
Dave Brisbin 1.17.21 Ever looked up to realize you’ve driven miles past your exit with no idea how you got there? Who was doing the driving just then? Ever done or said something before you were even aware another choice was possible, cringing afterward? Paul bemoans the same thing at Romans 7 saying, the things he hates are the things he finds himself doing. Says he’s not in control, that the sin living in him is driving. Two thousand years later, neuroscientists believe there are three parts of our brain, but only one is conscious and not always driving. The first one, often called the lizard brain is responsible for our most primitive survival instincts and procedural memory—the things we do over and over, like driving cars. The second, the limbic system controls our emotions and specific memories. What is programmed into our lizard and limbic brains over the course of a lifetime doesn’t just change on a dime because our conscious brain, the neocortex, has an epiphany, a conversion, or even just a desire to change.
This is why Jesus’ first followers called themselves Followers of the Way—not followers of Jesus. They understood that what they thought they knew and believed only showed them the door, but could not take them to the transformation they sought. Jesus says this over and over, that only when we ourselves do what he has done, will we be made free. It’s not enough to believe Jesus with our minds, to understand theology or church doctrine. Those conscious activities don’t get down to the lizard brain where our compulsions and fears really live. Only the daily practice of Jesus’ Way of love and symbolic rituals that bring us back to connection can deprogram what we can’t touch with our conscious minds. The lizard brain doesn’t know the difference between a symbolic act and a real one, so if we create a rich, daily practice of real and symbolic action always in the direction of connection, we will find we’re gradually experiencing the transformation Jesus intends.
Dave Brisbin 1.10.21 As our world seems to spin more and more out of control, becomes more and more precariously balanced, the word apocalyptic is being used more and more as well. We’re becoming obsessed. Movie, TV, and social media content seems to revolve more and more around apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic material, and all this cultural focus assumes that apocalypse means catastrophic destruction—world ending destruction. We get that meaning from its association with the book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. But the book of Revelation gets its name from the first Greek word of the book: apocalupsis…which means, wait for it…revelation. Better, unveiling or uncovering. The point of apocalyptic literature is not the catastrophe, but that in the midst of the destruction, God is still there, temporarily hidden by trauma and loss, but no less present and protective.
The apocalypse is the uncovering, the unveiling of God’s continued presence, the conviction that his promises remain intact, though we can’t see how. It’s ironic that we have come to fear apocalyptic books, when they were originally meant to instill hope, but even with this original understanding in hand, are we still waiting for this apocalyptic unveiling to happen? If we are still waiting, we’re missing the point. Jesus’ Kingdom always carries the qualities of now and not yet—acceptance of and gratitude for each moment, even as we work diligently for change in the next. Jesus is saying that apocalypse, God’s unveiling, begins right now with our own decision to see or it doesn’t begin at all. If we’re really following Jesus, then we are creating little apocalypses every day, seeing God revealed in the most seemingly insignificant details. The truth Jesus is trying to convey is that if we can’t see God now, we won’t see God later…in this life or the next.
Dave Brisbin 1.3.21 Our little dog was attacked by an owl in our backyard a few nights ago—an owl, can you believe it? She came running back in screaming and bleeding and now won’t go back out into the yard. She now sees the backyard as a scary place, even if daytime with no owls in sight. Are we much different? Looking to a new year with hope for change, are we looking with eyes capable of seeing change? This last year of loss has been so profound, and the first week of the new year not much better, that we’ve been programmed into a fearful mindset, a way of seeing that won’t change with the calendar.
Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. And if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness.” It’s that last line that signals to us in English that Jesus is speaking metaphorically. But in Aramaic, Jesus’ native language with its layers of simultaneous meaning, the metaphorical meaning is also literal. He is telling us that until the eye, the view, opinion, mindset with which we look at life is clear, simple, sincere, straight, true—even the light we see, the order and balance in our moments, will appear dark—chaotic, disordered. Scary. With no owl in sight. To rise above the programming of the loss of a year or a lifetime takes an eye clear enough to always choose in the direction of connection with each other and everything in our moments. The change to a new year is a great milestone, but changing the eye of our mindset is what really makes the year new.
Dave Brisbin 12.27.20 It’s the Third Day of Christmas. What does that mean? Three French hens immediately comes to mind from the song. But what are the Twelve Days of Christmas for that matter? The ancient liturgies of Christianity dating back hundreds and sometimes thousands of years have created a yearly cycle of seasons and celebrations that have defined and bonded communities through their common cultural festivals and traditions. We have lost a common liturgical language and practice in the modern West. Strike one, because liturgy is the way a people respond and participate in public and communal worship, and there’s no less need for that now than ever.
Strike two is that our culture celebrates the extremes: the biggest, fastest, youngest, first, last, most spectacular or most spectacular failure. Whatever is between those extremes is flyover country, like Kansas or Nebraska—something only on the way to something else, something important. This is the Third Day of Christmas. Like a middle child, not the first or the baby. What value can it possibly represent? Avoiding strike three is figuring out how the third day is just as sacred as the first or last or any other, and is the task of anyone who really wants to follow Jesus. Learning to love and value the consistency of showing up every day, day in and out, just as presently and energetically as if it were the only day is what constitutes the anawim heart. The heart of one who has learned to live humbly: in the vulnerability, dependence, and gratitude of one who fully relies on God’s presence and provision. Every day.
Dave Brisbin 12.13.20 How in the world could anyone have seen in a helpless infant, born to dirt-poor parents living in the back of beyond, all that Jesus was and would become? When you think about those who first recognized Jesus—Mary, Joseph, shepherds—the commonality is obvious. They are all as poor and invisible to the rest of the world as the infant in the manger. They have learned to be wholly reliant on God because in their lives, there has been no other constant. But there was one more group who recognized Jesus that at first glance couldn’t have been more different than these. Powerful, educated, wealthy, the Magi were all that these poor Galilean and Judean peasants were not, and yet there they are shoulder to shoulder with the rest in front of the child.
Jesus said it would be harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. By Kingdom, Jesus meant the quality and consciousness of a life lived wholly reliant on God, aware of God’s presence and gifting in every moment. When life conspires to harshly force you to the reality of God as the only constant in life, it is amazing enough to retain your humility and gratitude without descending into resentment and bitterness. But what does it take for a rich person to let go of their illusions of control and security, to find that deep down they are just as dependent and wholly reliant on God as well? It is the genius of the Magi that they had taken just such an internal journey to their poverty of spirit before they could ever take the external journey to Jesus. And though we may look poor in comparison to the power and prestige of the Magi, we are rich beyond comprehension to everyone else who gathered around the infant Jesus that first Christmas. We need the genius of the Magi to show us the way to the way toward recognizing our unassuming God in the most unexpected places—each moment of our lives.
Dave Brisbin 12.6.20 If you want to find something hidden by a child, how do you do it? After you’ve searched all over the house, you get on your knees, lower your point of view to three feet off the ground and see all the spaces you won’t see from standing height. And if you want to find the truth hidden in Christmas? Even from standing height, all the details of Christmas point to Jesus starting small. Not just a helpless infant like any other, but also an abjectly poor one, invisible to those fixated on the big and powerful. There are no random details in scripture. Every detail is there on purpose, and if we want to know what was hidden in Christmas by the infant Jesus, we need to get on our knees, lower our point of view to see the truth that can guide us through every moment of our lives.
And the truth is, as in all the metaphors Jesus used to point to Kingdom—his overall metaphor for the quality of life and consciousness that is full connection with God’s spirit—small things can have huge effects. The mustard seed buried in the soil, the leaven hidden in the flour, the gardener who shows up to unseen work each day with no control over the seeds themselves, the child, the Hebrew bride—all point to humble, vulnerable, unremarkable beginnings of the largest and most critical parts of life. Jesus and all of scripture are pointing us to this truth. If we want to live the quality of Kingdom, we need to be willing to start small, but even as we grow, never lose the quality of smallness because Jesus’ Kingdom can only and ever be lived from three feet off the ground. Jesus started small, born a child who never outgrew the childlikeness that allowed him to create Kingdom wherever he went. Jesus never grew out of his smallness. We need to grow back in. That’s a Christmas story we can live every day.
Dave Brisbin 11.29.20 Book of Hebrews tells us that our scriptures are living and active. What does that mean? It means the bible is more than ink on a page. More than the sum of the words. If it’s living, then something happens in the interaction with a reader…when the reader’s heart, author’s heart, God’s heart mix together. If it’s active, it means the words are a catalyst, but that there must be a readiness and willingness in the reader to partner with the words. It means it’s about us as engaged readers as much as God as inspirer. After all, if the message is love, then there must be a beloved.
It’s the same with all our human communication. Any sharing is only as effective as the receiving. I used to think my job as pastor was to make others care as much as I did on any given topic. Now I know all I can do is arrange the meeting. Like a matchmaker, what happens after the meeting is entirely up to others. It’s a hard blow to our egos to admit such powerlessness: that like the gardener who works to bring seed, soil, and water together, the real miracles happen while we sleep. Once we accept that we can’t make miracles happen; we can only create the perfect environment for them to happen, everything changes. We can relax, liberated from things we can’t control. We can work just as hard, but instead of our efforts producing entitlement for an outcome, they produce only gratitude, because the real gift is one we can never give ourselves. In other words, we become living and active—more than the sum of our words and actions: the uncontrollable, untamed fruit of a true human exchange.
Dave Brisbin 11.22.20 We’ve always been taught not to mix our metaphors. We lose impact and don’t make sense if we say something like, “not the sharpest cookie in the jar.” Yet Jesus made a ministry out of mixing metaphors…ok, well, he wasn’t exactly mixing them…more layering them, piling them one on top of another. If your message is spiritual, you have no choice. Spirit can’t be quantified in words, only pointed toward. Metaphor is the language of spirit, and Jesus is masterfully fluent. His central and most expansive metaphor is the kingdom of heaven—his way of pointing to a state of consciousness, a quality of life as seen through the Father’s eyes where all things are one thing, completely connected. But knowing we would misunderstand, both then and now, he uses dozens of other metaphors to point to what it means and feels like to live that quality of life, approach it, sustain it. He piles them up and leaves it to us to sort through, to follow where they lead.
Jesus may not have mixed his metaphors, but we must absolutely mix them into our quest for the quality of kingdom in our own lives. It’s not one metaphor alone, but all of them working together that paint the fullest picture of a life well lived. When Jesus speaks back-to-back of kingdom being like a mustard seed that grows uncontrollably into a huge tree, and also like leaven that leaves no part of the flour untouched, he’s making the same point: that kingdom is both tiny and hidden and huge and unavoidable—both right now and not yet, always here and always coming and becoming. When we take that metaphor and mix it with his metaphors of the child, the bride, and the gardener, we begin to see where he’s pointing…and the next indicated steps along his Way.
Dave Brisbin 11.15.20 Last line of one of the great rock songs of all time: You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave… Just as Hotel California was referring to a state of mind, 2020 has become a metaphor as well. A state of mind, an attitude toward life that even if different for each of us, is now etched into our psyches, and will not just leave as we check out on New Year’s eve. The continuous losses of 2020: Covid infections, lockdowns, social unrest, never-ending elections, have become a virtual war of attrition—a war fought not to win, but to wear down the opponent through continuous loss of resources. Who wins a war of attrition? The one with the most resources. Or the ability to renew their resources.
We’ve all been worn down by this year, sometimes devastated in our loss of spiritual presence, emotional regulation, psychological balance, sense of humor. For Jesus, renewal of these resources is contained in another metaphor he uses over and over when he talks about gardeners and their plants. And in a most telling parable, renewal happens only while the gardener is fast asleep. He knows nothing about how it works, can’t make it happen, just shows up day after day making soil ready for the possibility of growth. The gardener has come to terms with his utter dependence on forces he can’t control, and at the mercy of sun, wind, and rain, he finds his own humility and vulnerability, an interior soil now prepared to receive the possibility of grace. As a society, we haven’t been gardeners for a long time, and if we fight this 2020 war of attrition as we typically do—as warriors—we’ve already lost. 2020 is now a state of mind, a metaphor. If you want to leave, change your metaphor. From warriors to gardeners, as we beat our swords into plowshares, we find the resources to outlast any war of attrition.
Dave Brisbin 11.8.20 A contentious election is past and yet still continues. In a year like 2020, it seems nothing is straightforward. One thing is clear: we’re a 50/50 nation, divided on a razor’s edge over ideology and cultural issues. We lament the division and animosity on both sides, but politics by definition is managing divisions within a group, not erasing them. Erasing divisions requires totalitarian enforcement; short of that, people will always see things differently. It’s our human condition. Politics done well, focuses on the group’s common purpose—life, liberty, pursuit of happiness—to hold the center while compromising to make decisions for the good of all. But when politics loses its way, fear and corruption pulls the center apart until there is no more overlap, no apparent common purpose.
There is talk now of healing and reconciliation. How? Waiting for our leaders may be waiting for a train that never arrives. If we want healing, we need to start with ourselves. We always need to start with ourselves. An insight comes from an unexpected place: Moses pitches the tent of meeting a half mile outside the camp of the Israelites. If you wanted to meet God, you had to go outside the camp, outside tribal politics and adversity. Jesus was crucified outside the city gates, and the author of Hebrews says, let’s go to Jesus outside the camp, for here we have no lasting city—we are seeking the city to come. Where do we ultimately place our hope? Administrations come and go, politics is an ever swinging pendulum. There is no lasting city for us in the mere tools we use to manage our divisions. But practicing presence, we can go outside our self-imposed camps and find the grace of the city to come even as we live and breathe right here and now.
Dave Brisbin 11.1.20 What happens to children growing up in a house with parents who hold such high standards that they are essentially impossible to please? How do children respond when the only acceptance and approval they know seem wholly based on their performance? When they can never know whether their performance will be enough? Faced with a graceless environment, they can either keep trying to earn acceptance and approval or stop—overachievers and dropouts. Of course, these are not hard categories; we move along a continuum between striving for lofty goals and giving up, but one is generally favored. And what is true for children and parents remains true for all of us in our relationship with God.
Graceless churches and theologies produce a continuum from those who follow law, doctrine, and practice as perfectly as possible to be “right” with God, to those who eventually give up the fight. In one of the most vivid stories in the gospels, Jesus is placed squarely between the entitlement of an overachiever and the shame of a dropout. And it is Jesus’ grace, in fact, just the promise of his grace that carries the dropout through the barrier of her shame, off the continuum of a legal, contractual relationship with God, to find that grace is a real thing, even for her. The question Jesus is asking all of us is whether we’re ready get off the hamster wheel of the continuum…whether we’re ready to take an unmerited leap through the paper barrier of our shame and into an acceptance and approval that exists without condition.
Dave Brisbin 10.25.20 Continuing with the theme of grace—the unmerited favor, unconditional love without which there is no gospel at all—we focus on why it is so hard for us to grasp and begin to trust in a way that changes our attitudes and experience of life. The opposite of the concept of unmerited favor is a legal understanding of our relationship with God. Reward from obedience to law is merited, earned, and kills grace because it places us in continuum thinking, seeing ourselves on a continuum or spectrum from good to evil, working toward the point at which we are acceptable to God. Continuum thinking is generally a better way to look at human relationships than categorical thinking that puts people in categories or boxes that can quickly become stereotypes and prejudices. But when it comes to God and God’s love, the continuum breaks down in the face of the infinite nature of spirit. To begin to trust a love that can’t be merited, earned, won, or lost is to take a leap off the continuum. All of Jesus’ teaching, the model of his life, the scriptures, are like the training on the ground for a skydive, which gets you all the way to an open door miles in the sky…but you won’t know skydiving or be convinced of the grace of a parachute until you jump. And you won’t be convinced of God’s grace, no matter how much you know about it, until you jump off the continuum where the impossible becomes suddenly possible. Even something as impossible as amazing grace.
Frank Billman 10.18.20 Grace is one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith. It is a concept that we all celebrate and eagerly accept because we all know that we need God’s grace desperately. The challenge comes in taking grace from a mental construct and making it experiential – moving it from our heads to our hearts. At the root of our difficulty is the nagging question of worthiness. Does God really love us unconditionally? Can the Good News really be this good? The message today will walk through the obstacles to accepting God’s grace and explore part of the process that takes us there because without grace there is no peace.
Dave Brisbin 10.11.20 A conversation with a friend who was just diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer rivets me. From stomach pain to hearing a doctor say that the metastasis was so extensive that she had maybe two weeks or two months with chemo, all in the space of one Covid-empty emergency room visit… Her twin sister flies in and takes her home cross-country to Pennsylvania where family surrounds. Best place she could be, but she tells me of the anger and depression. Wants to know what she did to deserve to die so young? She fears death and wants at least to make it through the holidays and see her nephew’s baby. She’s angry with God. Feels abandoned, and no amount of prayer brings a sense of his presence.
I just listen, asking questions here and there, but mostly waiting for any cue or clue as to how I could possibly help besides just being on the other end of the line. Then she begins talking about her family—her sister and her sister’s children, how much she loves them and they her. Her nephew who is expecting a first child in two months, an aunt who is like her mother and how they spend every moment they can with her. Then she tells me that her sister wants to sleep with her in bed every night so she won’t miss a moment, not even the moment of her death. And that image of her sister’s love is a turning point in our conversation. I ask what she is expecting God’s love to feel like, and she doesn’t know.
I gently suggest she’s already swimming in God’s love but she hasn’t seen it because she’s been looking up instead of across at her sister and her family. It seemed to register with her, and I thought I heard her relax a bit even over the phone. Teresa of Avila said that we are God’s hands and feet in this world, that he has no body here but ours. God’s love is shown through each of us or it isn’t shown at all, and any prayer for connection with God is answered the moment we become present enough to see God in each other. We can’t ask any more than this of God or of life. There isn’t any more to ask.
Dave Brisbin 10.4.20 Have you ever been with someone who was so fully present and focused on you that you’ll never forget the moment? Someone who made you feel at that moment that you were the only person in the world? Or the room at least? Presence is an amazing thing. We can’t easily define it; it’s even harder to practice. But we know it instantly when it is trained upon us. Maybe because it is so rare these days that we instantly know it when we experience the difference. Years ago I had an elderly friend whose presence made me feel completely seen and accepted, and from that example, I can only image what it must have been to stand in Jesus’ presence and have those eyes trained on me. What a gift we give when we give our presence to another person. Why is it so hard for us? And how do become more present? If we look at the ways we can immerse ourselves in the day-to-day areas of our lives, maybe we can find the common thread between immersing ourselves in God, each other, in nature, and in our culture. In the stories preserved for us in the gospels, we see Jesus immersing himself in each of these areas, and through him, we can begin to find our own way to practice presence and become the person who can give it all away again, leaving each person we meet better than found.
Dave Brisbin 9.27.20 The poet Rumi writes that out beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field…he’ll meet you there. When we’re thinking of right and wrong, duty and obligation, law and obedience, we’re assessing our behavior and performance against some standard, and that’s better than not doing so, but it doesn’t make us present to moment and circumstance and whoever shares them with us. Presence is the key to having law and fulfilling it too, as Jesus would say. But presence is elusive and easily misunderstood, because you can be present without being aware and aware without being focused. We need to bring human awareness to the undistracted herenowness we call presence for contemplative prayer, and we need to add focus to presence and awareness to be mindful—focusing only on the task at hand, the person in our path. Jesus said the law would remain until heaven and earth pass away. But the word he used for pass away means to cross a boundary or barrier, to merge into. That field beyond rightness and wrongness is where heaven and earth merge in pure presence, and when we arrive there, obedience is meaningless, because the sense of “other” has no more meaning in the glare of the oneness we experience with everyone in our path. I’ll meet you there.
Dave Brisbin 9.20.20 Still talking about presence as the foundation of Jesus’ Way and the contemplative prayer that will take us there. When Moses came down off the mountain with God, his face was shining, and when contemplatives and mystics come back from their experience of presence, they say strange things to try to express themselves: “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.” (Rumi) What are we to make of such words? When Jesus says unless we hate our fathers and mothers, children and even our own lives, we can’t follow him, what are we to make of that? Truth is, trying to understand the words of those who come back from the experience of presence is like trying to understand the equations on Einstein’s blackboard—a dense wall of numbers and symbols that stops you in your tracks with its sheer incomprehensibility. It’s not until there’s enough of a change in our minds to allow the beginning of a change of habit, habitual action in the direction of the practice of presence, that we’ll get our first inklings of what Jesus, the contemplatives and mystics, and perhaps even Einstein are trying to express.
Dave Brisbin 9.13.20 We’ve been talking about presence. Presence as the foundation of Jesus’ Way. Though Jesus doesn’t use the word presence in the gospels, he’s always talking about love, and love isn’t possible without presence. Love is the effect of being present—what it feels like to be present. To be fully present is to be in love. And what is the effect of being in love? Love understood as complete identification with another is a great definition of humility, fully realizing our position as equals in relationship. And what is the effect of humility? Service, of course. Jesus is always talking about service. For him, it’s the proof of a heart inclined toward his Way, kingdom. Service can be done for all sorts of reasons: duty, honor, obligation, reward. But service done for any reason not present in the moment of connection never reflects love or humility. When service is as automatic as breathing, as essential as good food, it becomes less what we do and more who we are. We won’t need to go looking for ways to serve as much as we’ll see opportunities for service in each moment. And though no one will pin a medal on us for these every-moment acts of service that simply leave people better than we found them…when service has become who we are and how we’re present, no one will need to.
Dave Brisbin 9.6.20 I have been talking with people, so many lately, who have suffered tremendous loss. Seems almost like a flood of loss floating on top of the collective loss we’ve all been experiencing this year. Loss of parents and children to death, overdose, loss of jobs, careers and vocations due to Covid and financial downturns. Losses that fundamentally change the ground of a person’s life. Losses that ask a common question of all of us: who are we when we lose a defining part of our lives? We naturally see our identity in terms of the roles we play, the accomplishments we achieve, and the attributes we display as humans, but anything that can be taken from us is not our identity, and everything it means to be human is taken at death, which is why we fear it—who are we then? If you think about it, all our fears in life stem from the basic fear of loss of identity. When we assume we are the voice that talks to us in our heads, the egoic mind, the “false” self or small self of Thomas Merton, we are continually defining and defending ourselves. But it’s a case of mistaken identity. There is a deeper self that resides beneath our ability to describe or even think about. We can’t find it directly, because that would involve the mechanics of our minds, our small selves that limit such experience. Our true selves cannot be thought about, only experienced—because it’s only in the flow of present experience that we will connect with the ultimate reality we most often call God that reflects back who we really are. It all comes back to practicing presence. When we are truly present, the small self is finally silent, and in that silence we will find all we need to come home.
Dave Brisbin 8.30.20 I was asked this week by someone who said he always asks this question of someone he’s meeting for first time: what is the most important thing you’ve learned in life? My answer was immediate. Presence. He was surprised and said that no one has ever answered that way before. I asked how most people answered, and he said either love or virtue. My spiritual journey has been many things over the years from truth to salvation to serenity and peace to love and joy, but at this point it’s all about presence. Without presence first, we won’t find anything else along the way. Presence is the foundation and the way to love—can’t have one without the other. But then, what is the way to presence? Prayer is the way to presence, but only prayer understood in the way Jesus actually taught and lived it. Jesus tells us not to make a show, not to use words, and not even to bring our needs to the table. To retreat to a secret place both interiorly and exteriorly and connect with a Father who knows what we need before we ask. David in 32nd psalm tells us to find God when he may be found, which is not in the midst of a flood of thoughts and activity. Jesus tells us to pray in his name, his shema in Aramaic, which means his essence and character. The essence of Jesus and by extension, his Father, is pure presence and love. To pray from that attitude and posture is to stand before God as Elijah did—a Hebraism for prayer itself—to stand in a place of spiritual perfection experienced as lacking nothing at that moment. What do you pray for when you feel no sense of need? Presence is the definition of answered prayer as it brings us face to face with the nonverbal Answer to everything.
Dave Brisbin 8.23.20 There are two basic ways we make choices. The first is with judgment—applying all we have experienced and learned to a particular situation or circumstance. We’ve been taught all our lives that it is wisdom to exercise good judgment. Then Jesus tells us not to judge. Are we supposed to throw out all the programming, the learned and experienced data of a lifetime that has helped us survive? Of course not. But when it comes to personal relationships and spirituality, a preprogrammed response necessarily brings the biases and stereotypes that kill relationships by allowing us to make decisions about people without ever being present to them. Which bring us to the second way to make choices: to choose what love requires. What does love require? First and foremost, it requires presence. Love is not possible without presence: being connected, one with the beloved. When it comes to our relationships with the people around us all day long, our relationship with the unseen spirit in all of creation, Jesus is asking us to throw out our programmed responses, our learned categories and distinctions and triggers so we can really see who and what is right in front of us. Love and presence is the same thing looked at from different sides of a relationship. To make loving choices, choices that define us as followers of Jesus—as simply decent people—requires presence and the willingness to throw out the rules if that’s what love requires. The Way of Jesus is the way of presence. Once truly present, we can’t help falling in love. And that’s our purpose as humans—falling in love. Not following rules.
Dave Brisbin 8.16.20 Watching a spider hanging for days motionless in its web up in a remote corner of our ceiling gets me thinking about the purpose of a life lived only to keep on living. Obviously spiders have purpose in the ecosystem, but many people have been telling me during this pandemic lockdown that they feel caught in a Groundhog Day time loop, where every day is like every other, purpose and meaning falling away, depression taking their place. While it’s true that may of the activities that used to give us a sense of purpose whether related to work, church, sports, or entertainment have been restricted or eliminated, where does meaning and purpose really come from? Purpose that survives any difficult circumstance or loss in life? When Jesus is facing his own death, he shows us what he craves most in the garden of Gethsemane. He takes his three closest friends with him and asks them to be with him the way a child may ask someone to stay with them till she falls asleep. Jesus has lost a sense of presence and connection and longs for it as support for his purpose. His friends can’t stay awake; he feels alone, despairing, and terrified to the point of sweating blood. He has lost a sense of presence with his Father, expressed as the need to reconnect his will to his Father’s, and by the end of that terrible night he has done so. It’s presence that brought him back to purpose and meaning that would make the suffering overcome-able. And its’ presence that will make our suffering overcome-able as well. It’s all about presence. At least ninety percent of our spiritual journey is just showing up to presence, because our purpose and meaning is only and always found in our presence to each other. Without presence, a life is only lived to keep on living, and every day is Groundhog Day.
Dave Brisbin 8.9.20 When I first began working in recovery, I heard an AA oldtimer emphatically say that he was grateful to be an alcoholic, and I couldn’t process that statement. How could alcoholism be a good thing? But now a couple decades later, I see how for him, the pain and trauma of his alcoholism created a hinge moment, a point in his life, because of his choice for recovery, that angled the trajectory of his life in a new direction, like an alternate timeline in those time travel movies. Hinge moments are usually only seen in retrospect, years later, but what if we could get a sense of them when they are actually happening? How would that help us step up to the challenges we face and put purpose behind the pain that allows us to overcome? If we consider the shape of the Hero’s Journey—the one story plot we’ve been telling ourselves since we’ve been painting on cave walls—we can get a sense of the shape of our longest journey from birth to death. But we can also begin to see that life is a series of journeys within journeys that always bring us back to our starting point, but altered, with more wisdom and depth with each passage. Every loss we face that changes the world as we knew it, is a call to a hero’s journey. Only question is whether we are answering the call or choosing to sit down in the road, too afraid to move forward and unable to go back. Jesus’ life as recorded in the gospels is a perfect hero’s journey. As is Dorothy Gale’s journey to Oz, Odysseus in the Odyssey, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, and countless other stories. This COVID crisis is a worldwide, collective call to the journey. If we can begin to see ourselves as the hero in our own lives instead of bit players in someone else’s story, we can begin to see the hinge moments, the call to adventure that will take our lives in completely new directions.
Dave Brisbin 8.2.20 A public debate we’ve been having for past few months and past sixty or seventy years is whether violence is necessary to effect needed political change in our society and law. Or can non-violent methods work just as well? Better? Both sides have persuasive arguments, so the debate continues. Martin Luther King brought non-violent resistance to the civil rights movement in the nineteen fifties, but he stood on the shoulders of Mohandas Gandhi and his application of non-violent non-cooperation in his fight for India’s independence from Britain in the nineteen thirties. And Gandhi stood on the shoulders of Henry David Thoreau and his non-violent civil disobedience in response to institutional slavery and American imperialism in the eighteen forties. And all stood on the non-violent teachings of Jesus in the zero thirties. They all believed that non-violent protest and resistance alone had the power to both create fundamental change that would also provide the chance for healing and unity on the other side of that change. That the means we use must match the ends we seek or we’ll never achieve those ends. And these four also believed that non-violence was not just a tactic to achieve certain ends, but a way of life that had to come from deep within the hearts of those who practiced it or it was nothing at all. And this is where it touches us all whether we march in the streets and are politically active or not. We need to decide, regardless of the debate on how best to achieve lasting and needed political change, whether we believe that non-violence—treating each other with the respect and consideration we say we believe is everyone’s right—is the deepest desire of our own hearts. And whether we will practice that non-violence in our homes first and in every personal encounter. Until we do that, Jesus, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King would say we’ve missed the point.
Dave Brisbin 7.26.0 Ever wonder why the world is the way it is? Why isn’t it some other way? Why is life so difficult? Why do we have to eat other living things to stay alive? Why is there so much evil in the world? Death and destruction? Hate, bias, racism, greed? Would you have created the world this way? And if you wouldn’t and God did, what does that say about God? If you haven’t asked these questions, then you haven’t been very plugged in. Humans have been asking as long as there have been humans. And humans have been trying to create a better way, a better world—minimizing risk and danger, maximizing safety and security…but usually not for everyone. The fight we’re in here in our own country is basically over two competing philosophies for making the world better and more equitable for all. Same goal, but very different ways of achieving it, and all the angry voices are missing a deeper point and question: what if the world is just the way it’s supposed to be? What if our main purpose in life is not to change the world but to keep showing up to the work of change? What if purpose is realized in the work itself and not the outcome, and the world as it is propels us toward that true purpose? How we answer such questions will change everything about the way we experience our lives in this world. The world hasn’t changed much since we humans have graced it. And even as we work to make it more secure and fairer for everyone, we’ve got to find a way to see beauty and love in the midst of the chaos of our unfinished business.
Dave Brisbin 7.19.20 I was asked to talk about leadership last week, and I took a deep breath before responding because I realized what a loaded topic it was and how the request itself was coming from a profound disappointment in our current political leadership. I think I said I’d think about it, but the more I did, the more it seemed like it needed to be discussed. What makes a great leader? When I really considered it, analyzed the leaders I admire most, laid their qualities against the leadership exemplified by Jesus, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the qualities that make a great leader are the same that make a great person. When you think on it, we’re all leaders in one way or another, but no matter how small or large the scope of our leadership, the principles remain the same. What was it about our greatest presidents, like Washington and Lincoln, leaders like MLK, Gandhi, and Churchill that is common and points to great ability to lead. It’s easy to criticize the leadership we see or don’t see around us, especially now when our leaders appear oblivious or outmatched by the issues we face. But as with everything else that matters, the search for great leadership starts within us—that’s Jesus 101. In our search for great leaders, we need to look for those qualities within ourselves first, because though we may not find them on the national or world stage, it’s only if we can’t find them within that we are truly lost.
Dave Brisbin 7.12.20 A friend makes the comment that being a Christian is really hard. I ask why. He says it’s hard to meet moral and ethical standards, understand theological and doctrinal concepts, and live the precepts of the church. Well, he doesn’t put it that way, but more or less what he means. He also says it’s hard to put up with the bias he sees in our media and culture and encounters in his own life. Is it hard to be a Christian, or more on point, to be a follower of Jesus? We’ve made our faith so complex in legal and theological terms: created rules upon rules and dense theological arguments trying to describe spiritual realities that cannot be described in words. We’ve tied our faith to the politics and levers of power in each age and generation to better impose and legislate our worldview on others, earning their enmity and prejudice against us. This all makes Christianity hard to be. But does any of this have anything to do with Jesus and his teaching? Jesus couldn’t be clearer: loving God and loving each other—two ways of looking at the same thing—are the twin commandments that contain all the rest. And loving each other in the manner Jesus loves us is the only way we will be known as his followers. Not complicated. While the hardest thing we will ever do is empty ourselves of everything we think we know and hold on to for support, once we do, the kind of love Jesus is modeling follows as night follows day. The Chinese symbol for simplicity literally means “uncarved wood,” the natural state of something before we work it into complexity. If we can’t find the simplicity on the far side of our own complexity, our faith will remain hard, and the freedom Jesus promises, elusive.
Dave Brisbin 7.5.20 My wife tells me we need to talk about hope on Sunday. It’s been so heavy lately, so much to process, so much disturbance, where do we look for hope? That’s the key isn’t it? To continue to find hope, to continue to trust that all will be well in any circumstance. I hear radio hosts glibly throwing around words like endurance, resilience, caring, mindfulness, but it feels true and insulting at the same time. Platitudes. Where can we find a way to hope that still acknowledges the reality of whatever pain we feel? I’ve been fascinated by the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto during WWII since the moment I first read their story. Walled off in a section of the city, over nine to a room on average, fed only 184 calories a day, with no medical services and brutal treatment from Nazi guards, they found a way to survive so successfully that eventually they had to be deported to death camps as the final solution. They smuggled food and other supplies, maintained underground hospitals, soup kitchens, orphanages, libraries, synagogues, school, even a symphony orchestra. Not all, but enough of them found the hope to continue that can inspire us today to do what they did: to creatively restore what was lost, to find beauty in the rubble, and especially to find spiritual connection—solidly, concretely, in each other. Where are we to find the hope we seek in our difficulties? We can say in God, of course, but right here and now, we are God’s gift of himself to us in each other. If we can’t find God in each other, we won’t find him anywhere else…or the hope we need to continue.
Dave Brisbin 6.28.20 The current unrest over race relations has opened and even forced the opportunity for honest discussion about race and persistent inequality in our country. Unfortunately amid the demonstrations and destruction, the extreme voices are the ones heard the loudest, and emotions and rhetoric are high. Is it possible in this climate to actually talk to one another, to learn things we don’t know about each other’s culture and experience that is different from our own? And can we, will we use this present crisis as a head start down the path of self exploration to identify our own biases, hidden or otherwise, that keep us from being fully present to others regardless of race, creed, or political positions? We can allow this crisis to further our growth or we can try to wriggle off the hot seat and retreat to familiar patterns. In a fascinating story from the Gospels, Jesus appears to perpetuate the biased and racist attitudes of the Jews of his day, by essentially calling a Gentile woman a “dog,” the common slur Jews used for those they considered ethnically and legally unclean. What is Jesus doing here? What is he trying to teach us about sticking with the difficult and uncomfortable conversations until we can break through and begin to see the content of character and faith in people beneath the condition of their container or the color of their skin?
Frank Billman 6.21.20 On this Father’s Day we explore the nature and attributes of our heavenly father. Before we look at the scripture it is important to consider what may block us from truly seeing him and understanding his true nature. We can have roadblocks like our early church experience. Or perhaps our earthly father left an impression on us that colors our view of God’s nature. It’s even possible that our understanding of how the world works—our worldview—can impede our understanding of God. These need to be recognized and healed as we begin our journey to truly understanding our heavenly father. Perhaps the most compelling scripture comes from the Old Testament – Micah 6:6-8. In this passage Micah is reminding the Hebrew people that God is not nearly as interested in their sacrifices on the altar as He is in their changed heart and behavior toward others. Micah ends these verses with the simple message of: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Quite an amazing contrast to everything the Hebrews had been taught since childhood. Our journey is often the same. We have to unlearn some “truths” that we learned on our path to adulthood in order to really grasp the nature of God. Concepts like grace, unconditional love, and forgiveness are difficult to grasp and internalize unless and until we remove the baggage that we carry from years of earthly training and experience. And so, we start the journey!
Dave Brisbin 6.14.20 I’m often asked about end times and the apocalyptic passages and books of the bible that support popular end times scenarios. But especially now, there is an increase of questioning as the events of the last few months appear to mirror much end times imagery. A recent survey showed 56% of a group of pastors believing that we are in end times, but what can scripture itself show us about what we can and can’t know about end times? And what is prophetic and apocalyptic literature anyway? And since it’s so easy to get lost in the weeds of esoteric details that are highly contested and controversial within Christianity, are there main themes and guiding principles we can extract that can guide us to a personal response to life in this world? Starting with the famous Olivet Discourse, the “little apocalypse” of the gospels, Jesus first sets the context of his remarks, then makes three big statements that can serve to frame all apocalyptic literature. But as we look beyond that passage to Revelation, Daniel, 1Thessalonians, 1Corinthians, and various gospel passages, we see a consistent imagery that lines up with the primary metaphor ancient Jews used to describe life here between heaven and earth: the extended Jewish wedding ceremony. Understanding the function of prophetic and apocalyptic literature as well as Israel as the bride of Yayweh and the church as the bride of Christ, allows us to sidestep competing interpretive views and the fear they engender while giving us guiding principles for living our faith through turbulent times.
Dave Brisbin 6.7.20 We’re sailing through a perfect storm of pandemic and protest driven issues that are raising deep questions and the need for reexamination of ourselves and our society. Can our scriptures help us at a time like this? I’m asked how we’re supposed to understand Romans 13 where Paul tells us to obey our state authorities no matter what—they are ordained by God. He tells us to pay our taxes and bills and respect our leaders—no matter what. In other letters, he tells us if we’re married, stay married, if we’re single, stay single, if we’re a slave, stay a slave, if we’re a woman, submit to your husband and don’t speak or teach in church. Paul seems completely committed to the status quo, no fight for social justice here. What are we to make of all this and how can it help us in this present crisis? It all comes down to how we are conditioned to read the scriptures. Paul will never make sense to us until we realize that he wasn’t writing to us. We’re reading someone else’s mail. Paul was writing to groups of people trying to live through their own present crises, and if the circumstances of their crises weren’t the same as ours, then specific details of Paul’s answer may or may not apply. An answer can only be true within the context of the question, even if the principles it invokes are evergreen. The first step is giving ourselves permission to read scripture in a different way. The second step is to determine as best we can the prescriptive principles that always apply and will guide us anywhere and anywhen through our own perfect storm.
Dave Brisbin 5.31.20 Pentecost Sunday: Though it’s the feast of Pentecost today, the week of protests and riots are the elephant in the room that demands some attention and discussion. But is there a link between our response to the strife and opposition around us and the deepest message of Pentecost? Or better, would our engagement in Pentecost temper our response to the opposition we face? Between the extremes of the most destructive forces around us, there are still voices in our country calling us back to connection and sanity. Those voices crying in the wilderness are the ones giving us hope that we really will pull back from the brink, just as Martin Luther King’s voice did for previous generations. Reading his words of deep conviction and determination for his people that he spoke while still maintaining the balance and perspective to “learn and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition,” is the message we need to hear again today. And it is the message of Pentecost as well. Peter, a tribal and shortsighted figure who violently struck and injured those who opposed Jesus, on Pentecost became a man who could speak to all the nations in their own tongue so they could understand and respond. Pentecost is the infilling of an infinitely expansive Spirit. When we are ready, the tongues of fire and the wind constantly blowing through are lives will become real enough to fill us with the ability to love and learn from the opposition as much as we do our own tribes.
Dave Brisbin 5.31.20 Pentecost Sunday: Though it’s the feast of Pentecost today, the week of protests and riots are the elephant in the room that demands some attention and discussion. But is there a link between our response to the strife and opposition around us and the deepest message of Pentecost? Or better, would our engagement in Pentecost temper our response to the opposition we face? Between the extremes of the most destructive forces around us, there are still voices in our country calling us back to connection and sanity. Those voices crying in the wilderness are the ones giving us hope that we really will pull back from the brink, just as Martin Luther King’s voice did for previous generations. Reading his words of deep conviction and determination for his people that he spoke while still maintaining the balance and perspective to “learn and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition,” is the message we need to hear again today. And it is the message of Pentecost as well. Peter, a tribal and shortsighted figure who violently struck and injured those who opposed Jesus, on Pentecost became a man who could speak to all the nations in their own tongue so they could understand and respond. Pentecost is the infilling of an infinitely expansive Spirit. When we are ready, the tongues of fire and the wind constantly blowing through are lives will become real enough to fill us with the ability to love and learn from the opposition as much as we do our own tribes.
Dave Brisbin 5.24.20 Thomas Merton wrote that the bible is, without question, one of the most unsatisfying books ever written until the reader comes to terms with it in a very special way. If you’ve never been unsatisfied by the bible, if you’ve never been perplexed, affronted, offended, even outraged by it, then it’s possible you’ve never seriously considered it. What are we to make of God ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son, or Moses being punished with death before entering the promised land, for one infraction in forty years? Or Jesus saying it was for his followers benefit that he was leaving them? Reading the bare words, it’s hard to find satisfaction in such stories. But considering Hezekiah’s first actions as one of the few righteous kings in Judah’s history: tearing down the high places of worship and long standing religious traditions that had led the people astray, the spiritual principles running through all these stories and the main themes of scripture begin coming to the surface. The special way of reading scripture that will satisfy us, even thirty centuries later, lies in seeing the bible as a spiritual book whose physical details always serve a spiritual purpose, and in realizing that the bible will not do our spiritual work for us. It won’t give us the absolute answers to life’s questions we crave, but will give us the compass, tools, and hope we need to find the trust that will take us home.
Dave Brisbin 5.17.20 As the outbreak crisis continues, fear is ramping up in us either directly or through its son and daughter emotions of anxiety, stress, anger, and depression, among others. It’s becoming painfully clear that our fear is now creating new problems and exacerbating others, which brought a quote to mind from another era: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Franklin Roosevelt said that in his first inaugural address in 1933—another era, but as history always shows, one much like our own. It was the fear of the people that had begun driving the Depression deeper, and he was offering the hope of new solution and direction as a bridge to repairing broken trust. Fear is not an evil; it is the means by which we survive the clear and present dangers in our lives. But we need to determine that those dangers are clear and present and whether our fear levels are justified or becoming part of the problem. We can manage fear and use it to focus and motivate ourselves as long as we have hope and trust in the way forward. And ultimately, that means hope and trust in God and the unseen reality of life. Where is our FDR to show us the conviction and confidence we may have lost somewhere along the way? The great mystics and contemplatives, those who have had near death experiences, Jesus and Paul in the gospels and epistles all tell us the same thing. When life’s losses or we intentionally clear out, even momentarily, the thoughts and habitual thought patterns that carry our fear, we can again see what was always there, the ultimate truth of things: that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Dave Brisbin 5.10.20 Mothers’ Day. This pandemic and lockdown has pulled the veneer of so many of our fears in just the past two months, it raises the question: why so many of us who know God loves them are still experiencing so much fear? Did we miss a memo somewhere? A woman once told me she knew God loved her, but wondered how she could know if God liked her. May sound silly at first, that if God loves us, doesn’t that include liking? Or does liking even matter in the face of love? But I think that question lies at the heart of our fears. Liking is about affection, taking delight and pleasure in, a desire to be with, a playful attention that our ideas of love may not include. Love can mean many things and remain more or less invisible, but liking is experienced directly and emotionally. It is like a mother’s love as opposed to a father’s. Both are necessary to our growth, but mother’s unconditional acceptance and genuine pleasure in our presence is the key to it all. 1John tells us that perfect love casts out fear. But we won’t know the love we have is perfect until we know that God as lover also likes us, can’t wait to see us, loves us as much as mother as he does as father. Only when we’ve experienced God as Mother, will we ever really know him as Father, and finally be able to let our fears begin to subside.
Dave Brisbin 5.3.20 The best part of being a pastor is being trusted enough to be invited into people’s lives. To see and be a part of their vulnerabilities and fears as well as joys and celebrations. And during this lockdown, many people I’m talking to have multiple losses and difficult circumstances layered over the quarantine crisis. And each one, whether a death, illness, unemployment, homelessness, a hospitalization, represents a loss of the relationships and routines, the way of life that we call our world and our lives. That experience of being thrust into a doorway between the world we knew and whatever world is coming next is sometimes called liminal space from the Latin word for threshold or limit. To be in the doorway is uncertain, full of unknowns, and is experienced with enough fear and disturbance that we will try to flop back down to one world or another and reset normal as quickly as we can. But Jesus spent his entire public life in the doorways of liminal space. He understood that the purpose of our lives—to see with the Father’s eyes and live accordingly—can only happen in the doorways between the things we think we already know. That only in the doorways are we free enough from our illusions of control and security that we can see past all the distinctions and judgments we create to the unseen connection that is the real truth of things. To accept the disturbance of the doorways, to remain in that breathless state of between-ness is the first step toward the compassion, understanding, and love that always comes from seeing with the Father’s eyes.
Dave Brisbin 4.26.20 Everything in the New Testament is geared toward creating in us a fundamental shift in perspective. To experience the process of learning to see life through the Father’s eyes. To see life in all its complexity, diversity, contradiction, even absurdity of pain and joy from the viewpoint of the one thing it all comes from, is sustained by, and ultimately is. When we can begin to see life from this point of connection, everything changes, and we can finally begin to see the ground-shaking significance of Jesus’ prayer from the cross asking our Father to forgive those who were torturing him because they didn’t know what they were doing. He’s speaking to the human condition as seen through the Father’s eyes. That driven by our fears, we literally don’t know what harm we do and pain we create as we simply struggle to survive. But if we’re willing to follow the shape of Jesus’ Way: to face, accept, and own our own fears and vulnerabilities, we can finally begin to see how they shape our behavior and from there see how the fears of others shape theirs, identify with them and take those first steps toward forgiveness. Because they never meant to hurt us personally; they just didn’t know what they were doing.
Dave Brisbin 4.19.20 As I talk to more and more people being worn down by quarantine lockdown to where some are in real distress, the point is hammered home that our faith, spirituality, and the message we convey must be relevant and useful enough to meet people at their point of need. If the gospel as we understand it isn’t relevant, if it remains abstract—however beautiful as a concept—what good is it? Some recent surveys are showing that domestic violence calls are up 35% in the past few weeks. Chinks are appearing in everyone’s armor, but where there was dysfunction to begin with, there is real distress now. In a Sunday message, we can’t address all the specific issues needed to help specific families and individuals. There are principles we can look at to help us maintain balance and poise in our homes whether living with others or alone, but to talk about principles with people in pain runs the risk of trivializing their circumstances—speaking platitudes to those in need. As true as the principles Jesus gave us for living in relationship may be, they are also unhelpful…unless there is one person in the household who is able to put them in practice in real time in their home. How is that done? There are two ways to look at, each with its own learning curve, but for the person ready to follow the curves and become someone who can really listen, understand the fears driving behavior, empathize, compromise, comfort, and encourage—there is hope for balance within his or her home. Instead of waiting for relief, are you ready to be the person who brings it?
Dave Brisbin 4.12.20 Easter Sunday: On Easter, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, we celebrate Easter virtually via streaming with our community watching a live stream from their homes, setting their own communion tables to fully participate remotely together. Though missing each other’s company, in the following days, it was wonderful to hear how individuals and families created their own sacred space and found connection in spite of isolation. This Easter we try to step inside the minds and emotions of Jesus’ closest friends and followers as they live through the traumatic and mind bending events of Good Friday through Easter Sunday. What were they feeling and trying to understand? And why did none of them recognize the risen Jesus when they meet him again for the first time, and what it was that opened their eyes to finally recognize him when they did? There are no random details in the gospels. Every word and detail is carefully chosen to be preserved because it has something important to teach us. Why do we still look for the living among the dead? To focus beyond the literal stories to the spiritual truths to which they point tells us about our own expectations and beliefs that limit our ability to see new life when it meets us on the road to where we think we are going.
Dave Brisbin 4.5.20 Palm Sunday: On the first day of Holy Week—the week before Easter Sunday that recounts the events of the last week of Jesus’ life and circumstances of his death—the church celebrates Palm Sunday, named for the palm branches waved and laid before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem for the last time. The church has dubbed it the triumphal entry, but Jesus himself considered it a tragedy. Why? In Luke’s gospel, he weeps over the city and predicts its destruction because the people still didn’t know the things that make for peace, that they missed the hour of their visitation. And it’s in the tragedy of the people’s missed opportunity that we find the true significance of Palm Sunday—how it shows us the first step toward Jesus’ truth and only Way to the Father. The people cheering Jesus into the city saw only what they wanted to see, what their fear would allow them to see, as they imagined Jesus as their savior—the fixer of all their problems. And the silent onlookers, invested in the status quo, saw Jesus as a threat to their power base and all they held dear. Jesus was neither fixer nor threat, but something radically different that still requires each one of us to break through the fears and agenda of our egoic selves to see the opportunity for transformation that is riding into our lives at every moment.
Dave Brisbin 3.29.20 Fascinating thing about human nature is that we will do almost anything to avoid uncertainty and find meaning in the events and circumstances around us. And the bigger the event or circumstance, the bigger the cause needs to be to give the event the meaning we crave. But events, circumstances, and object don’t have meaning in themselves—they’re inanimate objects. If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it mean anything at all? It’s we who must bring meaning to the events and circumstances we experience. When we stop asking why something is happening, what it means in itself and start asking how it is teaching us and growing us, then meaning becomes clear…not in the event or circumstance but in ourselves. The first few verses of the book of James could have been written to us right now in the middle of this pandemic. James is trying to get his own people, faced with the persecution and societal meltdown of mid first century Israel, to completely reframe the questions they were asking so they could begin to see the meaning for themselves in the hardship. Because once that meaning comes clear, we can endure anything—knowing it is the very thing that will take us where we really want to go.
Dave Brisbin 3.22.20 On the first Sunday of COVI-19 lockdown, streaming to those in self-isolation, the surreal quality of living the reality of a pandemic outbreak is amplified. In just a week of lockdown, many of us are already strongly feeling the effects of disconnection from each other and the regular routines of life that once connected us. How can we best help each other in times like these—or any times? As always, Jesus gives us the principles: establish authentic connection first, see others and their needs as they really are, respond with action that because it is grounded in connection is always relevant, always feels like love. Connection always takes precedence over program—connection is the only program that matters. Those who are really making a difference during this crisis are those continuing to extend themselves to others, letting their actions flow from really knowing who they are flowing to. The uncertainty of a time like this raises a thousand questions, and maddeningly, the questions we’re asking out of our fear have no answers. But if we just continue to connect in any way we still can: finding the beauty in each moment, cheering a friend, hanging on to humor, helping those who need us, retaining our basic humanity, we find other answers that are much more powerful and make those other questions fade like the stars at sunrise. Living the fear kills connection. Living the connection keeps the fear at bay. Doesn’t kill it, but allows us to live fully in its presence.
Dave Brisbin 3.15.20 There’s an elephant in the room, and there’s no sense not addressing it. The COVID-19 outbreak is unprecedented in the way it is changing our way of life, and there’s a sense that things may never be the same, just as they never were after 9/11. With schools, churches, conventions, restaurants, sporting events, all public venues shutting down, with supermarket shelves empty and people fighting over bathroom tissue, we all want to know how long this will last and how bad will it get? The truth is, no one knows—and that is what is most frightening. In a great article titled the Psychology of Uncertainty, psychologists show us how our brains will do almost anything to avoid uncertainty. Uncertainty can’t be fought, planned for, or outrun. It is the real spirit killer. How can we live through uncertain times like these with our spirits and humanity intact? The short answer is faith, but not as a platitude. Our need for certainty and control has distorted our understanding of what faith originally meant. As Dickens wrote, this is the best of times and the worst of times…and the times are showing us that life is made of uncertainty and bringing out the best and worst in each of us. We can’t outrun uncertainty, but real faith will let us live well in the midst of it all.
Dave Brisbin 3.8.20 If we are to be persuaded to try to make this Lent a transforming process, the creation of a new habitual way of living in greater presence, it’s important for us to have realistic expectation of the result. Most of us would say that we expect peace in some form, and by that we mean we want any and all hurting to stop, an absence of the pain and longing that characterize so many of our lives. But Jesus never promised this. He said that he gives us his peace in one passage, then says that he didn’t come to bring peace, but the sword in another. It’s not until we translate his sayings back into Aramaic that his meaning comes clear. When I was just starting my spiritual formation decades ago, a mentoring pastor said he saw in me a “divine dissatisfaction,” a spiritual unrest and longing for something I couldn’t quite define. When we look at the clues left us in scripture, it becomes more and more apparent that this divine dissatisfaction is there for a reason, and we should pray it never leaves us.
Dave Brisbin 3.1.20 I often say that I’m a teacher, not preacher, by which I mean that a preacher’s main purpose is to persuade, and a teacher’s is to encourage students to engage. Both impart information, but the agenda is different. That said, there are things I do want to persuade my listeners: to be intimately part of a faith community and to passionately engage their own spiritual journeys. How this is done is entirely up to them, but this Lent I have been trying to persuade everyone to use this time to try to establish a new habitual way of making themselves more present to whoever and whatever occupies their moments—and therefore to God in the moment. How is it that we are persuaded to do anything? A marketer says we are persuadable when someone encourages our dreams, justifies our failures, allays our fears, confirms our suspicions, and helps throw rocks at our enemies. When you think of it, these five are all included in the promises of Gospel, if in a slightly altered form than probably first intended. But by whatever method of persuasion, if we can commit to creating one personal sacrament—a simple concrete action signifying an inner transforming intent—and performing it every day of this Lent: if we were to commit to making just one person smile each day, we may be amazed at what can change.
Dave Brisbin 2.23.20 Lent begins Wednesday as it has every year since the seventh century. What do we really know about Lent? For those of us who grew up in liturgical churches, what we learned may have had little to do with the traditions that established Lent, and what we remember now, may even subvert those ancient intentions. What does the word Lent mean? Why 40 days and how was Lent initially used in early church life? What traditions like Pancake Day, Mardi Gras, and Ash Wednesday have sprung up around it and what is their significance? But most importantly, how can we understand and even reimagine Lent to take us on a 40 day journey to the new life of Easter? If Lent became a time of fasting and deprivation as penance for sin, can we use Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness as model to begin to see Lent as affirmative action, as positive subtraction, sensory deprivation for the purpose of clearing away all that distracts from the Presence that will bring new life on Easter? Because just as Jesus’ first followers continued to look for the living among the dead, we need to practice new ways of listening and seeing that will allow us to look for new life, rebirth, where it really lives.
Frank Billman 2.16.20 The way Jesus teaches, through parables, stories, and questions in response to questions, makes clear that a primary intent is to challenge the belief system of the student, to help him or her deconstruct the worldview that is now limiting their ability to see a radically different truth. We all see the world based on several filters or lenses of our personal belief system, and identifying and deconstructing them is essential to spiritual growth because most of them operate on the subconscious level and appear to us as reality itself or the voice of God. Three categories of lenses of belief are: 1)Genetic predispositions--personality type, Myers Briggs, Enneagram; 2) Childhood upbringing, parents, teachers, church; 3) Woundings and successes. There are other filters but these have a huge impact and are a good place to start. If we can began to see what is shading our accepted truth, we can take action to negate or remove the filter entirely and begin the journey Jesus is traveling.
Dave Brisbin 2.9.20 It’s natural for people to focus on law and rules because the world runs on law and rules with the threat of punishment enforcing obedience. It makes the world go round and trains run on time. And the church, as an institution, has largely run on the same premise, which then makes God guilty by association of also looking for obedience to his “law” as the means by which we are accepted and approved. But Jesus and the Hebrew prophets before him are showing us a God running on compassion and mercy instead of justice, and if we’re going to actually follow Jesus’ Way, we need to make sure we understand that mere obedience can never bring us into Kingdom as Jesus defined it. A story in the book of 1 Samuel about David and man called Naval help illustrate the notion that we can still be wicked, even with the permission of the law, that is, lawful and unloving at the same time. God is interesting in lovingkindness, with lawfulness only an external guide to that internal state of connection with each other and himself. As we look at sayings from Jesus, Paul, and John, we see that mere obedience under the fear of punishment shows a missing confidence in connection with God that eliminates fear of punishment and allows us to simply love with a fearless vulnerability that looks like unrestricted obedience.
Dave Brisbin 2.2.20 Continuing a series of exploring difficult subjects, those that tend to really set off emotional triggers and divisive arguments, we have dug into the concepts of salvation, eternal life, Satan and spiritual warfare…and now the question comes about whether God’s judgment on us is predestined or if we really do have free will. Wow, no easy questions here. Just as with salvation by works or grace, there is an immediate apparent contradiction in scripture. Paul seems to directly say that God, from the beginning of time, has already picked the winners and losers—those going to heaven or hell. And Calvinist reformers 1500 years later, based on those passages and the writings of Augustine a thousand years earlier, created a belief system centered on the predestination of God’s elect. Of course, the controversy raged then and still does now, but it doesn’t take much digging to find passages that state absolutely that God draws and desire all people, not just some, to come to himself, and he wishes for none to go astray, some by Paul himself. Once we look more deeply at Paul’s apparent predestination statements in context of the larger passages and Paul’s main missionary objective to bring Gentile followers of Jesus equally into what started as a Jewish movement, a new understanding of predestination emerges. What is predetermined is not a forced outcome by God, but God’s deepest desire and intention that each one of us realizes that we are all equally a part of the family. What is predetermined is God’s choice about us. Left undetermined is our choice about God.
Dave Brisbin 1.26.20 Decades ago, I thought it was important to challenge a Franciscan priest who said he believed that Satan was really a metaphor for our own inclination to evil. He waved me off saying that all he could do was tell me what he was convinced of; that I needed to go become convinced of what I’m convinced of. Now, decades later I am challenged for my beliefs on Satan and evil, and though there is no definitive proof from the scriptures I used then to “prove” my points, I do have a different responsibility than did the priest to at least talk a bit about them. So, is Satan “real” as we typically understand him: a sentient being dedicated to opposing God’s will and effecting our destruction? When we dig into the Hebrew scriptures from within a Hebrew context, we’re in for a shock. The scriptures present at least four different ways “ha satan,” the adversary, can be viewed, and the passages we have used to nail down our popular image of Satan aren’t even referring to such a being in the first place. The Jews who wrote our scripture believed that nothing could oppose God, which carves out a very different understanding of ha satan’s role, and they also believed in a necessary balance between each human’s inclination to evil and good. It’s in that delicate balance between our own inclinations that we can find a view of ha satan that is healthy and helpful in taking us always toward the good that is our God.
Dave Brisbin 1.19.20 One of the drawbacks of the Sunday morning sermon is also its strength: uninterrupted speech. Good for developing and delivering a message, but not for conversation. And conversation, the give and take, question and answer is where ideas can really be conveyed and absorbed. And with a topic as large as salvation that was tackled last week, this Sunday is more about the conversation. Recapping the main lines of thought on salvation from last week’s “Becoming Saved” message, it seemed good to add a bit more thread. It’s hard for Westerners to get their minds around the Hebrew concept of salvation since it’s not grounded in afterlife, but here and now—as is all Jewish spirituality. It may help to understand that salvation and eternal life were equivalent terms to ancient Jews, but only if we know how eternal life was understood. Using Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus based around the famous verse, John 3:16, we get a glimpse from the Aramaic rendering of how eternal life is not life that continues indefinitely into eternity, but is life that is eternally alive, new, fresh, constantly reborn, as always, right here and now. Taking that definition and connecting it to salvation understood as spiritual liberation herenow, and then to Paul’s salvation statements in Romans, Ephesians, and Philippians, a new view of something so central to our faith begins to materialize. Let the conversation begin…
Dave Brisbin 1.12.20 A friend takes me to task saying that he could see that what I write and teach would make someone want to be “saved,” but that he couldn’t see where I was actually telling anyone how to attain salvation. Based on our understanding of salvation in Western Christian tradition and Paul’s line from Romans 10: if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your hear that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, I completely understand why he would say that. But what if the Jews who wrote our scriptures, including Paul, understood salvation differently? And what about Paul then writing in Ephesians that there are no works by which we are saved but only by grace through faith and then further in Philippians that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling? What can three statements seemingly in direct contradiction with each other and an altered view of what it means to be saved by God tell us about attaining that salvation? Digging in, we find that Jesus and Paul are speaking with one voice asking us to spin our assumptions a hundred and eighty degrees and see salvation from another point of view: that salvation is less about attaining and more about regaining—remembering who we are in God’s heart. And that if we’re always looking for salvation out there somewhere, it will forever remain just beyond our reach.
Dave Brisbin 1.5.20 Why are new year’s resolutions so hard to achieve? They are so hard that fewer and fewer of us actually try to make them anymore—especially those over fifty-five year of age. I suppose the older we get, the more we realize the difficulty, which lies in the fact that what we want most, resolve to do most, is not the result of a mere intellectual decision, a stated intention that we make once at the head of a new year. The things most valuable to us are always the result of repeated, ongoing action, discipline, and dedication until the change “takes.” Whether a reputation, character, stopping smoking, or losing weight, a marriage: if we’re not saying “I do” everyday, we’re ultimately saying “I don’t.” This is the same reason it’s so hard to follow Jesus. Because what we consider salvation is not an intellectual decision or stated intention either. Jesus specifically calls himself the “way,” the clear implication that following him is not an event but a process of showing up every day to a radically different way of living and perceiving life and love. His entire ministry and teaching is essentially the emphatic insistence that without a daily willingness to show up as a newcomer with beginner’s mind, like a child, we will never be able to apprehend the transformation of kingdom. In the parable of the Sower—really the parable of the Four Soils—Jesus takes us yet again through the process of following his Way. But unless understood from an Aramaic point of view, we’ll miss the lesson once again, understanding the four soils as and “us vs. them” distinction between believers and unbelievers rather than the internal process of preparing all the soil within ourselves and treat our own salvation as the ongoing resolution it really is.
Dave Brisbin 12.29.19 Anticipating a new year and new decade, how best to prepare and direct ourselves? How best to find the hope, peace, and assurance we need to remain undeterred and undistracted amid the noise and chaos of another year? Coming from an unexpected direction, I get a phone call from a licensed clinical psychologist, a PhD who had a near death experience that was so profound that he had to write about it, asking if I would be willing to read his manuscript. His story stood out among other such experiences I’ve read in its sincere attempt at objectively describing what is inherently a radically subjective and ultimately inexpressible experience—an experience of pure presence, of God’s presence—yet completely devoid of religious imagery. And most interestingly, his description matched in some cases almost word for word the experiences of the mystics and contemplatives who have written for millennia. Whether external circumstances like illness or accident bring us to the point where ego is completely stripped, or whether we live our contemplative practice to point we can voluntarily go to the same place, there is a common experience of the peace and assurance that all is well when we get beneath our conscious thought stream that is constantly telling us otherwise and maintaining the illusion of aloneness. That is the hope and blessed assurance we need to approach this new year, the conviction of knowing that ultimately everything is always and will always be well.
theeffect 12.22.19 theeffect’s Christmas service as a seamless presentation of music and story combines the scripture passages of Jesus’ nativity with original and curated writing, all centering on the incredible story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 between the trenches of the Western Front of World War One in Belgium and northern France. A spontaneous ceasefire in which muddy, exhausted soldiers were able to see themselves in the muddy, exhausted soldiers sometimes only fifty yards away across No Man’s Land. And though wearing different uniforms, these soldiers found the same humanity, hopes, and dreams that Christmas promised nineteen hundred years before and still promises today.
Dave Brisbin 12.15.19 Has the Star of Bethlehem ever fascinated you? The Star that led the Magi to Jesus…what was it really? A miraculous star that appeared and behaved like no other star ever did or could? Or a natural, but perfectly or supernaturally timed astronomical event like a comet, supernova, conjunction of planets or some other anomaly as many scholars have suggested? But even such events, if natural, could never behave as Matthew describes the Star behaving: going before the Magi, unseen by Herod and his advisors, and then stopping and standing over the place of Jesus’ birth. Is there any possible astronomical event that could account for all Matthew’s details? In our continued look at the account of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke, we look at the Star like a forensic detective sifting through the clues left in the gospel to see what may actually have happened. And surprisingly, if we’re willing to look in a direction that is often forbidden in modern, Western Christianity, we find there is one that does. If we’re willing to widen our view of scripture, there is an astronomical event that fits the date of Jesus’ birth, not as we celebrate it, but when it historically must happened, and accounts for all the other seemingly miraculous details Matthew relates—but only if we look through astrological eyes. Astrology in the bible? Not as we understand that term today, but yes, absolutely. Or course we can’t know for sure that this is our Star, but it’s a beautiful thing whenever our scripture and historical fact line up and point us in the same direction.
Dave Brisbin 12.08.19 There’s a word little known in Western Christianity that was a foundation of Hebrew spirituality, appearing throughout both Old and New Testaments. Anawim, plural for anawv in Hebrew, literally means to “bow down” but by extension means lowly, poor, oppressed, or marginalized. But more than that, it refers to people who have accepted this position in life, see themselves as vulnerable and dependent, and are grateful for all provision—realizing that ultimately they must rely on God rather than themselves for sustenance. The humility, submission, and grateful vulnerability of the anawim were understood as the ideal attitude toward life and God, and that it was primarily an interior attitude of heart that was easier to attain if physically poor as well, but available to even the wealthiest. The anawim are held up as the inheritors of God’s kingdom from the Psalms to the Beatitudes, and all the great figures of faith in scripture are anawim at heart regardless of their station in life. Mary and Joseph are most especially anawim, and at Christmas, we recognize that Jesus is born anawim as well. It is the full message of Christmas that Jesus “emptied” himself to be born as an infant no one would recognize as exceptional except those who were also anawim. The shepherds were anawim inside and out—the genius of the Magi is that they were deeply anawim despite their wealth, knowledge, and power. The full message of Christmas is that our God is anawim, treasures those attributes, and that we’ll never recognize him as he is until we become anawim as well.
Dave Brisbin 12.01.19 Why is there so much depression and anxiety at Christmas? One psychologist writes that there are three reasons: the demands of time, preparation, activities, and finances; family dysfunctional issues that are highlighted during the season; and inability to meet expectations placed on us both physically and emotionally. When you think about it, we first experience Christmas as children—learn what our culture says it’s supposed to be through a child’s eyes. And it’s a perfect storm for children: from three feet off the ground, the lights, decorations, candy, treats, magical beliefs, gifts, suspense, and anticipation create a breathless wonder. How do we expect to recreate all that through our adult eyes, looking at a different world from six feet off the ground? To recreate Christmas as our hearts remember it, is to recreate the world in our hearts as the child sees it. This is Jesus’ message to us—that the Kingdom he’s leading us toward is only experienced from three feet off the ground, from the standing height of a child or the kneeling height of a servant. And the genius of the Magi is that for all their learning and power, they retained enough of the attitude of a child to recognize in a poverty stricken infant the king for whom they traveled so far. For us, as in the O. Henry story, The Gifts of the Magi, we see how our full presence to each other in love recreates the abandon of the child that recreates the Christmas our hearts remember.
Dave Brisbin 11.24.19 In the run up to Thanksgiving, we take a pause to ask if anyone knows who established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in the first place. Our thoughts tend to go back to Pilgrims and Native Americans collaborating, but it was surprising to most that it was Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, who instituted Thanksgiving. This is ironic on two fronts: that Thanksgiving was born in the middle of the darkest period in American history, and born of Lincoln, a man of near constant depression at the most stressful time in his life. What allowed Lincoln, as he put it in his Thanksgiving proclamation to see the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies, and the continued beauty of the land and its people outside the theater of conflict? And how did he continue to acknowledge the divine source of that beauty and fullness in spite of his own personal loss and that of the country? Gratitude is an amazing thing. People choose to embrace or not, it seems, based on their ability to see gifts all around them that they could never have given themselves. And even as they work hard to earn their way through life, entitlement never takes permanent residence in their hearts as they come to understand that though we may rearrange the furniture, the house is still a gift beyond our imagination.
Dave Brisbin 11.17.19 Launching a new book is a crazy process. An all-consuming process. A process that takes on a life of its own and sweeps author and marketing team up into a whirlwind of deadlines, strategy, tasks, and emotion. But what does it all really mean? A book hopefully has meaning poured into its pages, but once it becomes a product to be sold, is there any real meaning left— to it and the process of selling it? As with all the tasks, causes, careers, and activities of life, where is the meaning? Maria Montessori said that play is the work of the child, and toys are the tools of that work. We dismiss child’s play as inconsequential and look to our work in the adult world as significant and meaningful. But just as the real meaning of child’s play lies in the motor skills, socialization, and problem solving being learned, the real meaning of the processes of the adult world lies in the humility, vulnerability, interdependence, and connection in relationship that we are learning if we’re paying attention to the tasks within the tasks we engage. The tasks themselves are like the play and toys of the child—inherently meaningless. But if we become aware of the inner task, of what we’re really doing as we do what we are doing, then a whole new world of meaning opens to us.
Frank Billman 11.10.19 If you think about it, we eventually get what we’re looking for. But if we have an ironclad definition of what we’re looking for, we won’t accept anything, however true, if it doesn’t look like the image we already have in mind. A forgone conclusion, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. When it comes to things of faith, most of us have the image in mind of finding the certainty of a faith proven by scripture, church, creed, and doctrine—that if we just master those elements, we will have the certainty for which we crave. But on closer inspection, another image arises: that faith is not about certainty, but about embracing the mystery at the core of life and choosing and taking action as if certain things that can never be proven are actually true…becoming personally convinced along the way. We have lived under the assumption that mastery will take us to faith, but faith as defined by scripture is telling us to make friends with the mystery that will teach us to live in the fearless vulnerability of Kingdom.
Dave Brisbin 11.3.19 If we really accept Jesus’ original challenge to “sell” everything we think we know and cling to for support and survival, what happens? What changes? The short answer is that we descend into a time of voluntary disorientation and disturbance sometimes bordering on panic as we realize our whole worldview wasn’t actually reality but just a set of beliefs, a filter on the world that we chose for ourselves or was chosen for us. And once we’ve looked behind the curtain, everything changes. But to be more specific, if we’re looking at the church and our faith, what changes and in which direction? In his book, a Quaker pastor describes ten new ways to look at Christian faith and church—ways that are possible to see and accept only after we’ve let go of our preconceptions and inherited beliefs. Can we find support for these new directions in the teachings of Jesus? And if we can, then these new ways of looking at church aren’t new at all. They are the reflection of Jesus’ original intent that we can only see with the new eyes we grow on the other side of Jesus’ challenge.
Dave Brisbin 10.27.19 In speaking about the pain and disturbance of breaking out into larger spheres of awareness—being born again intellectually and spiritually—an ancient Chinese philosopher says, “you can’t speak of ocean to a wellfrog, the creature of a narrow sphere; you can’t speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season.” To that I would add, “you can’t speak of perfect love to a human being, the creature of a broken heart.” Our broken hearts, as surely as the frog’s well or insect’s lifespan, wall us off from something so far from our imagined reality as to be inconceivable. How is it possible for us to break through the hurt, trauma, and need for defensive posture just long enough to glimpse the ocean of God’s love? The quick answer is faith—reeling off from the book of Hebrews that without faith it is impossible to please God. But that verse, so often used as a club over the head of the slightest admission of doubt or vulnerability, as if faith was the power we wield over uncertainty and vulnerability, flies in the face of a careful look at what the writer of Hebrews is actually saying. Faith is not the end of doubt, but the beginning of trust—the action of living as if what we say we believe is actually and already true, which brings us out of the narrow birth canal of our limitations and into the bright hugeness of a bigger bite of truth.
Dave Brisbin 10.20.19 Continuing on the previous week’s theme of Playing the Scriptures—finding the inspiration of scripture in the real time connection between inspired author, God, and inspired reader—what is our real relationship with scripture? The Quran, Islam’s sacred book, calls Jews and Christians “people of the book,” noting our special relationship and reverence for the text. But this focus on the text of scripture itself, the need to intellectually understand it as God’s revelation to humanity, has only brought two thousand years of division and persecution, resulting in tens of thousands of Christian denominations worldwide today. Is there another way to read scripture that heals divisions and brings us back shoulder to shoulder in shared meaning and purpose? Seems that is exactly what Paul is trying to do in his first letter to the Corinthians as he tries to heal the divisions among people focusing on different teachers with different interpretations, pledging allegiance to different factions among themselves. Paul is pointing, as Jesus did before him, to a graduation from passive listening and mental assent to an active participation in God’s presence that begins where our understanding ends. That mere obedience to intellectual understanding is the milk of infancy, but the solid food of maturity lies in seeing the book, the teaching, as the reflection of a life that has experienced a conviction that can’t be contained in words.
Dave Brisbin 10.13.19 It is so interesting that bible scholars and commentators for two thousand years have agreed on very little that they read of God’s word and have violently disagreed often as not. And yet the mystics and contemplatives among us seem to unanimously agree on everything they know of God. Maybe it’s not so strange when you consider that scholars are reading words and mystics are experiencing presence, but do written words and unwritten experience necessarily lead to different results? Only when we get so immersed in the words that we lose sight of the experience they were originally meant to convey. Just as written music in notes and bar lines is not the music itself but a bridge between the sound in an inspired composer’s mind and the sound from the hands of an inspired performer, the words of written scripture are not God himself, but the bridge between the experience of an inspired relationship with God and the inspired experience of the reader. Both written music and scripture are meant to be performed, not merely read. Before there was scripture, the writers of scripture had dreams and visions and experiences with the presence of God and each other to guide them, and what they wrote of that experience became our scripture. We now have their scripture to guide us as well, but our experience—our dreams and visions and awareness of presence are all part of the way we must play the scriptures if we are ever to read God’s word the way it was written.
Dave Brisbin 10.6.19 Some twenty-five plus years ago, I walk into the office of a Franciscan priest, bible in hand, to debate a specific doctrinal issue, and before I can get more than a sentence out, he puts his big hand up in the universal stop sign and says: All I can tell you is what I’m convinced of. You go become convinced of what you’re convinced of. At the time, it seemed a supreme evasion, but as years went on, I realized it’s the only thing one person can say to another about the deep things that really matter and can only be proven to ourselves by ourselves. And now as a pastor these past seventeen years, how many times have I said the same to someone with bible in hand as an opening to a very different conversation? The genius of Jesus is to recognize that the truth that really sets us free can’t be transferred to our heads as second hand knowledge, but only applied directly to our hearts as first person experience. The Way of Jesus is an active partnership, a way of living with God, not a passive learning exercise. And he’s calling us to engage at every turn, to find out what we’re convinced of by living the effects of what we say we believe. To speak with the authority of Jesus or a brown-robed Franciscan priest means to have traveled the path ourselves to find the convictions of our own hearts—not someone else’s.
Dave Brisbin 9.29.19 If you ask anyone what they really want out of life, you’ll get a variety of answers from health, wealth, relationship, family, love to meaningful work, purpose, a cause, making a difference to peace and serenity. But why do we want all those things? Because ultimately we believe they will make us happy. But happiness may not be the right word because it implies emotions that are ephemeral. Contentment. Solid, reliable, evergreen contentment. Ultimately, if we have that, we have it all. But we know the stories: people who have most or all items on those lists, still don’t have contentment. So what is contentment made of? Where does it come from? What will reliably make us content? Imitating Jesus, the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the third and fourth centuries left their cities, towns, and villages to live in the seclusion of the deserts of Egypt and Judea in search of the truth that would make them free enough to be content. Their stories give us the clues we need to understand that contentment does not play by rules that are immediately apparent at the surface of life any more than the bedrock topography that keeps a dune field in place can be determined by studying the lines in the surface of a sand dune. As we stop trying to defend rules, laws, codes, theologies, and other standards—lines in the sand constantly blown about by God’s spirit—we can move deeper into the bedrock principles that even as they first appear to defy the lines we so desperately try to defend and obey, will bring us finally to the contentment we desire.
Dave Brisbin 9.22.19 Years ago, I drove all the way to Death Valley deep in the Mojave desert, arriving late at night so I could walk out into a dune field under a really dark sky to see the stars. I wasn’t disappointed. The vast canopy turned overhead with the band of the galaxy angling across, and from my dunetop perch, I felt close to the stars. But was I any closer there than here in the city where I can count the stars on a couple of hands, or during the day when no stars pierce the blue curtain at all? Truth is, the stars are just where they are all the time, whether we can see them or not. And more mind bendingly, there are stars beneath our feet as well. It’s just that the ball we’re standing on always obscures. God’s presence is like the stars—always there whether we see/feel it or not. To realize that God’s presence overhead can be obscured by the rising of our nearest star—our own consciousness, and God’s presence beneath our feet is hidden by our focus on the needs of our physical lives and our very worldview. To conceive of a presence that is everywhere at once, equal density and distribution like the stars in every direction, is a first step. But meditatively practicing the setting of our conscious thought stream to create a dark sky for God’s presence overhead, and mindfully practicing the sensing of God’s presence beneath our feet during the whirlwind of our daily lives is the experience of a presence that will remain real whether we feel it or not.
Dave Brisbin 9.15.19 Our main mission at theeffect is to reintroduce Jesus to Western people. To meet Jesus again for the first time is to meet an ancient, Eastern Jesus who can speak again for himself, stripped of two thousand years of Western commentary and interpretation. And looking at Jesus through the eyes of those who followed first, hearing him from his own context and worldview, what is the essence, the foundation of his life and message? That’s what we really want to know, but to simply know is only an open doorway. Jesus’ real message is about what happens when we walk through and what it costs to walk through. To say that Jesus’ essential message is love is both true and misleading at the same time. The Father’s love that Jesus is trying to convey is so absolute and radical that it levels each and every one of us in the sameness of its indiscriminate covering. We strive our entire lives to be different, to be above, beyond, better, bigger, than others in order to be noticed, loved, and accepted. But what Jesus is trying to show and tell us is that when love is perfect, we’re not loved because we’re different, we’re loved because we’re the same. God’s love levels us before it lifts us; we can’t have one without the other. And if we’re not willing to accept the leveling, the sameness of the love and ourselves, we can never experience the lifting. As we work so hard to get God to overlook our flaws and focus on our accomplishments, reeling off our justification for ourselves, God is simply waiting for us to take a breath so he can interrupt and say, relax, it’s alright, hush now…you had me at hello.
Dave Brisbin 9.8.19 One of my most indelible memories is freefalling from twelve thousand five hundred feet. All these years later, my skydive remains both a clear memory and a clear metaphor. To do an accelerated freefall— jump without a jumpmaster strapped to your back, meant eight hours of training on the ground. And all day long I felt the fear growing until it was at the base of my throat as I stood holding the edge of the open door of a plane looking down at over two miles of air. As long as I was holding the door, I had a choice to jump or not…and I also had fear. But as soon as I pushed off, after the initial shock, I settled down to the business of doing what I was trained to do. Once the choice of whether to jump was removed and a sequence of events started that would end at the ground one way or another, all that was left was to trust the people who had jumped before and survived, my training and the bedsheet on my back, and to simply enjoy the ride. The fear was gone. After my jump, I began to realize how much life is like this. We’re all skydivers; you’re freefalling right now, where you sit reading this. Since the moment we were pushed out of our mother’s fuselage, we’ve been falling to the ground of our death. We didn’t choose to jump, but we’re falling and the only thing left to do is what we know to do in terms of how to fall with those around us, trust those who have jumped before us who tell us we’ll survive our contact with the ground, and enjoy the ride. We crave clarity, but it’s really all about trust amid the breathless uncertainty of the fall.
Dave Brisbin 9.1.19 For past few weeks, we have been working through paradoxes, seeming contradictions—sticking points to being able to really trust our spiritual journeys. And nothing seems to stick us more than the difficulties, traumas, and sorrows of life. How are we supposed to understand them and their meaning in our lives? We’ve been programmed by church and culture to see them as evils in life, signs of God’s disapproval, chastisement, or correction—to be avoided or prayed away. But Jesus has a very different take that is illustrated well by Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet—that joy and sorrow are pulled from the same well, that joy is sorrow unmasked, and that the more that sorrow carves into our being, the more joy we can contain. What is Jesus saying when he tells us we’re blessed, fortunate, when we mourn—that our mourning is also the source of our comfort? There is a relationship between joy and sorrow that has nothing to do with the good and evil labels we typically attach. As we look deeper, we find that both joy and sorrow are not contained in the person, place, or thing in front of us, but in the condition of our own hearts. When we open our hearts to another, it is an absolute certainty that we will feel both joy and sorrow over time. And if we close our hearts to prevent the sorrow, we also prevent the possibility of joy and our ability to follow Jesus into Kingdom.
Dave Brisbin 8.25.19 My wife suggests I speak about hope, and I’d been given some hope this week, but in a way that is a bit harder to express than I’d like. Had a dream of a conversation with an old friend who took his own life just over three years ago. It was a full role reversal, where I—who’d been pastor and counselor in our time together—was now student as he was counseling me. And I can’t remember anything he actually said, but it was the way he said it that was arresting: with a presence, a calm assurance, gravity, and confidence that he didn’t display in life. And all the emotion that I realized I hadn’t fully processed in three years welled up in me, and all I could croak out was, “I miss you so much.” And his wordless reply was the centerpiece of it all. Just a look that didn’t include sadness or regret or even sympathy. There was a knowing in his eyes that said he recognized my pain and my fears, but that he was part of a different reality now, an unbroken connection that I could see as well, right now if I so chose. The dream has stuck with me, and as I think more on it, my friend’s wordless message restates the teachings of our Hebrew scriptures from Genesis to Jesus, and tells us that as bad as things can get here in this life, the whole universe was created for us as a nest in which to grow and find our purpose. And in that nest, nothing of what we really are is ever at risk. We have everything we need to find that different reality that looks like presence, calm assurance, gravity, and confidence in unbroken connection. Was pretty hopeful to me.
Dave Brisbin 8.18.19 It’s no secret that religious vocations and church attendance and membership continue to decline in the US and West in general. But even so, as religious affiliation and participation declines, more and more people, especially young people are describing themselves as spiritual and finding ways to express that spirituality. And the direction of the shift is nearly always in the same direction—toward a contemplative, even mystical spirituality. Considering three stories: a Carmelite order of nuns formally shifting back to ancient rites and rituals, a young Southern Baptist man who converted and became ordained into the priesthood of the Eastern Orthodox church, and a young Pentecostal man who moved to the Unitarian church and then on to discover the contemplative Christian tradition all tell this same tale of a need for a deeper, more rooted spirituality. It’s as if we in the modern West are feeling a collective need, the presence of a missing piece of ourselves, much like the phantom limb phenomenon in which amputees still feel their missing limbs. We know we’re missing an essential piece and are looking to find it in more rooted and ancient forms that anchor us to something much larger than ourselves. When we look again at Jesus from a Hebrew point of view, from the Beatitudes to his time in the wilderness, we see the same longing in Jesus to find the missing piece he found in his Father. If we desire, we can let our phantom limbs guide us back to the spirituality Jesus first practiced and taught and find what he found along the way.
Dave Brisbin 8.11.19 There is a persistent emphasis on submission and identity in Jesus’ teaching pointing to an obvious relationship between the two. Jesus is telling us that there is something that we can learn about identity from submission that we can’t learn from dominance—the constant focus and striving for dominance and power over others and our circumstances. And since Jesus always couches his teachings in the relational realities of daily life, especially the relationships within families, we can look at another basic reality of life for more clarity: eating and drinking…food. Food and the need to eat stands at the very center of life and culture. All our activities orbit the kitchen in our homes and meals in our relationships, but what can they teach us? In The Prophet, Khalil Gibran makes the statement that since we need to kill to eat, eating should be an act of worship and our tables an altar on which our food is sacrificed for what is purer and more innocent in mankind. What does it mean for our meals to become worship? What is worship really? And is there a more expanded meaning that Jesus calls worship in spirit and truth that can help us find another way to submit in life and point us more emphatically to our identity in Father?
Dave Brisbin 8.4.19 In trying to get his message across, Jesus doesn’t speak of abstract theological concepts but always couches his teachings in the relational realities of daily life. Starting with the basic relationships in each first century home—husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant—his implication is that if we can’t experience Kingdom there in those relationships, we won’t experience it anywhere else either. His emphasis on questioning the sense of identity these family roles give us, especially present in first century Jewish life, is the first step toward finding a deeper identity in unseen Father. Just as husband and wife need to maintain their own separate identities even as they join as one in marriage, parents need to respect and foster their children building identities separate from themselves. Jesus is showing us that taking our family roles as identities can both harm other members of our family and keep us from finding the freedom of true identity. To see roles as how we play out our spiritual identity in physical life, to allow ourselves to submit to each other within those roles, builds the humble servant leadership and vulnerability that is both Kingdom and our deepest identity—oneness with Father.
Dave Brisbin 7.28.19 I love our Jude-Christian scriptures. I’ve been studying them for the past twenty-five years or so and trying to live by their precepts. But I didn’t always love them. In fact they have baffled me, confused, angered, annoyed, and outraged me for decades until I learned to read them in a way that seemed closest to the way in which they were written. That required reading through an ancient, Hebrew context. When we do that, sense, common sense, and a hold on common decency returns to a text that otherwise appears too alien to be of much spiritual service. To take one example, a contemporary Christian woman, who is also a feminist, can’t accept Paul and Peter’s instructions for a woman to submit to her husband. Submission has become a four letter word in our culture especially among women, minorities, and those who’ve been marginalized in our society. And when such passages link submission in marriage to submission in first century slavery, how can we possibly read such passages in a way that retains the credibility of the books I say I love? It’s all about the context.
Dave Brisbin 7.21.19 A four day trip to the mountains with parents-in-law becomes contemplation by circumstance as everything slows and quiets down, adjusting to the pace and rhythm of our elders and the mountains. With everything we do and identify left down the mountain, without the noise, distraction, and activity that keeps us from considering the quieter, more interior parts of ourselves, what is left? Who are we then? What is the meaning of our lives here? The mountains remind that it has something to do with giving—the giving of ourselves to a moment and all who share that space. But giving is a loaded word in religious thought where it becomes a moral command to care for the poor or our church or the necessary mirroring of God’s nature that precedes a blessing back. But if giving is a command, then it’s just an obligation, and if it’s a prerequisite to a blessing, then it’s a transaction, and if there’s any amount designated, then it’s a tax. We need to look at the six aspects or traits of giving as Jesus taught and are illustrated in Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet to see how giving and a sense of meaning in the mountains are related.
Dave Brisbin 7.14.19 On the seventeenth anniversary of his ordination, Pastor Dave talks about the journey and what he’s learned about the meaning of following a spiritual path that only a certain amount of following can convey.
Dave Brisbin 7.7.19 In The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, marriage is first described as a life-long, even eternal union where two live life as one. But then the prophet goes on to say there should also be spaces in the togetherness, that the winds and seas should dance and move between, just as the pillars of the temple stand apart and the strings of a lute remain alone though they quiver with the same music. It can be an initial shock to read these thoughts through the lens of our ideal notions of romantic love, but only because the ideal is balanced with the practical realities of married life and human nature: the need for individual identity in real relationship. This balance of the ideal and the practical is becoming rare in our culture of opposing absolutes, which means there is less and less common sense going around. But Jesus is full of common sense, and when we read his teachings on marriage, divorce, remarriage and look beyond our literal, absolute, out of context interpretations, we find a balance of the ideal and practical that is breathtaking—and liberating. An implicit permission to bring common sense back into our faith and live in harmony with everyday life.
Frank Billman 6.30.19 When Jesus is asked how many times an offending person should be forgiven, his famous answer seventy times seven can be a bit cryptic to us modern Westerners. Is it 490 times, and after that, we’re done? That’s a lot of times, of course, but in the case of lifelong friendships or marriages or family or even working relationships, we can go through that many times in a couple of years. In the symbolism of numbers in the ancient near east, Jesus’ expression means, essentially, forever and a day—an unlimited number. But how does that work? What does forgiveness really mean at its root and more importantly, how do we accomplish forgiveness, how do we know when it’s been accomplished, and who are we really forgiving?
Dave Brisbin 6.23.19 On the occasion of saying goodbye to our worship leader and friend of nearly five years as she moves out of state, I realize how much I seem to have been saying goodbye over the past two years. People have moved and died and simply fallen out of touch, and each loss takes its toll on my willingness to start again, imprint again, hurt again. It seems to never get easier, and yet what is love asking of us? In the prose poetry of the The Prophet, Khalil Gibran’s spiritual masterpiece, love is spoken of as a difficult path, a sometimes violent process of transformation that must be swallowed whole—the pain as well as the peace—or life will always be lived in seasonless shallows where we laugh, but not all our laughter and weep, but not all our tears. It’s a far cry from any of our cultural notions of love small enough to fit on a greeting card. It’s the image of an expansive, mature, open-eyed love that Jesus would recognize, because he describes it as well in his own paradoxical way. He and the poets are telling us that love always means saying goodbye to loved ones—the more loved ones the more goodbyes. And to live in love is to remain willing to be graciously and fearlessly vulnerable, willing to be hurt again, to say goodbye again and again until the day someone is finally saying goodbye to us.
Dave Brisbin 6.16.19 Father’s Day: It’s impossible to overestimate the influence our fathers have had on our view of life and ultimately of God. Fathers tend to be less present to small children than mothers, more the disciplinarian who expects acceptable performance for approval. Even given all the variations in families and fluid parenting roles today, we still learn primarily from our fathers the way the world works in terms of the judging of performance and consequences of non-approval. And in a patriarchal culture, our institutions and especially our churches reinforce the traditional role of the father, and as we transfer that lesson learned to our Father in heaven, trust becomes very difficult. But Jesus is painting a very different picture of his and our Father. When we look at his stories and teachings, when we look at the Aramaic words he used in the first lines of the Lord’s Prayer, when we consider how he lived his own relationships, we see an exuberant extravagance, an overwhelming abundance always flowing from Father that can’t be stopped or slowed in any way. Just as a desert dweller living in a culture built around the scarcity of water can’t conceive of living where water falls from the sky, Jesus is trying to show us that the scarcity of love and acceptance on which our lives are built can change in an instant once we experience a love that literally falls from the sky.
Dave Brisbin 6.9.19 We’ve been looking at love from God’s point of view: what is this love, what does it look like, how can we begin to grasp its infinite scope? But maybe what’s more important is beginning with the assumption of its reality and then asking what it means for us to be the beloved? To look at God’s love from our point of view. What does a person beloved of God look like? Fortunately, we have an example that jumps off the pages of scripture because his name actually means beloved—dead giveaway that we should be paying attention. David, the boy who became the king who united all the tribes of Israel is described as a “man after God’s own heart,” chosen to be king and God’s beloved. But a quick review of everything we know of David’s life and actions from the books of Samuel show us a man who looks anything but beloved. Capable of the greatest courage, loyalty, faithfulness, and exuberance, he is also capable of the greatest cruelty, selfishness, arrogance, and disregard for life. Which is the beloved part? Why was he chosen for belovedness? What does his story tell us about ours? It tells us that David wasn’t God’s beloved because he deserved it or earned it, but only because he believed it to be true so deeply that he never stopped coming back to God. No matter how far he strayed, he trusted that God was just a breath away, his own breath breathing his return to God’s presence. David represents the extremes of human behavior in a beloved package. And though our behavior may be much less extreme, the package is no less beloved.
Dave Brisbin 6.2.19 I sometimes get asked why I don’t talk more about the Spirit, and that question always surprises or at least reminds me of differing perspectives. Of course I understand why it comes up—the Spirit is central to any reading of the New Testament as that which draws us to God, informs and empowers us to a fullness in spiritual awareness. This week, I was asked when I would talk about the Trinity, so I thought I’d put the two together in the context of love and see what happened. It took the church 300 years after the crucifixion to decide how the Father and Jesus were related, and another fifty plus to add Holy Spirit to a trinity of persons in one God. But alongside those heady debates was a set of three eastern bishops who understood this threeness of God experienced as Father, Son, and Spirit in creation, reconciliation, and sanctification as inseparable from the constant movement, the alternating flow of giving and receiving between lover and beloved. They saw the three persons of the godhead as in perichoresis—a Greek word that literally means circle dance—the blur of motion that is the definition of the dance, the way the motion of breath and wind is the definition of ruha, Aramaic for spirit. The blur of motion is God, and a mention of any one person of God always includes every person in the blur because it’s the motion that defines the relationship. It’s when we enter the motion blur ourselves like kids jumping on a spinning merry go round to join their friends that the blur of faces resolves to individuals as we add ours to circle of the dance.
Dave Brisbin 5.26.19 Medieval maps of the known world would often depict dragons in the water beyond where anyone had gone. Uncharted waters held both promise and unknown dangers, and some maps actually printed the words here be dragons to really hit the nail on the head. Those willing to sail beyond what was familiar were the ones who charted the maps in the first place and continued to push against the dragons until the entire globe was charted. You see, everything it means to be an explorer begins where the map ends. It’s the same with the spiritual life. The same Book that tells us God’s love is the centerpiece of our existence also tells us such a love is too great for us to understand. But we need to understand something so central, don’t we? So Jesus addresses the dilemma with every teaching and story, consciously breaking down our attachment to what is familiar by calling us out beyond our maps of law, ethics, religion, justice, obligation, tradition, and even family and obedience-- whatever we grasp to make us feel safe and protected. Jesus knows that as long as continue to circle our ships in known waters, safely within the scope of what we think we know, we will never experience a love that is infinitely rooted in heaven and not earth. Jesus is leading where there be dragons, because everything it means to love as God loves begins where familiar love ends.
Dave Brisbin 5.19.19 If you were asked to name Jesus’ main purpose in his ministry, could you do it? There will be many answers of course, but we don’t have to speculate. Jesus told us flat out in Luke 4 that his purpose was to preach the Kingdom of God to all the cities. So if the Kingdom of God is Jesus’ purpose, have we gotten the message? Do we know what the Kingdom is? Just as it was misunderstood by Jesus’ first followers, we misunderstand too, which is why Jesus goes to such lengths to tell us that the Kingdom is not a place but a quality of life to be lived, not future but now, not out there somewhere, but within and all around us, and one thing more that we tend to miss. When we look at Jesus’ life we see him in every possible emotional state, both positive and negative. He often retreated from his work in order to reconnect with his Father, which tells us that the quality of life that is the Kingdom of God is something that is chosen, returned to each moment rather than a steady state entered just once. And if that is true, how do we enter Kingdom right herenow in this moment? And the next? If the Book is right and God is love and love is experienced as what we call grace, then it seems the Kingdom of God is really the Kingdom of Grace. And if that’s true, every time we choose graciousness—kindness, compassion, understanding, mercy—we enter into God’s grace, into the Kingdom of Grace.
Dave Brisbin 5.12.19 Mother’s Day: Two scenes from a movie try to capture what the day to day relationship was between Jesus and his mother. They are touching scenes, one heartbreaking, but both underscore the power of a mother’s love that is the closest we will come to the love of our Father in this life. If mother’s love is closest to the Father’s love and the Father’s love is arguably the most important thing we can learn in our spiritual formation, then why do we refer to God as Father? Where’s mother? Looking at how the Hebrews understood their God as coded into their very language, we find that though God is referred to in the masculine, he is often portrayed as feminine by the prophets. The Hebrew words for spirit and kingdom are both feminine—and wisdom, a main attribute of God, is personified as female in Proverbs. How can God be both mother and father at same time? A perfect balance, perfect marriage? Just as we know the earth is round, but experience it as flat every day, we could say the earth is round in fact but flat in experience. And we could also say that God is Father in fact, but Mother in experience, and until we experience the compassion and acceptance of Mother God, we will never really know Father God, no matter how much we know about him.
Dave Brisbin 5.5.19 A friend calls me to the hospital bed of her dying husband, and there in the room with her and him and his entire family, watching and being part of the dynamic and grief, I am hyper aware of the precious nature of all our relationships. And a line from a Carl Sagan returns: that in all our searching, the only thing that makes the emptiness bearable is each other. When I first heard that, I didn’t agree on theological grounds, but twenty years later, I’ve become convinced. It has occurred to me that if God really is the unseen unity at the heart of all the diversity and separate form and function we see every day, then there really is only one relationship around which all our other relationships in life revolve. And all our relationships in life are really just different ways of looking at the only relationship that really exists. But does Jesus agree? Is he in different words saying the same thing and how does that change our everyday experience? Looking at the words of Jesus, James, and John, it certainly seems they are trying to help us see that the only way experience the love of the Father in this life is through our love for each other.
Dave Brisbin 4.28.19 On Palm Sunday, looking at how the various groups of people around Jesus couldn’t see him as he was, but only through the filter of their own agendas and desires and so didn’t recognize the hour of their visitation—and then on Easter, looking at how the closest friends of Jesus didn’t recognize him at all after his resurrection—there’s a whole lot of unrecognition going around. So who is this Jesus we’re trying to follow and emulate? What do we really know and how close is what we think we know to who he really is? The New Testament doesn’t give a lot of detail, but when we dig into the language and context and the way the authors wrote their texts, a picture emerges, but it’s one that will challenge the view of Jesus that has come down to us traditionally. Can we really understand Jesus as lighthearted and playful, bold but vulnerable, and always completely integrated? When we look at Jesus through an Aramaic lens, how humor worked in the ancient world, the details that were put in and left out of Scripture, we’ll see how close we can get to really meeting Jesus.
Dave Brisbin 4.21.19 Easter Sunday: One of the most striking details of the post-resurrection narratives in the Gospels is that none of Jesus’ closest followers recognize him when they first see him risen from the tomb. What is going on here? How could they not recognize Jesus? Is this a literal fact being preserved, a deeper spiritual meaning being evoked, both? The two figures confronting the women at the tomb give us the best clue: why do you look for the living among the dead? Answer: they buried Jesus and expected him to stay put. Reasonable assumption, but they were looking for Jesus where they expected him to be and not where he always was…in motion. Life is defined by motion; something unmoving is by definition not alive. God’s spirit is defined by motion; the Hebrew word ruach means breath, wind, spirit—all only experienced in motion. As soon as we have a fixed idea about God, he is no longer there. Fixed ideas, like corpses, lie among the dead and can’t define a living God. As soon as we think we have Jesus figured out, he is not there, and we, like his closest friends need to let go of our preconceptions, let Jesus be himself, and stop the ultimate frustration and grief of looking for the living among the dead.
Dave Brisbin 4.14.19 Sixth Sunday of Lent, Palm Sunday: Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem that Jesus ironically sees as a tragedy for his people. Why? Because they miss the hour of their visitation, keeping them on a path leading to destruction. But how so? They greet him at the city gates with palm branches and shouts that signify the return of a king… As we look at the four main groups interacting with Jesus—the people and Zealots, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Romans, and Jesus’ own followers—we see that each group only sees Jesus through the lens of their own expectation and desired outcomes. As Jesus comes riding into their lives, they don’t see him as he is or what he represents and teaches. They remain unchanged by his presence and message and look only to further their own agendas. Without recognizing the radical change Jesus represents, they miss the visitation of God that would change everything. And as it was then, it is now. The truth is, every moment is Palm Sunday in our own lives. Every moment, Jesus is riding into our lives, humbly, on the colt of a donkey. If we haven’t become people who celebrate the seemingly insignificant details of life, we will miss the entire point and presence of an unassuming God, one who lives to serve, not be served. And as we look for a mighty savior to fix all our circumstances, we’ll miss the quiet one by our side who only invites us to see the truth that is already right before our eyes.
Dave Brisbin 4.7.19 Fifth Sunday of Lent: And so we come to Maundy Thursday as we work through the liturgical days of Holy Week. The traditional scripture passages associated with Maundy Thursday are all the events and preparations for the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, and Jesus’ arrest. It’s a busy day as Jesus gives a new commandment to his friends at supper—to love each other as he has loved them, institutes the Eucharist/communion, washes his friends’ feet, and prays a long prayer before going to the garden of Gethsemane. But as we look at the deeper significance of each of these events, the principle at the core of all of them is the unity for which Jesus prays at the end of supper. The new commandment, the washing of feet, communion, the return to the Father’s will in the garden all point toward the need to be one in identity, meaning, and purpose. And as we add Thursday to the four preceding days of Holy Week, we can see an overlay with the four stages of spiritual growth that trace our progression from self to group to interior work to unity in the broadest sense. It is a beautiful and essential representation of both the final week of Jesus’ journey and the totality of our own.
Dave Brisbin 3.31.19 Fourth Sunday of Lent: Each liturgical day of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday has a name and scripture passages designated that tell the story of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. But each day and its passages also tell another story when we look beneath the literal meaning. They show us the internal experience of the Way of Jesus…the path he takes all the way to the cross. Focusing on Holy Tuesday and Spy Wednesday that tell of the wise and foolish bridesmaids and about Judas and Mary, we find stories about balance. Jesus tells us that the parable of the bridesmaids is about watchfulness and readiness, and the context of the Jewish wedding tradition balances the anticipation of new life to come with the immersion in the life that is now. Judas, whether conspiring to have Jesus arrested or sparring with Mary over whether the perfume she pours over Jesus should have been sold for the poor, is wholly focused on macro political and social issues. Mary is only focused on her relationship with Jesus—intimate and vulnerable. Jesus is quick to point out the disconnect, and we are left to see how the balance between anticipation of new life to come and presence to daily details, the balance between the big issues over which we have no control and the intimacy of our closest relationships is part of this week of keys to Kingdom life.
Dave Brisbin 3.24.19 Third Sunday of Lent: Flipping channels, ran across the movie Chariots of Fire. Hadn’t seen it in decades and got immediately pulled in. Story of two runners preparing for the 1924 Olympics—a British Jew and Scottish Christian who couldn’t be more different. As the Brit is using running as a weapon against the prejudice he’s endured as a Jew, the Scotsman simply “feels God’s pleasure” when he runs. And his whole life as both athlete and Christian missionary to China reflects his ability to do two things: to see through the surface task—whether running or teaching—to the deeper, spiritual task beneath, and to radically accept life as it presents in any moment. Whether the pressure of an Olympic event or the advance of the Japanese army into China, he remains himself, wholly committed to the welfare of either competitors or students. How did he manage to get to this kind of balance? In his early twenties, no less? And more importantly, how can we? When we read from sources as diverse as Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Jesus at Matthew 6, and dialectical behavior therapy skills, we see patterns forming that give us clues to the how of this balance between work for change and radical acceptance, between the task at hand and finding the evergreen task within the task. And by leaning in right there we can begin to live the difference between identifying with our work, using our tasks as weapons of self-worth and simply feeling God’s pleasure as we run.
Dave Brisbin 3.17.19 Second Sunday of Lent: Trying to sit quietly in balcony chair and warm sunlight but shadows keep flitting across my closed eyes. Every time I look, nothing there, until finally I catch a smallish butterfly streaking by. Then another. And another, until I realize there’s a dense column all driving overhead in the same direction. Later I learn of the one billion butterflies migrating north to Oregon and beyond…because the rains this winter in the interior deserts dropped annual rainfall levels in single weekends, and dormant seeds and bulbs under the desert floor bloomed into carpets of flowers that caterpillars loved and survived into a billion butterflies going north. We notice a billion butterflies, but how often do we notice just one? Lent is about becoming people who don’t wait, like dormant, buried seeds for spectacular rains to bring a billion butterflies into our awareness, but actively search out the water and growth that allows us to see each and every butterfly that crosses our path. Jesus speaks of the cry of all creation showing us the truth, Paul gives us a three-part roadmap to the kind of awareness that really sees and celebrates whatever creation is right in front of us, right now. Whether a billion or just one, no longer waiting for a spectacular desert bloom, we make the desert bloom anytime any time we choose.
Dave Brisbin 3.10.19 On the first Sunday of Lent, we stop to consider what Lent has meant since the middle of the second century to millions of Christians from ancient to medieval to modern times. What is its place in the liturgical calendar and how did it and the other seasons of the church along with their cultural practices bind the people together in common experience? A common experience we no longer possess in our culture. But understanding Lent by understanding the model from which it came, Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, we begin to see that regardless of what the church taught and practiced, Lent was not about suffering or deprivation as some sort of sacrifice for God’s favor. Nor was it about penance for past sin. Looking at the model of Jesus, we see a voluntary sense-deprivation, a quieting and removal of all distraction and whatever fuels the ego-self that obscures real identity and meaning. Jesus didn’t go into the wilderness to suffer, he went to be purged of everything that hid the truth from his eyes, but he accepted suffering as part of the process. This Lent, this 40 day preparation for the new life of Easter, can establish a structure for our own journey toward our real selves, if we let it. Will we? Let it?
Dave Brisbin 3.3.19 The shape of our life journey moves initially from the simplicity of childhood to the complexity of adulthood. But if it stops there, we’ve missed the point of it all. To push further, to let go of the complexity and dive back down into the simplicity of our essential spirituality brings us into real meaning and purpose. To illustrate from John’s Gospel, the story of Jesus’ first miracle, changing water to wine at Cana, can be read very simply as just that, Jesus’ first miracle that established him as more than a man, teacher, and sage—someone in whom his first followers placed their faith. But delving deeper into the imagery, the symbolic use of numbers, the historical context and relationships implied from an ancient Hebrew point of view adds complex layers of meaning and begins to show us much more of what John and his community understood about Jesus near the end of the first century. But to stop there in all that complexity, no matter how interesting and enlightening, is still to miss the essential message of Jesus’ work. To break through and find the simple and intimate connection with the story is what moves us from head to heart, from a two thousand year old narrative to the choices we will make in our next breath.
Dave Brisbin | 2.24.19 Talking about the mental gymnastics involved in moving from dualistic thinking to unitive thinking, once again, it’s not about become wholly one or the other, but a realization of the need for the balance of middle ground. Ultimately all our brains do—our left brains at least—is to differentiate: compare and contrast, find the edges of things to define and distinguish them from the background and the next thing, to place them in categories, divide light from dark, past from future, us from them. Without this ability, we don’t survive. All the tasks along our journey of life are dependent on the ability to think dualistically, and we need to take the tasks of life seriously. If we don’t, we’ll never find our purpose, meaning, and identity as humans. But at the same time, if we take the tasks of life too seriously, if we never stop differentiating and judging, if we become defined and identified with our tasks and accomplishments, then we never find meaning, purpose, identity either. We’re on this hero’s journey of life not to find and acquire our purpose, but to reach the point of release of all that we think the journey is about, and in that clearing realize the purpose, meaning, and identity that had always been ours from before we began. From Abraham to Moses to Solomon, to Jesus to Dorothy Gale in Oz to each of us, the journey is the same in shape and infinitely different in detail. A hero is not the one who completes the journey, but the one whom the journey completes.
Frank Billman | 2.17.19 In talking about contemplative spirituality, the term dualism or dualistic thinking comes up quite a bit. What does that exactly mean? And more importantly, if the goal in contemplative life is to lose our natural dualistic tendencies, to become more unitive in our consciousness, what does that look like in everyday life? What are the mental gymnastics that need to be embraced before we could ever put such non-dualistic experience into play? Pastor Frank explores this with real world examples and some of the intellectual paradoxes that need to be faced in order to pursue the kind of spirituality that Jesus, in an ancient Hebrew context, found so natural.
Dave Brisbin | 2.10.19 When I was in pastoral training, a pastor told me that no one should preach the parables until they’ve been in ministry for 30 years. Now I violated that right away, but approaching 20 years in ministry, I do see what he was driving at. There is a perspective that comes just from sheer years of having seen the panorama, the parade of years go by that creates a different way of looking at life—and parables need to be looked at the way we look at life--not text. For two thousand years, scholars and clergy have debated the meaning of Jesus’ parables, breaking them down into the smallest bits, trying to crack the code. But some parables absolutely resist such fine grained interpretation. As in the difficult parables of the unjust steward and judge, Jesus seems to be violating everything we know of our morality and ethics as well as his own. But parables aren’t meant to be understood through the lens of what we already think we know, they are meant to explode what we already think we know. They are meant to slap us in the face and wake us up or at least confuse us enough to stop trying to force familiar lines of thinking into radical new concepts. If we let go of trying to resolve each word and detail to make the parable fit our understanding, if we step back as from the vantage of 30 years’ experience and see the overall contours of the story, where it’s pointing, how it makes us feel--with just enough Aramaic context, we can begin to see where Jesus is pointing us. And if we’re willing to follow that new direction both mentally and relationally, we’ll find new ways of seeing and hearing that may begin with a parable, but will extend to every detail of our lives.
Dave Brisbin | 2.3.19 Situated on the liturgical calendar between Christmas and Easter, between Jesus’ birth and death, is a perfect time to look at Jesus’ life—to look at balancing what he lived and how he loved with the more theologically significant events of his birth, death, and resurrection. It’s a perfect time to consider how living as he lived would give theological significance to our own birth and death. But our western church roots go deep, and making that balancing shift can be difficult unless as Jesus says: we grow new ears to hear. Using parables to break through what we think we already know and how we already hear, Jesus gives us the story of the Sower, which is really more about the Four Soils. But as he speaks of seed falling on the beaten path, rocks, and thorns as well as on good soil, church ears have heard him speaking of four different types of people who break down to two basic groups: believers and non-believers, those who accept Jesus theologically and those who don’t, us and them. Digging deep into the Aramaic underpinnings of Jesus’ saying, we find layers of meaning that put us in the center of the story: that ultimately each one of us is all four soils all at once. That we all have the blind spots, the hard baked stubborn spots, and the unhealed hurting spots that keep us from fully embracing a new truth, even as our good soil embraces others. If we willing to give little ground, Jesus is showing us how to prepare our soil and grow new ears that will grow good crops.
Dave Brisbin | 1.27.19 Nearing the end of the liturgical season of Christmas that spans 40 days from Christmas Day until the feast of the Presentation on February 2, we are now living between Christmas and Easter, between Jesus’ birth and death. People have commented on the fact that a tombstone lists dates of birth and death with only a mere dash signifying the entirety of a person’s life. But Jesus didn’t even get a dash; he only got a comma. In the earliest creed of the church, the Apostle’s creed, Jesus’ birth and death are listed in a series of beliefs only separated by commas. Everything that Jesus lived and breathed and taught and loved is not mentioned in a list of events the church understood as theologically significant. But how can we understand the theological significance of an event in Jesus’ life without knowing the life of which those events are a part—the context for any event in his life? Early in its history, the church shifted from a focus on Jesus’ life and Way of living it, to a focus on his death as instrument of salvation and promise of resurrection. But Jesus’ life informs his death, and if we’re to be authentic followers of Jesus, we must find the balance between the two—learning to trace the shape of his life before we consider the significance of his death, or our own. Here, now, between Christmas and Easter, we’re living in his comma, the perfect time to consider our dash.
Doug Fanney | 1.20.19 Although the words mystic and contemplative have developed bad connotations in conservative Christian circles, there is a rich Christian mystical tradition from the earliest generations of Jesus followers. And though today contemplation and mysticism are often equated with occult practices, Christians have used the terms to mean the practice of experiencing God non-verbally and non-rationally, to be completely in God’s presence and present to God as opposed to thinking about God intellectually. Under this definition, from New Testament evidence, Jesus and Paul, among others, show both contemplative practice and mystical experiences. Of course the goal of Christian mystics was to forge a balance between the experiential and intellectual, and that is what we are after in a contemplative setting. To better understand the contemplative practices of the mystics we are continuing our ongoing series of presenting outstanding Christian mystics, and here Doug Fanney presents Meister Eckhart, a 14th century German priest, scholar, educator, and mystic who defied the church of his time to work, write, and teach his people, bringing them into direct contact with their God to experience the love that would transform everything about their lives.
Dave Brisbin | 1.13.19 The passing of Shirley Boone, Pat Boone’s wife of 65 years has had a big impact on many of us. A close personal friend and staunch supporter and member of our community for the past five years, she will be hugely missed here and of course worldwide. But watching Pat moving through the final months of her life and through the week following her death has been a great lesson for me. Pat prayed for healing ceaselessly, but prayed in such way that his faith and characteristically cheerful attitude toward life and God’s presence continues now unabated. He described his wife’s passing as a simple change of address, a moving to a place he will visit soon. He described his prayers in the last few weeks as a search for God’s intention in whatever direction that moved—as finding a direction he could cooperate with. When we are faced with impending loss, as we desperately desire a specific outcome, how then shall we pray? Looking at Jesus’ modeling and teaching of prayer, we see the instruction to pray “in my name” over and over, but until we unpack that tiny phrase from an Aramaic point of view, we can’t see how Jesus and Pat are on exactly the same page…praying in such a way that any outcome remains right in the center of our sense of God’s presence in our lives.
Dave Brisbin | 1.6.19 January 6th has lost its significance in our non-liturgical, Western churches. Known as the feast of the Epiphany since ancient times, it celebrates the appearance of God to Magi and the rest of the world and sits in the transition between the 12 days of Christmastide and the 28 days of Epiphanytide—the 40 days of the full Christmas season. It is a season full of other feast days and colorful, even superstitious, activities and rituals of the ancient and medieval church. But though we see these now as curious and quaint, they held the people together in common cause and experience in ways our culture has lost. Rituals and practice repeated at the same time in the same order for lifetimes and centuries of lifetimes defines a people—not the outcomes of those actions, however spectacular. We judge our effectiveness by our accomplishments, but the spiritual life centers on what we do over and over each day, regardless of outcomes that remain outside our control. Jesus shows us how this is done through his entire life, but encapsulated in his prayer at Gethsemane is his willingness to let Father handle the outcome as he just shows up for the next indicated step. It’s all about acceptance. Holding lightly to our heart’s desires as we keep showing up to epiphany, the appearance of God-with-us in this moment.
Dave Brisbin | 12.30.18 The run up to Christmas was full of personal setbacks and a difficult week, but the Christmas service itself seemed to simply erase all that angst in one stroke as I allowed myself to immerse in the images, music, and sense of connection to the people in the room. We think of our spiritual journey as one solid path that we’re either on or off, and once on, should stay on if we only have enough faith. But life and scripture tell a different story: that the spiritual journey is not one path, but one moment—a moment we either choose to be connected or choose not. That being on the spiritual Way of Jesus is stringing enough of those kingdom moments together to form a kingdom necklace, and that our progress along the Way is always marked by two steps forward and a step back. Consider Peter’s journey in the Gospels: from the moment Jesus called him at the shore of the lake to his stepping out of the boat to walk on the water then sinking, to his refusal to let Jesus wash his feet to his declaration of faith and subsequent denial, Peter is a case study in the nature of the journey. Realizing how we humans live and process our spirituality is critical to being able to follow Jesus’ Way, to continuing to grow while seeing our difficulties and setbacks as just the preparation for the next two steps forward.
Dave Brisbin | 12.16.18 We all tend to look for anything where we expect it to be. Makes perfect sense. Works for car keys and laundry detergent, but not so much when you’re looking for truth. Truth has a way of showing up in the most unexpected places, and if you’re only willing to look where you already believe it to be, you’ll miss it every time. How in the world would anyone think to look for or see in the face of a dirt-poor infant the truth of all that Jesus was? And yet the Magi did—advisors to their king, co-regents, scientists, religious leaders. And Galilean shepherds did—the uneducated poorest of the poor. And twelve hundred years later, Francis of Assisi did—a rich man’s son voluntarily living a pauper’s life. What do all these varied people have in common? What allowed each of them to see beyond and beneath the surface of things to a timeless truth? We need to know, because what they have to tell and teach is critical if we’re to also enter into the real meaning of Christmas, a meaning that Jesus will spend the rest of his life trying to teach as well... That our God is a humble God, vulnerable and unassuming, willing get right down on the level of each beloved like a mother playing with her child. And that regardless of their station in life, only those who have learned to value and practice humility and vulnerability will be able to accept a God who values and practices the same—to recognize that truth resident in Jesus even in his most vulnerable and powerless moments.
Dave Brisbin | 12.9.18 It’s hard enough to communicate spiritual experiences and truth when we’re honestly trying. But what about when we’re not? When consciously or unconsciously, we’re hiding behind spiritual platitudes and practices to justify our actions or inactions, to gain some advantage or outcome…? It can be tricky because it’s easy to convince ourselves that the language we speak and religion we practice and believe is “right” and spiritual in itself, but once again, Jesus is telling us something different. When at the last supper he told his friends he was giving them a new commandment—to love each other as he had loved them; that everyone would know they were his followers by their love. How literally are we to take Jesus’ actual definition of followership? How literally did his first followers take his new commandment and definition? When we look at the historical record, extremely literally. Several ancient sources define early Christians by their love with Tertullian in the second century writing that even those who were enemies of Christianity had to say: behold how they love one another. And a modern sociologist writes that Christianity was not simply and urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in ancient cities more tolerable. Seems that’s a way of living that speaks spiritual truth unequivocally, and a definition for followership of which Jesus would be proud.
Dave Brisbin | 12.2.18 When we say to each other, just give it to the Lord, surrender your life to Jesus, or let go and let God... When we say, ask Jesus into your heart, pray about it, or you need to find God’s plan for your life…do we really know what we mean? And even if we do, does the person we’re speaking to have a chance at the same understanding? And even if they do, do they have any idea how to accomplish them? We can call them platitudes, but that makes them too easy to dismiss. They all carry truth—at least they were true when experienced by the person who coined them, but afterward, when put into words, they became pointers that will only be true again when re-experienced by the hearer. If we’re going to be honest about our spiritual communication, we have to admit that words have limits, and dig deep to make sure we’re getting past mere mental concepts to the concrete experiential steps that are the only way to the truth we seek. If we know how to look, Scripture helps show us the process that each one of these aphorisms-become-platitudes is meant to describe. Aphorisms dealing with faith and trust, relationship, and decision making—words that are completely true but completely unhelpful at the same time—point us to scriptural passages that show us a way of life that makes the words true again.
Dave Brisbin | 11.25.18 When it comes right down to it, the main effects of an authentic spiritual journey are gratitude and humility. From these two attributes flow every other attribute we may associate with our spiritual progress. Why? If humility is defined as an undistorted view of ourselves and our relationships with God and each other; if gratitude is defined as an undistorted view of the moment we’re in, that it contains everything we need in the moment and is enough, then these two attributes are the reflection of the experience joy and contentment of pure presence. So, how do we get there? Here, a character who doesn’t normally get a lot of attention can come to our rescue…John the Baptist. John tells his followers that he must decrease as Jesus increases, and in his relationship as forerunner and the closeness to Jesus it affords, his joy is complete. John has a breakthrough moment standing in the waters of the Jordan that brings his humility and gratitude to a focus, but later in prison, he questions whether Jesus is the expected one or whether he should look for someone else. The beauty of scripture is that it gives us an undistorted view of the human condition and the journey to humility and gratitude, which themselves are the undistorted view of Kingdom life.
Nina Dreyer | 11.11.18 Through the study of the mystics and contemplatives we’ve been conducting both on Sundays and midweek, we’ve covered several historical personalities. Several of them have been studied by staff and members of our community, and several of those chose to present in first person, even dressed for the part to bring home the fact that these storied saints of the church were simply flesh and blood people who answered life’s circumstances with a fierce desire to know God completely. Here, Nina Dreyer, one of our staff and licensed social worker and psychotherapist, takes on the persona of Julian of Norwich, the 14th century English anchoress, mystic, counselor, and the first woman to write a book in the English language. Her story, though extreme, contains the same shape of the journey that can be applied to our own stories here and now.
Dave Brisbin | 11.18.18 Most of the questions we ask about religion and scripture and theology are really the same question over and over, because all of our questions and difficulties center on the one question of unconditional love and acceptance. In other words, we want to know if God is keeping a light on for us… But the answer we crave, the one that will really set our anxieties down, can’t be found in anything made of words. Even our scripture can only point to the truth, a truth that has to be lived to be believed at a level that transforms. Jesus knows this, of course, and so gives us a model prayer that when understood from the Aramaic context in which it was delivered, becomes a prayer not to be recited in words, but a sequence of actions to be lived out. To understand the Lord’s Prayer as a roadmap for living Kingdom life is to bring it back as a mirror of Jesus’ own lifestyle. To decode the Lord’s Prayer and start living its five steps as a daily way of life will show us the “answer” we’ve been waiting for as we experience the Father’s love directly and intimately.
Dave Brisbin | 11.4.18 When Jesus speaks of Kingdom, he’s not speaking of a place or a territory. He’s talking about us, all of us living a particular quality of being that translates into a particular quality of life—a habit of being. Some sociologists call any habitual way of being a habitus. But Jesus’ habit of being has a quality defined by presence, connection, the ability to see both the seen and unseen components of life—to see the overarching connection of everyone to everything and each other that is not apparent without this quality. It is a complete change of our way of perceiving the world and life and how we react to it. It’s a new way of living life that includes and transforms all our ingrained habits, skills, and attitudes—a new theory of everything that changes everything we experience. Jesus spends most of his teaching time describing this Kingdom habitus in terms of its effect on the quality of life it creates. It’s the only way it can be described at all. When we read the Beatitudes, the kingdom parables, and watch Jesus in action, we are seeing his habitus. And we are also seeing how he leads others to create their own habitus of Kingdom…how he heals, teaches, mentors, and serves—guiding those who are willing from imbalance and dysfunction to a platform from which they can see a new possibility for their lives. And for the students who are ready, the invitation to follow from passive learning to active engagement with him, and from there to turn and serve others themselves. Where are we along this path to Kingdom? What is the nature of our own habitus? How closely does it resemble Jesus’ in effect? And how ready are we as students for the next phase of our journey?
Dave Brisbin | 10.28.18 A friend tells me he wants to take his motorhome up to Canada and stay for at least three months or more because he can’t stand being a part of the U.S. anymore. I figure it’s because of his politics, but as we talk, what comes out is a real grieving over the state of all relations in our country: race, political, religious, social, cultural, generational…he’s ashamed to be a part. Though we do talk about how many hours a day he spends watching cable news, he has a point. What’s happening in our country? The short answer is fear. People are afraid of not maintaining their quality of life or that of their children. And scared people build walls. Real ones and mental ones. Emotional ones. Religious, political, social, and cultural ones. And as soon as we build a wall, we create enemies of those on the other side. Even if we don’t mean to, it’s the nature of walls. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, not to judge those on the other side. If we are to love as Jesus loves, as the Father loves, what does that really mean? And how do we know if we’re actually doing it? Paul was a man full of walls, and so by definition, full of fear. Early Jewish followers of Jesus offended Paul’s certainty about Judaism and later Jewish followers of Jesus offended his certainty about Gentile followers. But by the end of his life, he writes that he is at peace with his weaknesses and content in all circumstances. To love like Jesus and the Father is to become unoffendable. To grant enough freedom to the enemy to live peacefully on the other side of our walls until the moment we realize those walls no longer exist.
Dave Brisbin | 10.21.18 In one of our studies last week, someone asks the age old question—maybe first question we humans have asked about ourselves and life: how can I believe or trust there’s a God or any higher power that cares about me and my well being when there is so much evil all around? The oldest book in the Bible is focused on this question. An entire branch of philosophy focuses on this question. Polytheism and atheism are answers to this question because if you have many gods, some good and some bad or no god, problem solved. But for those who believe in one God, all good and all powerful, and yet evil exists—pick any two but you can’t logically have all three. Even Satan doesn’t get God off the hook. If God can’t stop Satan, he’s not all powerful, and if he won’t, not all good. Is there a way to understand God that maintains what theists believe about one God and yet never shrinks from the realities of daily life? If there was such a rational answer, we would have had it long ago, so any “answer” won’t exist in the form we’re expecting, but as we consider a quote from a second century church father, the lyrics of a popular song, the stories of the separation and reconciliation of two sets of biblical characters, and the dysfunctional marriage of one prophet, a way through begins to emerge. We can’t know God until we know why he won’t make us love him, that love is only love if it is freely chosen. And we won’t see God’s face until we allow ourselves to fall deeply into the risk of the pain of loving as he loves—by setting our beloved perfectly free to choose whether to love us back, to choose the “evil” that is actually the proof that such perfect love really exists.
Dave Brisbin | 10.30.11 Driving home from northern California through the endless San Joaquin Valley, radio stations fade in and out as we drive through their broadcast ranges. Scanning for the next signal, I hit on a clear channel just as a song I haven't heard in years is starting...turn down the lights, turn down the bed, turn down these voices inside my head... Her voice brings long dormant memories flooding back with the music, and by the time she gets to the chorus: I can't make you love me if you don't; I can't make your heart feel something it won't--I'm fully involved. The uncanny thought strikes that this song, passionately about unrequited romantic love, could so easily be sung by God to each one of us. Our relationship with God, though obviously not sexual, has always been portrayed in intimately human terms. There's the prophet Hosea, told to take an unfaithful woman for a bride as extended metaphor for the tenuous relationship between God and Israel--God and us. Did God personally risk anything by creating us with the capacity to refuse his love? Can his heart break like ours do when we sing, I will lay down my heart, and I'll feel the power--but you won't, no you won't...? Maybe God could make us love him, but maybe he won't, because if he did, we would no longer be us, and love would no longer be love: deprived of the one thing both need to be what they are...a choice freely made.
Dave Brisbin | 10.14.18 Last Thursday was a tale of two hospitals. First a trip to a prominent children’s hospital to speak to the director and manager of spiritual care about new programs they are initiating for patients, families, and clinical caregivers. I am struck by the unhurried presence of the two I meet. Unhurried, gracious, taking their time with me, as if I were the only person in their world until the moment they have to move on to their next meetings. From there, I drive forty miles to visit an elderly friend in critical care in a massive hospital downtown. Darker, more serious, not for kids. I walk into the darkened room and she asks what brought me all the way downtown. I say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you. She says, oh isn’t that wonderful? And we talk and hold hands and seven minutes later, she asks what brought me all the way downtown, and I realize her memory has reset itself. Still carrying the unhurried presence of the last hospital, I choose to enter her world and simply say, only you, dear. I’m here just for you, and she says, oh isn’t that wonderful? We repeat this every seven minutes for the 45 minutes I’m with her, and I have just as much a thrill in telling her as she does receiving the news. I have been given the gift of presence voluntarily by two practiced professionals and involuntarily by my friend for whom I am the only person in her world for seven minutes at a time. It’s a study in presence that stays with me as I turn to see how Jesus handled presence, the steps he took to create and maintain, and I find five stories all back to back in one chapter of Luke—chapter five. Reading between the lines of stories that don’t tell but simply show, I find six lessons in the practice of presence that allow us to enter into the world as Jesus sees it, if only for seven minutes at a time.
Dave Brisbin | 10.7.18 Sometimes insightful messages come in sets of threes, it seems. Or maybe it’s that as the first time goes right over our heads, second brings awareness, and the third really hits home, we’re just sensitive to the threeness of things. I suppose it’s always our choice to see life as either a series of coincidences or having divine influence or somewhere in between. And that’s the point: how we see the events in our lives and our place in them is a choice. Any worldview we choose will answer some questions and beg others, but whether we hit an objective accuracy we could never prove anyway, some views of life are just more fun. A series of events of the past week from a trip to the zoo to the homecoming greeting by our pet dog, to an email from a friend in crisis telling the story of a young boy running into the pool with his swimmies on, a pattern of experiences and images formed with an impact that seemed to far outweigh mere coincidence. Jesus always points to children as the emblems of kingdom, but more than that, when we dig beneath some limiting translations, we find that he’s really saying that kingdom is us and we are kingdom when we look at life in a particular way—a way that makes us look like children. Whether to see the threeness of this last week as God’s guiding hand is my choice. And yours as well. But whatever the mechanics of life, some choices are just much more fun and childlike. Kingdomlike.
Frank Billman | 9.30.18 Through the study of the mystics and contemplatives we’ve been conducting both on Sundays and midweek, we’ve covered several historical personalities. Several of them have been studied by staff and members of our community, and several of those chose to present in first person, even dressed for the part to bring home the fact that these storied saints of the church were simply flesh and blood people who answered life’s circumstances with a fierce desire to know God completely. Here, Frank Billman, one of our recovery pastors, takes on the persona of Frances of Assisi, and presents him as the humble man who saw himself as a poor but beautiful part of God’s creation and never lost the childlike quality and wonder that made him call himself and his followers, God’s jugglers.
Dave Brisbin | 9.23.18 Every now and again we stop presenting new material so we can consolidate our thinking and just have a conversation. Starting with the theme of contemplative life that we’ve been discussing for several weeks and placing it in the larger circle of perfect love, we set out. Our goal is not to provide absolute answers to any given question. When it comes to issues of faith, no such certainty is possible. We’re just talking through issues and providing educated viewpoints to consider together. You never know what’s going to come when you hand the mic to someone in the room, so take a listen and find out… there may be questions you’ve been asking as well.
Dave Brisbin | 9.16.18 Movies are our dominant storytelling media these days, and though we can say it’s a shame people aren’t reading as much anymore, sometimes the combination of a great script, great actors, and great pictures really brings a message home. Spinning the dial, I came across the movie Jackie and became involved in the story of Jackie Kennedy coping with the first seven days after the assassination of her husband/president. But what riveted me was the series of scenes between her and a priest counselor in which she asked the classic questions of grief, loss, and life in general. She questions God and his cruelty, she questions her actions and what she did to deserve the trauma and pain, and she questions her life as she reveals she’d been praying every night to die. The priest carefully tries to steer her down a middle course between the extremes of an indifferent God and one who actively creates or allows pain, but ultimately confesses there are no answers. Delivered by the great actor John Hurt just weeks before his own death to pancreatic cancer, a death he knew was coming, makes even more pointed the truth that at its most mature, our spiritual journey ceases as a search for rational answers that aren’t coming—and becomes a conscious immersion in moments we may not understand, but that God in his infinite wisdom has made sure are just enough for us.
Dave Brisbin | 9.9.18 Speaking more from a personal point of view, Pastor Dave talks about how the recent series on the contemplative journey and lives of mystics in the Christian tradition has stirred up emotional memories of his own journey and the questions they pose on the nature of the deep desire in some of us to engage this journey at all costs. Where does this desire come from? Why is it so strong in some of us and not others? How is it sustained? And most importantly, where do we direct it and nurture it into a conscious contact with God and each other? As always, we go to Jesus and see that he had a very defined Way of bringing his people to their Father, and it roughly breaks down into four main areas of growth: healing, teaching, mentoring, and serving. When the desire in us becomes strong enough, we become ready to stop being victims and start healing at least enough to build a stable platform for learning about a Way of living that changes everything. Then at some point the student becomes ready to actually engage the Way with a mentor who can guide and provide accountability until the student becomes the teacher and can serve. This is the contemplative way, the Way of Jesus that takes us from fearful brokenness to an assured humility and willingness to be openly vulnerable in our moment by moment experience.
Dave Brisbin | 9.2.18 In the first and second of the Ten Commandments and many other places in the scriptures, God tells his people that he is their only God and that they are prohibited from making any carved images—what King James called graven images—of him or any of the gods of the near east pantheon because he is a jealous God who will visit iniquity on the people who defy him to the third and fourth generations. As we are looking at the contemplative practice of coming to know God intimately, how are we to deal with a passage like this? The image of a jealous God visiting iniquity on innocent generations seems the antithesis of a God who looks so different in Jesus’ eyes, life, and message. As we peer through the Hebrew context, words take on different meanings, but primarily, to understand the scope of graven images really points us in better directions. To carve an image is to literally set it in stone, presenting a false view of a transcendent God and killing the experience of a living relationship. But we do the same with our mental and verbal images, and we do the same with our written word-images as well. As far as we know, Jesus never wrote anything down, kept all his teaching and interaction freely moving in real time. Were his words experienced only as oral tradition for the next two to three generations perhaps to avoid the veneration of a static manuscript in place of the living relationship it described? When our knowing of God is not based in graven images made out of any possible material—even thoughts and words—but in a living, daily experience of presence balanced with knowledge of scripture understood through Hebrew eyes, we find a jealous God who is no longer threatening, but consistently and exactly who Jesus portrayed him to be.
Dave Brisbin | 8.26.18 Some twenty five plus years ago, as I was attempting to go into bible battle over a particular interpretation with a Franciscan priest. He held up his hand in the universal stop sign and said, “All I can tell you is what I’m convinced of. You go become convinced of what you’re convinced of.” Coming through my mindset then, it seemed like a complete copout. But later and after all these years, I realize it’s the only thing one human can say to another in matters of faith and spirit. In our fear, we want to be certain, absolute about everything including the things that can never be absolute without ceasing to be what they are—articles of faith that exist only in the presence of mystery. But those of us who sincerely seek the truth that Jesus said would make us free come to understand that such truth can’t be proven in words or diagrams that feed the fear, but in the experience of truth-as-a-person that feeds the heart. And those same seekers, like pioneers or astronauts taking first steps into uncharted territory, experience truth as if for the first time and yet with the sameness that unchanging truth demands. Holding the conviction of the contemplatives and mystics in the Christian tradition against the conviction of Paul in the New Testament, we encounter a record of experience with a God who always sees us as if for the first time. As we guilt over our mistakes and sins of the past and worry over our imagined unworthiness in the future, our Father sees only the person standing in his moment, the only moment that exists. It’s as if he takes a snapshot of who we are right now and loves us, however scarred or unfinished, simply because we’re there in his presence—as if there is no other information that exists. Because the only moment that exists already contains all there is. If we’re in that moment with God, we are one with all there is, and all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.
Dave Brisbin | 8.19.18 Watching the birds come and go in our backyard, I have my favorites. The finches and hummingbirds, the doves who do more walking than flying... Then I see this jet black bird with fire engine red wings and think wouldn’t it be great to wait for the perfect mix of birds, then throw a net over the whole thing—one big aviary with all my faves that I could see any/every time I looked out. But next thought is that the moment the net goes over, I’m responsible for those birds, feeding and cleaning, and the thought after that was that there would never again be the widening smile over a bird I’d never seen before or the gratitude that the birds chose our yard over all the others. Deep down, we all know the presence of a friend is infinitely more valuable than that of a prisoner, yet we throw mental nets over our lives and relationships, trying to hold on to just the right mix of circumstances and people, just the right view of theology and scripture that will throw a net over a God who may not otherwise choose our yard. Those who wrote our scriptures have a lot to say about this. They called God’s spirit, ruach: wind, breath, spirit all at the same time, but defined by motion. God’s spirit is always in motion or it’s not God’s spirit. To throw a net over, to try to hold God still is to miss the whole point of relationship—that it needs to be freely given and received. If it can’t be that, it’s not worth having.
Dave Brisbin | 8.12.18 As a church that believes in, teaches, and practices a contemplative way of life, we take a certain amount of criticism from certain Christian circles. And as we are about to begin a workshop series looking at the lives and practice of some of the great mystics of the Christian tradition, there have been concerns raised both online and in our community. Why? What’s the controversy in the church at large over this issue? Contemplatives and mystics both believe that direct connection with God is possible right here and now, but not in words or rational thought. Believing that God “speaks” in pure presence, we must learn that language—be purely present ourselves, “rest in God”—to connect with his spirit using the tools of silence and solitude, mindfulness, meditation, and non-verbal prayer among others. We use the terms contemplative and mystic almost interchangeably, but a mystic is generally regarded as a contemplative who also has ecstatic spiritual experiences such as visions, dreams, and sometimes euphoric responses to God’s presence. The controversy stems from whether these practices are scriptural, whether they move outside or even against the Biblical framework. So being as fair and clear as possible, given our own point of view, let’s look at what contemplation and mysticism are and are not, and what exactly the Bible says about both. With no attempt to persuade, we won’t be giving answers, but the evidence may surprise you. And hopefully comfort or at least relax you.
Dave Brisbin | 8.5.18 Had a dream the other night. Kind of like a flying dream, same feeling, but I was back in college, on campus in a cavernous common room with no furniture and students sitting in groups or alone on white, polished floor. Looking down, socks no shoes, when I realized how smoothly I could glide on the floor, I began ice skating around the room faster and faster between and around the groups of student, wind in my face, so free. Later, outside, immersed in the beauty of the campus, talking to a student about classes, I realized I had no idea what he was talking about—I hadn’t been attending any classes at all. The sense of freedom and absence of responsibility was a stark contrast to my waking life. Thought I was functioning and managing well through an extended time of loss, but my dream showed another level of life that I was no longer experiencing. How is life supposed to be lived? Western Christianity has looked at Jesus most often as the “man of sorrows” focusing on his passion and death for our sins. But is there another view of Jesus that looks more like ice skating in our socks? Looking at possibly the most famous single verse in the New Testament, John 3:16, there is a clue. And when we realize that the Aramaic word Jesus used for the world God so loved and the eternal nature of the life we find in him is the same word, “alma,” we realize that the life Jesus is pointing toward is not about quantity, life that lasts eternally, but quality, life that is eternally alive—starting right here an now. And rather than being of man of sorrows, Jesus was a man of eternal aliveness.
Dave Brisbin | 7.22.18 Most often, we attach meaning to circumstance. We view accidents of birth—where, when, how, and to whom we are born—as significant, along with our own accomplishments and external events that affect us. We attach good or bad labels to our circumstances based on the level of pain they bring. But when we think on even the worst things that have happened to us, if enough time has passed, if we have continued to breathe and live, we tend to find that even the worst circumstances have created cherished outcomes we never saw coming, or possibly could not have come any other way. When Paul writes to the Romans that God causes all things to work together for good, he lists a couple of stipulations that we really need to pay attention to: not always or for everyone, but for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. But what does that mean, exactly? Turns out that if you consider the verses before and after this famous verse, Paul defines who loves God and how, how they are married to God’s purpose. And when all is said and done, loving God is essentially the same as being called to his purpose. If we’re living in the hope that saves, breathing through whatever circumstances present…we can’t lose. And then the reality dawns that meaning isn’t what we take out of our circumstances, but what we put in to them—into our relationships with God and each other. And once we know that we can have that meaning in any circumstance and moment of our lives, we can say with Paul that we’ve learned to be content in all circumstance.
Dave Brisbin | 7.15.18 I almost don’t pick up the phone; it’s been ringing all day. Just getting into work flow again and don’t recognize the number…I watch it for several rings then grudgingly tap the screen. It’s a young Marine with a fellow corpsman driving around looking for and calling churches near the base. You’re the only one to answer the phone, he says, and goes on to tell me they are being deployed the next day for the first time and just wanted someone to pray with who “knew what they were doing…” There was a moment somewhere during this exchange when all the resistance and worry about work not getting done and any other distracting thoughts fell to the floor, and I knew exactly what I was going to do, couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Do you know our address? Yes. What’s your ETA? Five minutes. Give me fifteen. What an honor to have picked up the phone, to have been at the right place and time when these two young men rode by. Jesus speaks of service, makes it a centerpiece of his ministry and worldview, and so we have made it a centerpiece of ours as well in a typically institutional way—with organizations, agendas, and mission statements. But is there another face of service to which Jesus is pointing? I’ve always been puzzled by the story in John 11 of Jesus raising Lazarus back to life. Jesus’ decisions and reactions just don’t seem to track. Why did he wait two more days to travel to his friend who was sick? And if he knew he was going to raise him, why did he weep with his sister just before? I see a video where a man speaks of “shoulder taps,” moments when it seems God is directing our attention to a need right in front of us, a need eclipsing all others by mere proximity. Maybe Jesus is pointing to a more organic and seamless view of service as simply being aware and present enough, open and vulnerable enough to feel the tap—to know exactly what to do when either an unknown number or a best friend calls.
Dave Brisbin | 7.8.18 Think of all the debates and fights between Christians. Among Christians. Between Christians and non-Christians. What are they all about? Truth? Ethics, morality, law, doctrine, church practice or style, social issues? For Christians, if it’s Scripture that informs us of truth, then every fight—whatever it’s about— is ultimately about Scripture. What we believe about Scripture dictates both what we think we know of truth and how we think we need to go about defending it. But the Bible is primarily a spiritual book conveying spiritual truths and building an awareness of unseen significance in life. Yet we focus and fight over the physical accuracy of issues like creation, church practice, numbers, dates, and of course miracles and miraculous healings. Jesus presented his healing miracles as proof of the authenticity of his ministry, “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them…” We immediately question whether these events actually happened, but from a spiritual perspective that is much less important than what they can teach us herenow. Taking any debate off the table, even assuming Jesus’ healings literally occurred, is there a deeper layer of meaning that points toward a truth beyond physical accuracy? Truth is, any physical healing is really only a temporary reprieve—from the moment we are born, we are all slowly dying. So even as Jesus heals what is temporary, he is also pointing to what endures, inviting us to partner with him in his greatest miracle…to be truly living while we are dying.
Dave Brisbin | 7.1.18 When did Christianity actually begin? It would be easy to say at Jesus’ birth, baptism, ministry, Easter. But was Christianity as we know it present during Jesus’ life? Even Easter was a “silent” event. It happened while Jesus’ followers were sleeping or at least staring at the ceiling that night. Afterwards, they didn’t recognize him when they first saw him, and it took some time for them to come to terms with their new reality. One scholar maintains that Christianity began the moment Jesus’ first followers recognized the full impact of his resurrection—fully realized what it meant that he was alive. That was certainly the moment or series of moments after which they moved out in a new boldness and began revolutionizing the Roman world. But before that revolution could take place, each faithful follower, in the period between Easter and Pentecost, had an experience nothing short of an interior revolution—a radical overthrowing of his or her previous concept of reality. It was an interior micro revolution that preceded the exterior macro revolution to come. But can we also move in reverse? Can we look at the details of a macro revolution to see how they mirror and map the personal revolutions we all need to engage in order to grow along Jesus’ Way? Approaching July 4, looking again at the words of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s words bring key concepts to bear that are true for all revolutions, national and personal, and can help us discern when we’re getting close to our own interior revolt, when to act, when not to act, and when we’ve let the moment pass.
Dave Brisbin | 6.24.18 In times of difficult life transitions, when the uncertainty factor is blowing the top off the thermometer, questions of how to proceed become really urgent. But coupling these transitions and the seemingly risky decisions that come along for the ride with a perceived loss of connection with God, spirit, relational connection, can be paralyzing. When the pain is great, it seems to us that the solution must be great as well. We look for sensational—big, top-down fixes or breakthroughs. We think we need to hear God’s voice in a way we haven’t before, pray for clarity, find a big missing piece somewhere out there to alleviate the insecurity. There is a theory in criminology called “broken windows” that believes taking care of even the smallest signs of criminal activity or social disorder—fixing broken windows—creates an environment where even serious crime is less likely to happen. And where it’s been implemented, it seems to work. In other words, if you want to create big changes, you start with the little issues, the day to day broken windows in your city or in your life. Looking at Jesus’ life both in what is stated he taught in the gospels and just as importantly, what is left out in his 18 “lost” years shows a Jesus taking care of the smallest details on his way to a ministry that would shake a world. By identifying and working through our broken windows, no matter how insignificant they seem, we can find our way back to the presence of our God and the ability to make the risky decisions that will eventually shake our world as well.
Dave Brisbin | 6.17.18 On Father’s Day: Though the ancient Hebrews who wrote our scripture always referred to God in the masculine as Ab/Father, there is much in scripture that also refers to a feminine nature as well. Hebrews understood that God encompassed both ab and em, father and mother—both are embedded in their language, sacred writings, and world view. But here in the modern West, looking at scripture more literally as we do, God as father eclipses God as mother and presents us with the unbalanced view of God primarily as king, judge, executioner, administrator—all the functions of ab at the expense of the mercy, compassion, intimacy, humility, and vulnerability of God as em/mother. But Jesus comes to our rescue with an ingenious solution: “Abba.” This word for father carried the intimacy, familiarity, and belovedness of a child for her daddy and by using it, Jesus was conveying that he had seen his father’s face and news was good about the nature of our relationship with him. When did he see his father’s face? Contrary to the common view of Western Christianity, the gospels imply that it was during an intense struggle, a wrestling in the wilderness where Jesus stripped his life down to the ground in order to see what was really true. The shape of this wrestling is mirrored over and over in scripture, in Jacob, Moses, and even Philip as they struggle to see their father’s face. It will be no less a wrestling for us to put down whatever we carry that blocks our view so that we can move from ab to abba and see both father and mother in our father’s face.
Dave Brisbin | 6.10.18 My wife tells me she keeps seeing the number 11:11 everywhere. I start seeing 11:11 as well. She does some research and finds that seeing repeating numbers is a “thing,” a phenomenon sometimes called “angel numbers,” with an intricate system of meaning based on numerological values. But since any actual meaning can’t be verified or falsified, it’s all easy to dismiss, even mock as mere coincidence or selective perception—as it probably is, factually. But seeing the numbers has become a touch point for me and my wife, a running connection between us, a reminder of a greater unseen world, a source of playful attention and smiles, a call to prayer and a return to center. Seeing, being aware of these numbers has become full of meaning for me and my wife—it’s become a middle way, a third way through the details of life. A business coach has me read a book giving permission to be completely obsessed with business success, which appears to stand in complete contradiction to the contemplative principles I’ve studied for decades, calling us to a quiet center and a detachment from outcome. And though it would be easy—and comforting—for me to dismiss, even mock that celebration of “obsession” so that I didn’t have to stretch to consider it, I’m thinking there is a third, middle way between these two poles, any two poles that life presents. Jesus tells us the last shall be first, to take the seat at the foot of the table, and yet his life was radical and extreme and his family thought he was crazily obsessed when he began his ministry. Where we think we may have to choose between being an obsessive warrior and a happy contemplative, maybe our tradition is really showing us the middle way of the happy warrior.
Dave Brisbin | 6.3.18 Dialogue from movie: “You’ll never believe what just happened!” “If it’s bad news, I generally do believe it…” Unfortunately true. Why is it that we generally do believe the bad news over the good? If you think on it, we’re shaped much more by the hurts and traumas we’ve experienced in life than by the joys and pleasures. Pain demands strategies for survival that we build from earliest childhood—strategies that become perceptions, attitudes, behavior, and beliefs that are sturdy and persist indefinitely after the painful circumstances are gone. How do we pull our personal pendulums back to a centered position? In Romans, Paul speaks of presenting ourselves as living sacrifices and renewing our minds to prove God’s will. What does that mean? How does it help? To put that into practical terms is to line it up with Jesus at Matthew 6, when he tells us not to worry about the future but to seek Kingdom first, right now. Putting it all together is to realize that all life is always today and that the Kingdom to which Jesus and Paul are pointing is always now/today as well—in fact it’s a momentary Kingdom. The choice to renew our minds and behavior and attitudes is always now, always a moment by moment proposition. There is no super switch we throw or prayer we say to enter Kingdom once and for all. There is only this moment and the choice we make to be fully here, present to God’s spirit infused in each other and everything around us or not. It’s like a string of pearls—it only becomes a necklace the moment there are more pearls than string.
Dave Brisbin | 5.27.18 I’ve watched a friend over the nearly ten years I’ve known her, fight her way back from the depths of traumatic loss to new life only to find out that she has cancer. When we last connect, she’s just coming out of eight hours of chemo. Eight hours for one treatment. I had no idea it could take so long. You’d think after all the years down and the all years climbing back up to new job, house, friends, and fiancé, there’d be some sort of plateau for a while at least, but the crest for her was just the beginning of the next trough, and the oscillation continues. One week out of Pentecost, it’s important to realize that it was ever thus. We want to believe that when we attain a peak experience like the filling of the Spirit at Pentecost, things will stay peaked from that point on. But that’s not the picture scripture is painting. Looking at Peter after Pentecost, Paul after Damascus, David after Goliath, Elijah after Carmel, peaks that should have remained only form the crest that defines the next valley in their experience…and the oscillation continues. There is nothing wrong with the shape or our lives, the shape of the oscillation. There is nothing they or my friend or we have done wrong to deserve it, but not to expect it, amplifies it. Life will always carry us up and down as we live here between heaven and earth, and the mark of the truly successful life is the one that has learned to love the oscillation. Or if that’s not fully possible, to at least learn to love through the oscillation.
Dave Brisbin | 5.20.18 On the day of our 11th Anniversary as a ministry, we listen to an excerpt of the last audio recording our co-founder, Bob “Bubba” Beauchamp delivered in 2015. When Bubba died in January, 2018, we excerpted a short clip of what was the essence of how he and we at theeffect approach our spirituality: experientially over intellectually and relationally over religiously. Jumping off from Bubba’s anecdotal delivery, we take a look at the components of a personal spiritual “program” and how critical it is to make our spiritual practice personal. Our churches and religious traditions give us an external structure, if we choose to shelter within it, but until and unless we begin building an interior structure within the larger structure, we will have nothing that is really our own and portable—able to be taken with us where ever life leads. The model of Jesus’ life gives us the shape of this structure, and Bubba confirms it with his: the community, accountability, structure, discipline, and service that gives us the sense of meaning and purpose and identity that allows us to see God everywhere as Bubba did: in his parrot who greeted him by calling his name, every crashing wave, cloud and bird in the sky, the memory of his parents, and every face in his path. By approaching the altar within, we find a seamless presence in our lives where every smile becomes a prayer.
Dave Brisbin | 5.13.18 On Mothers’ Day, we’re recalling a question posed last year: I know that God loves me, but how do I know that he likes me? It’s a brilliant question if you think about it, but at first blush, why would it even come up? If we know God loves us, isn’t that enough? No, not really… We’re commanded to love one another, even to love our enemies. But liking implies affection, genuine delight and pleasure, desire to be with, a playful attention that is beyond any commandment. We can choose who we love, but no one can choose who they like—any more than we can choose whether we like broccoli or bacon (I know, everyone likes bacon). We have so focused on God as Father and love as duty and justice, that we have lost the connection with God as Mother and love as compassion and affection. The notion of God as mother pushes all the wrong buttons in our culture, even sounds blasphemous to some, but can our scriptures, placed back in their original Hebrew context come to our rescue? When we look at the original meanings of father and mother in Hebrew, the non-dual continuum through which Hebrews viewed what appear to us a polar opposites, when we see how Hebrews personified Holy Wisdom and God as female, how Spirit and Kingdom are feminine nouns in Hebrew, a balance begins to appear. And when we consider that Jesus always led with mother’s love—acceptance and connection—before he ever taught father’s love— justice and law—we begin to see that God is the perfect balance of father and mother, loving and liking. We may well want to be liked more than loved, but as long as God remains centered in our minds and thoughts, he is Father only—loving and judging at the same time. When we step away from our thoughts about God and simply live our moments with full awareness, we begin experiencing the connection and acceptance of God as our Mother and the answer to our question.
Dave Brisbin | 5.6.18 You’ve heard of heat seeking missiles…truth is, we humans are all pleasure seeking missiles. We seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Necessary trait for survival of the species. It guides us spiritually too, as long as we honestly consider in what we ultimately take pleasure. You could say that the spiritual journey is really an ongoing refining of our pleasure centers. Chinese proverb—to suffer yourself when all under heaven suffer, to enjoy only when all under heaven enjoy—implies an ultimate refining of our notion of pleasure that Jesus seems to affirm as he leads us to further and further expansion of our sense of relationship and connection. To love the enemy equally with our friends and neighbors and then to see even our attachment to family as a barrier to the fullness of unity are among the most difficult teachings of Jesus. A view of the perfect lover as a mirror that faithfully reflects the beloved without agenda or distortion, a mirror that is empty of self until the beloved steps into frame and empty again as the beloved moves on, seems to be where Jesus is leading: that such a laying down of self is the only way we will ever see that we are intimately connected to everything—not just some things—and that our life is the connection itself. And that apart from everything that is, we don’t actually exist. It’s a disturbing notion for us rugged individualists…the thought of our sense of self returning as a drop to the ocean. But as the poet Rumi wrote, we are not a drop in the ocean, we are the entire ocean in a drop.
Dave Brisbin | 4.29.18 From the account of Pentecost in Acts 2, it can seem that the Spirit descending on Jesus’ followers like tongues of fire on each was an event that happened at a particular place and time as they passively waited. But the truth is, there’s nothing passive about the spiritual life. We need to resist the temptation to think of Pentecost or baptism of the spirit or the born again experience as the moment when Spirit is unleashed, no longer withheld. Spirit is always unleashed, permanently permeating everything all the time—never withheld. Pentecost is a conscious choice to return to unity with Spirit as we become aware of its presence in a fundamentally new way. It can be a gradual process, a process of becoming more and more aware until we realize at some point we have a very different relationship with Presence. What is this process? How does it work? Jesus’ Way to Father can be looked at as a return to the Garden of Eden, a return to the kind of connection with which each of started as children. And Jesus’ insistence on loving the enemy, the willingness and practice of embracing what is different and difficult in our lives—people, ideas, circumstances that offend—is the process itself. Each time we love enemy as Jesus did by breaking through the ritual, theological, and social barriers we have set up to keep ourselves safe, we are returning to the borderless relationship beyond tribe and self that is Pentecost.
Dave Brisbin | 4.22.18 If we’re serious about getting to Pentecost, experiencing the full awareness of spiritual presence, there’s a basic truth about the journey with which we have to come to grips…that the way to Pentecost begins at Calvary. Jesus said that it was to his closest followers’ advantage that he go away, so the Helper could come. Moses, after 40 years of faithfully leading his people, is not allowed to enter the promised land, but dies within sight of it. What is being communicated? Moses himself and Jesus himself had become physical impediments to their followers’ ability to take the next step in their spiritual journeys. As long as they clung to their leader as provider and deliverer, they would not find the direct connection with unseen Spirit that is Pentecost. Calvary is the moment all Jesus’ followers’ hopes and expectations, the entire world they’d been building is killed right before their eyes. It is the moment of Jesus’ greatest display of vulnerability, which forces the choice of his followers to see vulnerability for what it really is: the flip side of love. Without embracing the vulnerability of their apparent abandonment, they would never be able to experience the fact that to be deeply in love is to be deeply vulnerable and to love perfectly is to literally or figuratively lay down your life for the beloved. That moment, that Calvary moment, is the beginning of the path to a filling of the Spirit of love through its flip side…vulnerability.
Dave Brisbin | 4.15.18 Between Easter and Pentecost, or more specifically, between Pesach/Passover and Shavu’ot, stretches a period of fifty days called in Hebrew sefirat ha-omer—the Counting of the Omer. Jews were told to make a grain offering on the second day of Pesach, then count each day for seven Sabbaths, add one day, and make another grain offering. Starting as celebrations of the barley and wheat harvests, Pesach and Shavu’ot respectively grew into celebrations of the physical liberation of the people from Egypt and their spiritual liberation from slave mentality at the giving of the Law. Hebrews made a distinction between the physical liberation first and the spiritual liberation that naturally followed a people living in intimate relationship with God. The counting of the omer is their structure for an interior preparation for spiritual deliverance. Jesus makes the same distinction to Nicodemus—that he must be born again in spirit before he can see God’s kingdom. And though Nicodemus cannot understand such language at John 3, by John 19 he has broken through to the boldness and freedom that Jesus’ followers will also experience on Shavu’ot, Pentecost fifty days later. For us, whether we call this being born again or baptism of the spirit, we need to understand that such spiritual empowering is not passively bestowed, but actively unveiled—we must become ready to see. We are in the liturgical middle of the counting right now, and we need to find our own way to count the omer, to live as if kingdom is already present before we can become people who can see that it actually is.
Dave Brisbin | 4.8.18 Moving past the Resurrection and anticipating the spiritual filling of Pentecost fifty days later, is there a model for the shape our days if we’re living a spiritually aware lifestyle? What does that look like? Jesus teaches and demonstrates all through the Gospels of course, but the nation of Israel itself shows most clearly the ideal of what day to day conscious connection to God looks like. Leaving Egypt, Moses establishes a law that takes Israel out of the death and next world obsession of Egypt and places all the emphasis on immersion in this world, herenow. And perhaps more to the point, the promised land the Hebrews eventually occupy in Canaan had no major river or natural water source that would support irrigation and agriculture as Egypt had. Israel had to rely on its annual rains, the Yoreh and Malkosh, the early and latter rains that fell in fall and spring and without which there was no sustenance. You can harness the flow of a river, but not the rains. To be completely dependent on the heavens, on God in heaven, to be deeply connected and aware of the movement of wind and weather herenow, to pray humbly for provision while working hard in preparation and celebrating gratefully for the blessing of the rains captures the post-Pentecost lifestyle as well as can be.
Dave Brisbin | 4.1.18 There is one detail in the post resurrection accounts of Jesus appearing to his closest friends and followers that is common to all of them, and yet this detail hasn’t gotten much airplay or consideration in terms of what it may mean to us who are still trying to follow Jesus so long after that first resurrection Sunday. None of the friends and followers to whom Jesus appeared after his crucifixion recognized him at first. This seems utterly impossible, if you think about it. How could they not recognize him? Mary, as close as she was to Jesus, loving him as she did, doesn’t recognize him standing right in front of her by the tomb until he calls her name. The Emmaus travelers walk the entire trip and get halfway through supper before they realize who he is. Peter and the fisherman don’t recognize him on the shore until they pull in an impossible catch of fish. Did he look physically different? Some sort of cloaking miracle? The Gospels are only as important as they are relevant to our lives right here and now, and right here and now these Gospels are telling us that we are all limited to seeing what we expect to see, what we believe is possible to see. They are telling us that even those who walked with Jesus, had to have their limiting beliefs broken down before they could see the truth right before their eyes. Are we any different?
Dave Brisbin | 3.25.18 On Palm Sunday, what is the importance of the details of Jesus’ big entrance into Jerusalem that kicked off what turned out to be his last week before crucifixion? Do we focus on historical facts that occurred nearly 2,000 years ago or on spiritual truths as immediate as our next breath? Standing behind all the historical details are rich symbolic truths that point us in an inescapable direction: that Jesus was not coming as a conquering national hero, but a humble, spiritual servant of anyone and everyone in his path. But of the four main groups of people watching him ride by on the colt of a donkey, none saw who he really was. Each group saw what they wanted to see, colored by their needs and ambitions: a warrior messiah set to overturn the Roman occupation, threat to power and tax bases, the chance to rise to relevance and power... Shortly before all this, Jesus asks his closest friends: “Who do you say that I am?” That is still the central question today for anyone who sets off to follow Jesus. Are we just looking through our own need and ambition, or are willing to go through the painful, risky process of letting all that go so we can see who Jesus is emphatically telling us he is. And are willing to let that truth change us radically from the inside out?
During our grand opening celebration for our new San Clemente location, we took time to have several effect members talk about their personal journeys leading them to theeffect and beyond. The stories are classic tales of spiritual transition and community. Also, the family of one of our founders who recently passed was on hand to present a portrait of him for our facility.
Dave Brisbin | 3.18.18 The central question for any who calls themselves Christian or a follower of Jesus has to be the one Jesus asks his followers--and by extension all of us--in Mark 8, “Who do you say that I am?” The question has as many answers as there are followers most likely, but how do we come to the best answer that we can muster as a group? Leonard Sweet comes to our rescue with the term EPIC, which for him is an acronym standing for Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Communal. He has said that this is the way the youngest generations among us process information as opposed the older generations of the Modern world who are Propositional, Representational, Word-based, and Individualistic. The differences are profound in terms of worldview and attitude toward life, but the immense relevance really hits home, when we realize that the ancient peoples who wrote our scriptures were EPIC too. Our interpretation of ancient, EPIC scripture has been arrived at through anti-EPIC glasses and has been colored by attitudes and beliefs alien to the writing. If we are going to answer the central question of Jesus’ identity, we first have to tackle how it is we are asking and the means by which we ask.
Dave Brisbin | 3.11.18 On the fourth Sunday of Lent, trying to re-imagine Lent as time of sensory deprivation in order to clear away all that distracts and obscures God’s face, if we’ve begun practicing moment by moment awareness, if we’ve begun to confront our limiting beliefs and obsessive behavior patterns and become willing to overturn those interior tables, what truth starts to become apparent? Jesus gives us a big clue traditionally read on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week. During the Last Supper, he strips off his mantle and tunic, wraps a towel around himself and kneels in front of each of his friends to wash feet. It’s hard for us as modern Westerners to comprehend the full scope of this outrageous action, or to understand Peter’s violent reaction. But Jesus is showing us something absolutely profound, something we have to be prepared to see, as Peter and the rest of the room as yet were not. By showing as radically and graphically as possible that he was an unassuming, humble, servant leader, Jesus--as one and the same with the Father--is trying to convey that our God, the creator of heaven and earth, is also an unassuming, humble, servant leader who lives to serve us…to kneel and wash our feet. If we, like Peter, are outraged by this image of God, then we need to spend more time seeing what things look like from kneeling height.
Dave Brisbin | 3.4.18 On the third Sunday of Lent, continuing to look at how taking Lent seriously as a time of clearing away all that distracts and obscures the truth of our lives…after we commit to the process of increasing awareness moment by moment, what’s next? As we become more aware of our emotions and emotional triggers, thought and behavioral patterns, as we begin to see ourselves as with a third eye moving and choosing and relating based on whatever has become our worldview to date—what are we going to do with that information? If our thought and behavior patterns are healthy, creating healthy relationships, then nothing of course. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. But if not, then just as Jesus did in the Jerusalem temple, are we willing to overturn the tables of our own ingrained beliefs in order to rearrange a life that has become unable to produce the fruit of its design? Make it once again resemble its original promise? That is the lesson of cleansing of the temple and cursing of the fig tree, and Jesus’ challenge to us. If we’re not willing to overturn our own carefully placed tables, then all the awareness in the world avails nothing.
Dave Brisbin | 2.18.18 On the first Sunday of Lent, how do we learn about this 40 day journey to Easter from the tradition of liturgy? Each day of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday has passages from the Gospels embedded that can help us prepare for the new life of Easter if we’re paying attention. Looking at the passage traditionally read on Palm Sunday, as Jesus is entering Jerusalem before the crucifixion, he tells those who are trying to silence the cheering crowd that even if these were silent, the rocks would cry out. What can we learn from singing rocks? That all creation is an unceasing expression of truth? That if we can learn to become still and silent inside, that we will be able to hear the music playing through each moment? Paul calls this sort of interior attitude unceasing prayer, and at 1Thessalonians 5, gives us not one, but three directives that if understood properly and practiced consistently, will transform the quality of our most basic relationships and take us a long way toward the rebirth of resurrection.
Dave Brisbin | 2.11.18 Lent is upon us. Already. Again. What do we really know about Lent? For those of us who grew up in liturgical churches, what we learned may have had little to do with the traditions that established Lent, and what we remember now, may even subvert those ancient intentions. What does the word Lent mean? Why 40 days and how was Lent initially used in early church life? What traditions like Pancake Day, Mardi Gras, and Ash Wednesday have sprung up around it and what is their significance? But most importantly, how can we understand and even reimagine Lent to take us on a 40 day journey to the new life of Easter? If Lent became a time of fasting and deprivation as penance for sin, can we use Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness as model to begin to see Lent as deprivation for the purpose of clearing away all that distracts from the Presence that will bring new life on Easter? Because just as Jesus’ first followers continued to look for the living among the dead, we need to practice new ways of listening and seeing that will allow us to look for new life, rebirth, where it really lives.
Dave Brisbin | 2.4.18 Once we begin to get a new notion of the Father’s love, we are immediately assailed with all the reasons why not, why it couldn’t be so, that something that seems to be this good, it just can’t possibly be. And so we need to protect the love—not the love itself; it needs no protecting as the first and most durable substance in the universe, but we do need to protect our convictions. Traumatic and challenging life events will chip away, difficult relationships, betrayals, abandonments, religious practice and doctrine, and even scripture itself make Father look like unconditional love at certain points and something else in others. How do we navigate all this? How do we read our scriptures in such a way that Father’s love remains in our hearts exactly as Jesus said it was? Taking sample passages from Paul’s letter to the Galatians and first letter to the Corinthians, we see how the Father’s love stands firm even in the face of passages that seem to directly refute it and can always remain for us what defines kingdom and the truth that makes us free.
Dave Brisbin | 1.28.18 The Father’s love is so big, so pervasive that we still have more to talk about. How do we start to grasp something that by definition is ungraspable—as is anything that is infinite. In trying to understand anything, our minds immediately begin defining and categorizing, creating edges to distinguish that from this and give us something to hold on to. But this is not possible with the things of God that have no edge and no degree. Just as with the stars of the universe, which science tells us is finite, but has no edge—if there is no edge, there is no degree. The stars will look exactly the same in any direction: equal density and distribution. That’s the way it is with anything that can’t be measured. It always looks the same. The universe can’t be measured so it always looks the same wherever you are, which means wherever you are is exactly at the center of everything that is. God’s love has no edge and no degree, it can’t be measured and so always looks the same, which means that wherever you are, whenever you are, you are always and forever right in the center of it all. If we could begin to grasp that…
Dave Brisbin | 1.21.18 Our co-founder, friend, and benefactor, Bob “Bubba” Beauchamp died January 16. It was a Tuesday morning when my phone rang at 7AM, and I saw Bubba’s son’s name and just knew things were going to be very different. Bubba was a larger than life character who filled rooms with presence and laughter--someone who never left you unchanged, always left you better than he found you. As we’ve been returning these past weeks to discover again the deepest principles of the faith community Bubba helped create, there is no more basic principle than the Father’s love and no one more suited to display it than our Bubba. Bubba found the connection. On the other side of the trauma and compulsions and resistance of his life, he found a love that consumed everything that had distracted him and left only the connection itself. For as long as knew him, he lived and loved that love, and showed us what it looked like in a beautifully imperfect package. All we can do now is be grateful for Bubba’s presence and example, and try to follow on, clumsily at first until we start to fill those big shoes.
Dave Brisbin | 1.14.18 As we ease into our new space, seems a good time to revisit the foundational principles that define theeffect…go back to basics. This is never an irrelevant thing to do: the most fundamental principles in life are those that run so deep that we can only grasp them in stages. We need to revisit them over and over. And so it is with the most foundational of all the principles that Jesus gave us…the Father’s love: a love so consuming, pervasive, self-existing, even fierce, that GK Chesterton called the “furious love of God,” and Jesus called Abba. To really embrace such a love, one that has no degree, always looks the same lavished on any one of us, can’t be turned up, down, or away, that actually unbalances the scales of justice in favor of the beloved, is a love that will outrage and disturb us before it does anything in the direction of comfort. If God’s love hasn’t outraged us yet, we simply haven’t taken it seriously enough, haven’t waited to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. But on the other side of that outrage is the abundant life of kingdom—and only on the other side of our outrage, the death of legal relationships, is a unity that changes everything.
On our first Sunday in our new space, we revisit the idea of consecrating our new space just as our old space was consecrated over nearly a decade of service. And not just in terms of a formal prayer or ritual or even of the formal worship on a Sunday morning, but through every authentic vulnerability between each of us and another in this place. To consecrate, to set aside this space for use in God’s kingdom is to enter again into real relationship either formed here or brought here—every tearful share and open conversation, every embrace and kindness. These are the moments and actions that consecrate our space. Jesus called it worshipping in spirit and in truth, and to really get inside the nuances of what he meant by that phrase will take us like a laser to the heart of the truth we seek.
On New Year’s Eve, on our last day in the space and facility that has been our home for over nine years, it is a day of endings. But then tomorrow is a day of beginnings… How do we process all that? People have often told us that just stepping into our room gives them a sense of spirit or presence or just connection and peace. Is that something we’re leaving behind? If this has been God’s house for us for nearly a decade, will our next space be God’s house as well? When we look at scripture, at Moses experiencing holy ground before the burning bush, then building the first tent of meeting--God’s first house among the Hebrews--we start getting clues to how God views his house. Beyond the fact that his first house was portable, the story of the filling of his presence moves unmistakably from the enclosure, the space, to the people themselves. And in Numbers 33, we see that the Hebrews always recorded their journeys from their starting places, as series of setting out, not destinations. And if we’re paying attention, we come to understand that God’s house is within us, among us, in our midst--and in every setting out, we simply bring God’s House with us…if we so choose.
We know so little of Jesus’ birth and childhood. Only two gospels give us any information at all. Luke gives us most of what we traditionally know of Jesus’ birth and childhood, and Matthew gives us the story of the Magi. Who were these Magi, these wise men from the east? What was the star they followed and what do their gifts signify? Why did Matthew feel this story, above all and any other stories of Jesus’ nativity and early years, was the one to include in his narrative? So many questions that we’ll never fully answer, but if we look at the Magi from a spiritual point of view and not just a historical one—bring the past right up into the present of our daily lives, it is shocking how relevant the Magi become. If we let them speak to us, if we put ourselves in their place, juxtaposed with the reality of our lives herenow, we find we can begin to see answers to the why and how of it all, even as we continue to speculate on the what.
As we prepare to move to a new facility at the end of the month, we take a moment to look back on our time at our facility of nine years and consider how we as humans attach such meaning and emotion to places and things. It’s a beautiful thing we do—makes us real. Taking time to grieve the loss of everything we’ve known, even as we prepare for the adventure of what is coming soon. And as we are also approaching Christmas as well as a move into the unknown, makes sense to consider Mary in Luke 1, given an incomprehensible message that she will be bearing a very special child that would change her life completely or possibly even end it. What was she thinking as she listened, what fears played across her mind and heart even as she humbly accepted a scenario she could never understand? And what lessons can we learn from a little girl, only 12 or 13 years old, that we can apply to ourselves, to the adventures that life will insert into our paths when we least expect them?
Dave Brisbin | 11.26.17 With Thanksgiving just passed, it may be good to stop for a minute and consider what this holiday may have to teach us at root. The older I get, the simpler things begin to look, and I’m beginning to realize that the things that remain complicated are of much less importance than the simple ones. As a master of simplicity, Jesus is always breaking things down to their simplest terms, and when it comes to kingdom, his central theme, it may all come down to just one word... The world is becoming angrier. Why? Unmet expectation, insecurity, envy, entitlement, victimization? Yes, all the above. And Jesus is always pointing in the same direction: overcoming expectation with awareness, insecurity with intimacy, envy with spiritual abundance, entitlement with vulnerability, and victimization with choice and action. And each one of these choices creates the same sensation, the same condition in life: gratitude. Gratitude is not a ticket in the door to kingdom. Gratitude is the experience of kingdom itself. Gratitude is what kingdom feels like—its default position. When we’ve taken the journey, it’s how we know we’ve arrived.
Dave Brisbin | 11.19.17 The world and culture that produced our Scriptures is so different from ours that the very basis through which we understand the words we read in our translated texts—our worldview—has to be translated first in order to really understand the truth being conveyed. Try to imagine a world in which the workings of nature—from thunder and lightning to earthquakes and solar eclipses—are not scientifically understood, but ascribed directly to God. Imagine a complete dependence for survival on rains and weather, animals and crops, on family structure. An impossibly dark sky at night exploding with stars and the bright band of our galaxy as divine lightshow. Imagine living your life never seeing your own reflection, and the sense of self and identity that would entail. In a world like that, the most basic phrases relating to God and spirituality take on new meaning. Breath, wind, and spirit were all expressed by ancient Hebrews with the same word and so occupied the same space in their lives. To understand this central place of spirit in motion and breath is to begin to understand biblical spirituality. Here, with no analog in Western culture, perhaps the Hawaiian concept of aloha and island spirituality can come to our rescue and help us translate our own texts.
Dave Brisbin | 11.12.17 It often helps to hear deep spiritual truths as expressed in faith traditions other than our own. We can become so familiar with our own traditional expressions that we don’t hear them anymore…they become enveloped in colloquial meaning and lose the ability to shock us into deeper awareness. And we do need to be shocked. Native Americans did not put their energy into buildings or infrastructure. They didn’t value the physical trappings of Western societies and lived nomadically within the systems nature provided. They saw life, meaning, and purpose from a vastly different perspective—one that Jesus was trying to convey as well. When Crowfoot, the great Blackfoot chief says, “What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset,” when Waheenee of the Hidatsa tribe writes, “Often in summer I rise at daybreak and steal out to the corn fields, and as I hoe the corn I sing to it, as we did when I was young,” they are speaking of the meaning of life encapsulated in the immersion in a singular act in a specific moment. All life and meaning coming to a single point of awareness. Jesus would call this Kingdom, and if we can’t learn to sing to the corn again, we won’t really know what he means.
Dave Brisbin | 11.5.17 Maria Montessori said that play is the work of the child. She recognized that the playful activities of childhood influence the pattern of the connection between nerve cells in the brain, the development of motor skills, language, socialization, personal awareness, creativity, emotional wellness, problem solving. And if play is the work of the child, then toys are the tools. And yet, the child knows nothing of this. The child just plays, and all this development happens in the background as by-product. John Lennon wrote in a song that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. As adults, we often dismiss the play of the child as meaningless childhood expression, missing the deeper significance. In the same way, we miss the deeper significance of life because we take our work and tools literally and not as the play and toys they really are. Our work and tools have no real intrinsic meaning. Everything we build with our hands and tools will be lost in time. But what comes as by-product, from a direction in which we were never looking, is the eternal, deep truth-understanding of life—as we simply show up day after day, working, striving for excellence, taking care of customers, co-workers, family, friends. If play is the work of the child, then work is the play of the adult, and once we realize that the real meaning of life is what happens as process rather than outcome, we can really start to live.
Dave Brisbin | 11.2.17 Speaking to a divorce recovery workshop on the topic of new directions in life, how to make sense of the pain and loss? How to deal with the completely changed landscape of life and relationships? A new world in which to navigate and chart new directions? If we can understand the shape of the emotional/spiritual journey we’re on, like looking at the overall shape of the route on a map, we will have much more confidence we’re headed in the right direction as we twist and turn street by street on the ground. The shapes of ancient rites of passage and the timeless hero’s journey trace the shape of the journey in which we find ourselves and with that as guide, begin to show us meaning and purpose in the pain and loss—and at the same time, guiding principles for choosing the new directions that new landscapes demand.
Dave Brisbin | 10.29.17 A nationally-known pastor writes of a sea change earlier in his life when he realized that he was no longer on a path he recognized or thought would lead where he really wanted to go. He wrote that he believed that we have a far too narrow view of repentance, that it meant “to think,” and he had much to rethink and repent. But if we really look at the etymology of the word repentance through five different languages, ancient and modern, we find that repentance is vastly broader than simply feeling regret or rethinking. French, Latin, and Greek all stand between us and the original Hebrew that forms a major theme in Jesus’ teaching. The first words Jesus speaks in Mark is, “The waiting is over. The kingdom is here. Repent and believe the good news.” But when we look at repentance fully, we find not just a word, a single meaning, but an active process, another threeness that takes us from the sorrow of a path not taken to the renewing of mind that overcomes the fear of choosing altogether new directions. And it’s right there that Paul picks up the story and tells us of the kind of wounded sorrow that moves us toward a repentance that moves without any regret at all.
Dave Brisbin | 10.22.17 Looking at the record of increasing human awareness of the intimacy of God’s spirit recorded in scripture: from a wild, fearful presence on a mountaintop, to the shepherd-like pillars of cloud and fire leading the people of Israel, to the cloud standing outside the tent speaking to Moses, to that presence settling on and filling the tent and eventually the temple, to filling Jesus at his baptism, to the apostles at Pentecost…what of us? How do we move from the awareness of Spirit standing outside our tent to resting on and filling us as well? How do we receive the Holy Spirit? What does that even mean? And how do we know if we have that filling? There are clues all over scripture to guide us, but only if we really pay attention to the context, to the backstory, to the larger experience of the people that show us what it really means to ask and invite the Holy Spirit into our lives. Much more than a verbal asking, a spoken prayer—and much more than the speaking of tongues, the awareness of God’s presence filling our tabernacle is life changing on every level.
Dave Brisbin | 10.15.17 At the end of John’s Last Supper account, Peter asks Jesus in the Latin version, “Quo vadis, domine?” Where are you going, Lord? Isn’t that the question we’ve all been asking since the very beginning and are still asking now? We’re still asking because a question this large, that encompasses all of life and all it means to be human, is not answered in a conversation. It’s not answered verbally at all, but in the actual following after…once we have discerned a general direction. And what is that direction? If we are willing to look at scripture in a different way, from Genesis to Revelation, the direction the Lord is going becomes apparent. Looking at the Hebrew description of Presence, sometimes called shekinah glory—where and when it descends and where and when it is removed—we begin to see that it’s not the Presence that is changing, but our perception of where to look. If we can entertain the notion that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures together contain the record of the evolution of faith in a people collectively, the deep insights of certain individuals among them, both the problem and the solution, a description of where we have come from and where we’re going, then we will be prepared to see the where the Lord is going and to follow after in an ever-expanding experience of his Presence.
Dave Brisbin | 10.8.17 Ever notice how it seems to take longer to get somewhere you’ve never been than to get back again? Why is that? Watching every turn, wondering if you missed one, if there’ll be a street sign, how much longer…? I always like to look at a map of the whole route before letting the GPS lady lead me around by the nose. There is a certain amount of anxiety involved in going somewhere for the first time that is relieved once we have some idea of the overall shape of the journey. And what’s true for external journeys is certainly true for interior ones as well. We are always looking for signs and prophecies, plans and God’s will to help us see the way before we actually travel the way. But what Jesus is constantly telling us is that we won’t get the kind of sign we’re looking for if what we’re looking for is certainty. All we get is the “sign of Jonah,” the general shape of the Way that descends into the belly of the beast before it ever leads anywhere else. Jesus is saying that life is shaped like this, that the nature of the journey doesn’t require certainty or even clarity, and if you persist in clinging to those obsessions, you’ll never open to the trust that really is the engine of the only Way to Father.
Dave Brisbin | 10.1.17 Meister Eckhart said that the spiritual life is much more about subtraction than addition, but what does that mean? Many spiritual teachers have spoken about the fact that life is divided into halves, but what is the distinction? Putting the two together, the first half of life is about building the physical platform for survival, happiness, meaning, purpose, identity—it’s about acquisition both physically and emotionally…about addition. The second half is about undoing all that, about the subtraction of layer after layer of manufactured identity and the illusion of certainty. It’s about coming full circle back to the garden where we play with Presence in the cool of the evening and become vulnerably secure in trust. But what does a second half of life journey cost and look like? How do we know we’re in it? Here, Paul comes to the rescue with a beautiful moment of vulnerability and self-disclosure at Romans 7. In a passage that has traditionally been hard to understand, in this context, we see Paul showing us the push and pull, the disorientation and frustration of moving from the first half practice of law-following as righteous addition to the gift of finally letting go of the effort to be good enough, subtracting our way into the weakness that makes us strong in God’s embrace.
Dave Brisbin | 9.17.17 If you’re waiting for anything, you’re not herenow—you’re projected somewhere into an imagined future. And if you’re not herenow, then you’re not in Kingdom, not on Jesus’ Way. Life is like music and dance: you’re either making it or you’re not…if you’re waiting for it, you’re not making it. And yet, as long as we’re breathing here, time appears to us as a sequence of events, past, present, future, and we really do need to learn from the past and anticipate and prepare for the future. How do we do that and remain in Kingdom if life is made up of a combination of now and then, being/doing…and waiting? There’s an art to waiting, a way to wait that keeps us grounded herenow and on Jesus’ Way, and the key to understanding how Jesus is telling us to wait lies in the ancient customs of the Jewish wedding traditions. To understand prophetic and apocalyptic scripture as well as the simple moments of your day begins with knowing how a young Jewish bride waited for her new life as wife and mother between her betrothal and wedding. And then to understand why both Israel and the church understood themselves as God’s bride living between heaven and earth, between life herenow and new life anticipated any moment is to begin to practice the art of waiting.
Dave Brisbin | 9.10.17 Anyone who’s played football had to learn the playbook and how to run the plays in the book, but the real play of football begins where the playbook ends. What do you do when the playbook has delivered you the ball, put it in your hands, and now it’s just you, a field full of linebackers, and a goal line? A great chef begins where the recipe ends and jazz players are defined by the music they make beyond the printed page. It’s a great irony that the church has traditionally told us that God will bless us if we just obey the rules, the law…especially considering that Jesus spent most of his precious time trying to tell us and show us that we can only begin to see the blessings God is constantly showering on our lives once we outrun the rules: transcend them, graduate beyond them, fulfill them by becoming them—living with their original intent written on our hearts. Until and unless we begin to see that Jesus is trying to grow us up and over mere acquisition and obedience as the means to God’s love and approval, we’ll never experience the freedom of simply running downfield with abandon, the ability to make a feast out of whatever ingredients each moment provides, or the creativity in flowing with music that has never been written, and will exist only as long as we are playing.
Dave Brisbin | 9.3.17 A pastor once told me that the pulpit is the last bastion of uninterrupted speech in America. That may be true, and monologues have their place and power, but from time to time we like to have “Conversations” on Sunday mornings, times when we can interact as a group—ask questions and make comments, tell personal stories—sometimes open ended and sometimes directed. Today, directed a bit, realizing that how for the past few weeks I’ve been focusing on the “via negativa,” the ancient, Christian tradition of descent, of letting go of whatever is false in our lives may have created an overly negative view of Jesus’ Way, it seemed to good time to talk about what willingness to let go actually brings into our lives. Letting go of more and more of what is false is really a letting go of fear, and letting go of fear finally allows us to see what is real before us. And what is real is Presence. What does this presence feel like and how do we experience it in everyday life? We all throw in to discuss.
Dave Brisbin | 8.27.17 In saying that Jesus’ hidden years show us a life of willingness to let go of anything that is not truth, to descend first, with no guarantee of ascension, just a promise…what does that look like? What does it mean in real life? Our lives? Piecing together the clues in the few stories we have in the Gospels, it looks like leaving home. Leaving everything that is familiar, comfortable and comforting, what has always been and seems secure and certain, stepping out into the unknown without a safety net, away from those on which you’ve always depended. We see Jesus leaving home four times in the Gospels—short bloodless, matter of fact descriptions with little or none of the raw human emotion and drama of such leavings, both for Jesus and his loved ones. From age twelve to thirty plus, he leaves the warmth and comfort of home to pursue his unswerving desire for truth. If we read between the lines and layer our own experiences of leaving home for college or summer camp, for the military, or job, spouse, prison, divorce—whether anticipating better or worse, it’s wrenching to leave what we know and love, and just as hard for those who love us. Are we willing to leave home? Sometimes literally, but always emotionally, intellectually, spiritually? Willing to leave what we think we know sustains us for something deeper, truer? If not, then we are not following the Way of Jesus.
Dave Brisbin | 8.20.17 Francis of Assisi is credited with saying that we should preach the Gospel continuously and use words where necessary. Taking his cue from Jesus, Francis understood that the Gospel was first a way of living life and only secondarily and of necessity a concept put into words. That words were only as good as the experience that gave them life. Jesus himself and his life itself is the message, the Way, but in our hyper-intellectualism, we miss all that, and in our focus on Jesus as God, we miss his life as a human, as a man—as scripture tells us: fully human, like us in all things, prone to all our weaknesses, learning and growing as we do, yet with an unquenchable desire to know truth, which brought him fully one with the Father, or as scripture puts it, “without sin.” What does that “gospel” look like, what does the shape of Jesus’ life tell us about the shape of ours? Is all this really supported by our scripture? We know very little about Jesus’ life outside of his public ministry, but it’s by stringing together the clues of his first 30 hidden years, with some reading between the lines that we see what it really looks like to follow Jesus, to live a life that is always willing to let go of anything that is not truth, to descend before you ascend, to feel your way to the Father when there are no words to express the process. We focus on the teachings and healings of Jesus during his public ministry, but it’s only in understanding his hidden years, his life journey to his ministry that we can understand what his words really mean.
Dave Brisbin | 8.13.17 The hardest thing for us to understand about Kingdom is its immediacy. The understanding of Jesus’ Kingdom as the heaven of afterlife is so deeply embedded in us, that intellectually understanding otherwise doesn’t really move the needle much. We can say we understand and yet for years still operate as if this Kingdom is still off waiting to happen in some undertermined future. It’s only by living the process of Jesus’ Way, day in and day out, that little by little the conviction builds that when it comes to Kingdom, its’ always today. Kingdom is the state and quality of living a completely healed life, yet when we read of all the healings of Jesus, we focus on the literal, physical healings, allowing us to keep the full, spiritual healing of Kingdom still off wanting to happen. The blind seeing, deaf hearing, lame walking are also about the process of becoming open to new Ways of seeing and hearing and moving past the paralysis of fear that keeps us stalled on Jesus’ Way. The full healing of Kingdom is always right here, right now, always today.
Dave Brisbin | 8.6.17 When Jesus says that he is the Way, truth, and life, if we’re to take him at his word, what he is saying is that he is both a person and a process. The implications of this statement are radical, but we typically don’t even consider them as the church has come to focus almost exclusively on Jesus as a person and has lost the promise of process: finding the person/truth that makes us free. But though the processness of Jesus may be lost on us, it wasn’t on his first followers who called themselves “talmidey urha,” Aramaic for Followers of the Way...not followers of Jesus. And even though Jesus was understood as identical with the Way, still their distinction pointed directly to the fact that we as followers actually do need to follow a Way, a process of becoming more and more identified with both Jesus and Way. So now as modern Westerners, we need to follow a process of unlearning that will take us from the person of Jesus we think we know to the process of Jesus that his first followers knew, that will then take us to the person of truth that will make us free.
Dave Brisbin | 7.30.17 How could an abundance of emphasis on the absolute love of God be a problem? What could go wrong? It is one of the ironies of my life and chosen profession that my absolute focus on the absolute nature of God’s love has placed me at odds with many of my Christian contemporaries, and though this over simplifies the nature of any controversy, it at least accurately expresses my intentions and the method in my “heresy.” At a recent gathering, in the midst of an energetic discussion, one man called me a “functional heretic,” a term I just loved and enthusiastically accepted. I knew what he meant: that I was someone pushing the envelope just short of too far to remain functioning within Christendom, remaining true to Jesus and his message even if expressed in radically different ways. But the reason I loved and accepted the term is because I believe it absolutely applies to Jesus as well. Jesus never stopped being perfectly functional within Judaism, but in his attempt to cut through accepted doctrine and beliefs that had come to burden and separate the people from their God, he pushed the envelope as far as he could—eventually too far for the authorities to permit. And if we’re ever to understand and experience the freedom of Kingdom that Jesus was teaching and living, we’ll need to become functional heretics too, unafraid of the opinions of others and the disturbance of pushing the envelope just short of too far…
Dave Brisbin | 7.23.17 If God is a playful God—as mirrored by Jesus who loved to play with children, tell colorful and funny stories, eat and drink with his friends—how are we to react and respond? How does this notion that God doesn’t live life as a duty to perform but a playground to be experienced change the shape of our journeys? Why is playfulness so important? Think on it: to be in a playful mood and mode is to be tender and open…to be vulnerable. It’s a place of the surrender of control, a suspension of disbelief and reason and defense. It’s far too frightening a place for many of us to go, who don’t feel safe enough to be playful. The arch enemy of playfulness is control, and control is always the foot soldier of fear. We can’t be playful, childlike until we know that we are loved. This is the essence of the Good News: that we are loved enough that being playful is not only possible, but the only possible response…which is why the emblem of Kingdom, the living out of God’s playful love, the proof of that love is always “such as these,” those who, like children, are free to live and love playfully.
Dave Brisbin | 7.16.17 On the 15th anniversary of my ordination, I took a look back at the subject of my first sermon on ordination day all those years ago: The Gospel According to Lou. A beloved friend who died from complications arising from diabetes two weeks before my ordination, Lou’s last words to me and my wife fueled a fundamental change in me and my first sermon that I thought I already had in the bag… “Love each other, just love each other…and kid around a little.” Twelve words. But it was the kidding around part that characterized Lou, who’s playful smile always made me feel I was the only person in a crowded room. It was his playfulness that made all of us aware that Lou actually enjoyed the love he expressed for everyone in his path. And it was his playfulness that finally broke through a theological view of God by showing me the playfulness of Jesus hiding in plain sight in the words of the New Testament. To see Jesus as a laughing, smiling, energetic man playfully living his relationships began redefining my understanding of God’s relationship with me and mine with everyone in my path. I wanted to become someone like Jesus, like Lou, who loved being in love and could state the Gospel with authority in only twelve words.
Dave Brisbin | 7.9.17 What about faith healing? What is it? How does it work? Does it work? Is it biblical? Questions such as these are always present. They are born out of a deep human need for healing and wholeness—and out of the pain, trauma, and fear life presents. People in pain can be most easily manipulated so we need to be wary, yet Jesus healed many of the people around him…aren’t those gifts still in operation? How do we know how to proceed? Although Jesus tells us he came to bring good news to those who have been marginalized, freedom to those who are captive and oppressed, and healing to those in need, he also shows us that kingdom—his word for abundant, healed, liberated life—is a process of becoming that he calls the Way. Is healing an event or a process or both and how do we balance our desire to change our circumstances with learning to be content in all our circumstances? Let’s talk about healing and faith and see if we can find the Way through together.
Dave Brisbin | 7.2.17 Fourth of July should be a time to reassess, take stock of the last 241 years, see where we are, where we came from. We live in an age of cynicism. Our culture doesn’t revere tradition or founding principles anymore, but does that mean there’s no truth, no relevance there to guide us herenow? When we carefully read a document like the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson is telling us that human rights derive directly from God--but not political contracts or laws. Laws only exist to serve the people, and when they don’t, it is the right of the people to abolish them…yet people will suffer oppression and evil as long as they possibly can before finally acting—partly out of fear and partly out of prudence. Revolutions should never be taken lightly, and what operates in nations and governments is reflected in our personal lives. Jesus is calling us to a personal revolution, one that will question and upend all of the intellectual concepts and religious contracts to which we’ve signed, if they no longer serve the purpose of spiritual liberation. And we will resist such upheaval for as long as we can until the day we realize that our desire for those God-given “unalienable rights,” is finally greater than our fear of the disruption of our interior revolution.
Dave Brisbin | 6.18.17 On Fathers’ Day—Is our Father in heaven male? We call him Father after all…and “him.” Intellectually, most of us know God is spirit and neither male nor female, but emotionally, subconsciously, the feelings, the consequence of maleness surrounds our Western notion of God. To have been immersed in a male conception of God keeps him at a distance—the king, judge, executioner, administrator, creator/builder, lawgiver and standard bearer. We talk of the female attributes of our God: compassion, mercy, intimacy, love—but we really order our lives of faith and religion around the king, not the queen, Father, not Mother. Jesus had an ingenious way of dealing with this dilemma: while his people called God their Ab, Hebrew for father, he called his Father, Abba, the familiar, intimate name that Hebrew children use for their daddies to this day. Without contesting the tradition of his people, Jesus brought into the relationship the sense of intimacy and compassion missing from a culturally male conception of God. There is a journey implied here, a journey Jesus took as preserved in the New Testament, a journey from Ab to Abba from father to mother, king to confidant, that we must all take if we really want to go where Jesus went.
Dave Brisbin | 6.11.17 One of the hardest aspects of working in a church setting is watching people come and go—people you like, those you thought of as friends move on and leave you often feeling hurt or abandoned. Natural to feel that way—hard to make the emotional distinction between friendship and ministry. But what is really hurting us? Really, it’s our expectation, our opinion of how things should be. Any community is in constant motion—never static. Any community as we view it is just a momentary snapshot in time that will be morphing into something else in the next moment. To be able to live richly in any community or family or workplace is to expect what is real and not what we wish to be so. As Sengtzu famously said: If you wish to see the truth, hold no opinions for or against. It’s the same message Jesus is giving us when he tells us not to judge. Judging is another way of trying to impose our opinions. If we’re ever to enter the quality of life that is Kingdom, it will only be when we let fall our opinions and let our moments be what they really are.
Dave Brisbin | 5.28.17 The theme of balance in kingdom life continues as we consider a very strange saying of Jesus: to be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. In sending his followers out to teach and heal, what is he trying to tell them and by extension, us? To balance “shrewd,” as intelligent, thoughtful, discreet, practical, and cautious with “innocence,” characterized as simple, sincere, straightforward, without deceit is a difficult mix that seems to be in basic contradiction at first glance. But as with all of Jesus’ instructions, it’s not only possible, but necessary, of course. And this balance must extend to the fundamental ways we look at life and faith, religion, and even scripture itself. When we apply Jesus’ balance to a view of the teachings of Paul and Jesus, what does it reveal? How does it change the way we look at the message being delivered? And how does it change how we apply those teachings to the everyday issues we face here and now? To balance a simple and straightforward approach to faith with the intelligence, practicality, and discretion of the snake can make all the difference, and give us permission to view the fundamentals of our faith in different ways.
Dave Brisbin | 5.21.17 Reading an article by a pastor who now consults and coaches other pastors on growing church attendance, building programs, and time management created a moment of dissonance that I needed to process. In coaching pastors on protecting their time, to focus their time on necessary growth, the author stated that a pastor can only have meaningful relationships with 120 people at a time, and in a church that group is always changing and needs to be managed to the point of actually changing phone numbers and cutting off access to those outside the current 120. Sounds harsh, contains truth, sounds antithetical to Jesus’ principles, but Jesus had inner circles as well. Hence the dissonance. How to balance? And what does it say of our view of time? The ancient view of time and timekeeping was so different than ours, it may be hard to make hard and fast comparisons then and now, but it again points to the necessary balance between mother and father, accomplishment and relationship that is key to kingdom living. Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes that we modern people are fixated on space, of filling formless time with things and accomplishments, but that God sees time as holy in itself, that the first thing God made holy was time—the Sabbath, a palace in time. To see time in a new way may help us to create a better, more holy balance between space and time in our own lives.
Dave Brisbin | 5.14.17 Mothers’ Day: I was recently asked that though we know God loves us, how can we know he likes us? Great question, one that goes to the heart of our human experience. On Mothers’ Day, and by way of answering, it’s always good to be reminded of the ancient Hebraic understanding of the roles of mother and father that is coded right into their language. To understand father/Ab, as “strong house,” the support and structure of the family, and mother/Em as “strong water,” the glue that holds the family together, is fundamental to their life in family, tribe, and nation. But it also reveals their view of God as well. Though God is always referred to in the masculine, Hebrews never understood their God as male, but with key divine concepts such as wisdom and kingdom referred to as feminine, they saw God as a balance between the justice and mercy, accomplishment and relationship that father and mother represent. We can know, understand that God loves us through reading, study, and ritual practice, but we will never know God likes us, enjoys our company, feels personal devotion to us until we experience him as loving mother. Jesus portrayed his Father in just such a way in the parable of the prodigal son—and until we have experienced enough moments when dad acts like mom, we will never know we’re liked as well as loved.
Dave Brisbin | 5.7.17 The cross of Jesus is such a big and central message in Christianity that we need to spend more time on it. So continuing the discussion from the previous week’s message, “Lamb of God,” and in answer to the perennial questions—why is the bible so violent, and why would God sacrifice his son?—we’re looking at deeper ways of understanding Calvary that neither compromise the sacrifice of Jesus nor the love of the Father. In typical midrash fashion (see the message “Deeper Reading” for more on midrash), the New Testament writers portray Jesus on the cross using three deeply embedded images from the Old Testament: the Passover Lamb, the Lifted Up One, and the Scapegoat. To fully understand how Jesus’ first followers understood his sacrifice on the cross, we need to know how these three images functioned in the spiritual lives of the people and how they applied to the spiritual truth of Jesus’ sacrifice. As we dig deeper, we find that all three point us toward a deep gaze at ourselves, at our intrinsic nature as humans that necessitate a laying down of blame, resistance, justification, and anything else we use to deflect our own pain and personal responsibility. When we really understand what Jesus became when he became the “sin of the world,” we can begin to understand the nature of a sacrifice that will really set us free and save us to love as the Father loves.
Dave Brisbin | 4.30.17 No matter what questions we ask of religion or church, scripture or theology, the subtext, the question we’re always really asking is the same: with all life’s pain, uncertainty, absurdity…do I matter? Am I safe? Whether we’re asking about heaven, hell, salvation, law, or any esoteric point of theology, what we’re really looking for is assurance, confidence in our own acceptability. That’s the human condition. And so it also is as we ask about the cross, about what it really means, and how Jesus as Lamb of God, an innocent blood sacrifice, impacts the nature of a God who Jesus tells us is absolutely all loving. Is there a way to understand the Lamb and the sacrifice in such a way that God’s loving nature is not compromised? The answer lies in the context of the cross. Just as the letters of Paul are always answers to questions that are left unstated, we can’t understand how his answers are true until we know the context within which they are true. The context of the cross, the unstated question, is salvation—but our beliefs about salvation affect the way we see the cross’ answer. Understanding what the ancients who wrote our scripture believed about salvation, understanding what the “sin of the world” is that the Lamb takes away, and how we come to the cross ourselves to journey with Jesus will point us in a new direction where love and sacrifice connect without compromising either.
Tina Henningson/Dave Brisbin | 4.28.17 In a talk show interview format, effect board member Tina Henningson works through questions submitted by our membership on everything from the direction and basic beliefs of theeffect—are we Christ centered, Evangelical, emerging, recovery centered, contemplative—to salvation and judgment, Christianity vs. other faith traditions, nature of God’s love, nature of prayer, evil in the world, what is Judaism and why is that important to a follower of Jesus, faith and loss of faith, how to help those in deep grief, miracles, whether church and religion are really necessary… It’s not so much that there are definitive answers to all our questions, but the direction of our questions and consideration of each other’s answers are all part of the journey. So join us in our easy chairs for an evening of talking through the issues that are most on our minds.
Dave Brisbin | 4.23.17 Just as Jesus’ closest friends were kept from recognizing him after the Resurrection because of their limiting expectations and beliefs, we are kept from seeing the deeper meaning of scripture for the same reason. But even to make such a statement that interprets a passage of scripture beyond the strictly literal meaning of the text demands some explanation. What is an acceptable method of scriptural interpretation that can take us to a deeper reading, a reading beyond the literal, moving us to a spiritual understanding and relevance for our daily lives that is still consistent with the author’s original intent? To answer that question, we need to know how the writers of scripture understood the interpretation of sacred texts in their own time. The ancient Rabbis of Judaism used four increasingly deeper methods of pulling meaning from their sacred books. Here, we focus on just one, the one they called “midrash” and see how its use can take legitimately us to a deeper reading of each of the passages associated with the days of Holy Week, and especially how we can understand the events of Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday in deeper terms. If we can’t expand our notion of how to read scripture in a deeper way, the way the authors of scripture intended, how will we ever come to a deeper reading of a text that was written to be always living and active in our daily lives?
Dave Brisbin | 4.16.17 Easter Sunday: Why do all the Gospels preserve stories of Jesus’ closest friends not recognizing him after the Resurrection? Mary in the garden, travelers along the Emmaus road, Peter and the fisherman on the lake. The central question the angels ask the women who have come early Sunday morning to anoint Jesus’ body--why do you look for the living among the dead?—questions our deepest assumptions and beliefs if we will let it. The women expected Jesus to be exactly where they left him Friday afternoon, and we do the same in slavishly following our own expectations and belief systems. Jesus is ushering in something radically different, always in motion, just as spirit itself is always in motion, as life itself is defined by motion. As soon as a belief of ours becomes set, static, no longer moving, it is no longer alive—and Jesus is not there any more than he is in a graveyard of motionless corpses. The message to us, if we are looking for the risen Lord, is not to look in static beliefs—where we expect him to be—but in the blur of motion that is daily life, in each seemingly insignificant detail among those living life. In allowing our beliefs and trust to move and expand in directions we would never expect, we not only find the risen Lord, but the new life that Resurrection promises us all.
Dave Brisbin | 4.9.17 Palm Sunday: What is the real message behind Palm Sunday. Sunday school graduates can all remember that Palm Sunday gets its name from the palm branches that the people waved in front of Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem beginning the week of his passion and death. Some of us will remember that the palm fronds symbolized the people welcoming him as a victorious king and how that unnerved the watching Jewish and Roman authorities. But how does that translate to us, two thousand years and a world away from those events. Why is it preserved in our sacred text and what can it teach us? Entering in to the mindset of each of the various players in the story—the people, the Jewish and Roman authorities, Jesus’ first followers—looking at the symbolism of palms and donkeys, reading the alluded prophecies, looking at the real meaning of hosanna, mixed with Jesus’ pronouncement over Jerusalem as he entered the city and wept, we find the crux of the message here. That every moment is Palm Sunday in our lives, that every moment Jesus rides in on the colt of a donkey defying whatever expectation we have of him, inviting us to see him for what and who he really is so that we never again miss the hour of our visitation.
Dave Brisbin | 4.2.17 On the fifth Sunday of Lent, looking at Lent as a positive-negative: an affirmative stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence, the image at John’s last supper of Jesus stripping his garments, tying a towel around his hips and moving from friend to friend at table, washing feet gives us another Lenten principle in preparation for new life. It is extremely difficult for us as modern Westerner to appreciate just how mind blowingly outrageous and offensive Jesus’ actions would have been to his friends. There is no relevant analogy for us to bring home the shock of a revered teacher, rabbi, a spiritual master and healer doing what even Jewish slaves were not obligated to do--what was relegated to Gentile slaves. It was dirty, impure, and humiliating work, underscored by Peter’s initial refusal to allow Jesus to wash him. Something this profound either bounces off our cultural force fields and doesn’t penetrate at all or we quickly moralize it to say that God wants us to be humble and in service to each other, which also misses the central point: that Jesus sees himself as the servant of everyone and anyone in his path, that he exists to serve and pour out everything he has, and as he and the Father are one, that our Father in heaven is a servant as well. The outrage we may feel if the creator of heaven and earth were to bow to wash our feet begins to welcome us to Peter’s world. But as Jesus told him: if we can’t accept who our God really is, we can’t have any part of him and remain unprepared for the new life on the other side of that acceptance.
Dave Brisbin | 3.19.17 On the third Sunday of Lent, looking at Lent as a positive-negative: an affirmative stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence, we use Jesus’ cleansing of the temple to give us our next Lenten principle. When Jesus rampages through the Temple court overturning tables, he is, in effect, calling into question a given in the daily life of first century Jews: that the Temple, the Temple priests, the Temple system were as good as God, were their means to connection with God and community. Jesus underscores the obvious—says right out loud what any thinking person could see but was afraid to say: that the system had become corrupt and instead of being a means to God’s presence, had become a hindrance, a limitation, a wall between the people and their God. Making the principle personal, what tables to do we need to overturn in our lives? What “givens” that we take for granted as established truth do we need to question to discern whether they are still leading or have ever led us to the experience of God’s presence? And not just truths or institutions or people external to us, but what internal beliefs, attitudes, and patterns of behavior need to be overturned as well? Giving ourselves permission to begin the process of questioning, the courage to be disoriented and disturbed as we clear the courtyard in preparation for new life.
Dave Brisbin | 3.12.17 On the second Sunday of Lent, looking at Lent as a positive-negative: an affirmative stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence, we naturally turn to prayer. What is prayer really? And specifically, what is the continuous prayer to which Paul calls us? Using the Hebrew bride as the bible’s metaphor for the balance of living a balanced life of awareness and presence, we can start to look at prayer in the same way. Not a constant stream of words pronounced verbally or mentally, but a continuous awareness of our place and position and relationship to everyone and everything in any given moment—all infused and sourced in unseen Presence. But is there a difference between mere mindfulness and prayer. How do we know the difference, practice the difference, and above all how do we develop the ability to pray without ceasing? It begins with intent, the intent of our mindfulness and awareness—what is it we are intending to be mindful of and present to? It has to do with our intent leading us an actual structure that we honor with the discipline of showing up day after day and moment after moment. It’s not complicated, just a patient and dedicated building of our prayer muscles.
Dave Brisbin | 3.5.17 On the first Sunday of Lent, we have begun to look at Lent, not as a negative—as a voluntary deprivation of pleasure in penance for sin—but as a positive stripping away of anything that distracts, obscures, or keeps us away from God’s presence. Looking at the Hebrew meaning of the parable of the ten virgins/bridesmaids—the five who are alert and present and keeping their lamps filled with oil and the five who are not—becomes not a statement of final judgment, heaven or hell, but another image of balanced life and awareness herenow. How do we balance our desires and plans for the future: how we think things ought to be, wish them to be, were taught they should be, need them to be…with a simple awareness of the flow of things as they are right now? To remain alert to present even as we plan for and prepare for radically changed life? What does balanced planning look like? Planning that is as healthy mentally and spiritually as it is effective? Surprising insights come from military leaders who must plan, but at the same time acknowledge that no plans survive contact with the enemy; that all plans must be laid carefully and just as carefully released in the flow of real time events. Balance means being present to all of life, to plan and then stop planning, to question and then stop questioning and let life question us, change us, and change our plans.
Dave Brisbin | 2.26.17 As we approach the Lenten season, many of us have not experienced the annual cycle of a liturgical church, and among those who have, many have never been taught what the liturgical traditions really mean to the spiritual life. This year, we want to try to make Lent, as preparation for the new life of Easter, come alive in a new way—really prepare us for that new life. What does Lent mean? What is Shove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and how has the church celebrated these liturgical days for centuries or millennia? If Lent is meant to mirror Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, how are we to understand his emptying, his moving into silence and suffering in a positive and affirming way for ourselves? To make these connections and see Lent as an interior journey that we can enter at any time is the beginning of our preparation, and understanding some contemporary tools—mindfulness and centering prayer—can be our first steps along the way…and a challenge and encouragement to begin.
Dave Brisbin | 2.19.17 Living the balanced life of the Hebrew bride, between heaven and earth, between the reality of daily relationship and task and the promise of radically changed life at any moment is fragile and delicate and easily lost. In fact, it’s not so much about whether we’ll lose balance, of course we will; it’s about how quickly we can recover afterward. As Western Christians, we’ve been conditioned to see this life in a fallen state and our reward for finishing the race of this life well coming in the heaven of the next life. But Jesus is teaching that whatever we think heaven is, if we’re waiting for it, it never comes—being out of balance keeps us from seeing heaven where it always is: forever here and now. Many of us are focused on end times, on rapture, on the snatching up out of a dying world into new life, but what does that say about our view of life herenow? As we look at Paul’s actual words from 1 Thessalonians that have been interpreted as the doctrine of end times rapture, we see the wedding tradition imagery at work again, giving us an intensely balanced view of life along Jesus’ Way. And any such balance must first acknowledge, with the words of Genesis spoken over and over, that all of God’s creation is good, very good. Without such a beginning, how can we ever balance herenow and therethen?
Dave Brisbin | 2.12.17 Why try to understand Jesus’ message from a first century, Hebrew point of view? What will that change? There’s a question I get a lot. The answer is: mostly everything. Whatever we say about Christianity being a relationship rather than a religion, the truth is that Western Christianity has become heavily focused on an intellectual understanding of theology and a rational/literal understanding of scripture, a legal view of our relationship to God, a dualistic view of life—especially the separation of the spiritual and physical, and an emphasis on the afterlife as opposed to life herenow that sharply defines our view of and attitude toward life and spiritual practice. From a Hebrew point of view, the intellectual gives way to the experiential, the literal to the metaphorical, the legal to the relational, dualistic to holistic oneness, and therethen to herenow, which changes everything about our view of life and practice of faith. One of the primary metaphors Jesus and the Jewish authors of scripture use to describe this way of seeing and living life is the ancient Hebrew wedding tradition, in which a bride waits up to two years between the kiddushin/betrothal and nissu’in/wedding for her groom to come unannounced to claim her. Knowing the details and significance of the wedding tradition, how it shaped everyday Jewish life, how a young bride lived between betrothal and wedding, between the life she’d only and always known and the radical change of a new one to come, between heaven and earth—the present embrace of a too-short experience of love and life mixed with the excitement and anticipation of sudden newness at any moment—points us toward the rich experience of living kingdom as breathless brides.
Dave Brisbin | 2.5.17 Growing up, my church taught me to believe that a savior was coming—someone out there who would change me, save me from myself and my sin. I just had to believe and obey and wait. And that belief ordered the understanding of my faith, dictated day to day choices and attitudes. But reading through Hebrew eyes, Jesus is teaching something quite different…that no one is coming to save us. No one is coming because everyone and everything we’d ever need has always been and is already here. He says the waiting is over, the kingdom is here; he says we won’t find it by looking out there somewhere--it’s within and among. He really couldn’t be any clearer that the salvation, the transforming change we seek is already right here in our midst. One of the problems with what Christianity has become in the West—primarily an intellectual understanding, a theology and a moral code, belief and obedience—is that there is little talk of the process of change. Fundamental change is what Jesus’ message is all about, but if change is seen as an event coming from outside in, we miss the essential participatory process moving the other way: from inside out. When Jesus tells us to repent and believe in the Gospel, that really translates to change direction and trust in the truth of the Father’s love. If our faith remains an intellectual understanding, we will miss the journey, the process of transformative change as we wait to be changed. But…if everything and everyone we need is already here, how to we get from here to there? Repent and believe, change and trust points us to the only tools we have to get from here to there, to kingdom living: awareness and choice. We don’t choose just once to follow Jesus. We choose every moment of our lives, again and again to be present to the Presence that precedes us. The spiritual life is really about developing awareness of Presence in each moment. And with awareness in hand, spiritual discipline is about then choosing where Presence leads: from here to there.
Dave Brisbin | 1.29.17 Just last week I was asked why churches and religions have to "always say that they are right and everyone else is wrong?" Great question from a young person looking at church from the outside in, trying to figure it all out: why the exclusion, the judgment. Why indeed? What is it about us that needs to build tall walls, delineate us from them, make our spirituality, which is inherently mysterious, an absolute certainty. In a word, it’s fear of course, and when we’re afraid that we may not be worthy of acceptance, love, or belonging, then we immediately begin the exhausting task of removing any pain, imperfection, and uncertainty from our near vicinity. We need to be right, be flawless, be certain, because the alternative is just too terrifying or at least uncomfortable to entertain. And in the making of all uncertain things certain, there has to be winners and losers--a zero sum game in which there are haves and have nots, the elect and the damned. But it was not always so in Christian thought, and certainly Jesus never taught so. To begin to understand the transforming message that perfect love casts out fear is the beginning of a journey that will lead to an embrace of mystery and a faith based on trust and not certainty…to a living of life that once again makes friends with the unknown, finds contentment and adventure in an amiable uncertainty that admits that while we don’t have all the answers and may not be right about everything, we know we are loved in such a way that mere clarity becomes a footnote.
Dave Brisbin | 1.22.17 We all want to be happy, don’t we? All our choices are arguably made in order to be happy, either in this moment or one further down the road in this life or the next. We’ve learned that certain things or activities make us happy so, we pursue them over and over looking to repeat the experience of happiness. One young man told me that happiness was opening a new can of Folgers coffee and just smelling that smell. Another person said that laughing made her happy. But if you really think about it laughing and fresh coffee don’t really make us happy, they make us present…and that makes us happy. Happiness is the feeling we get when we are completely present to a moment intense enough to clear away all the thoughts, emotions, expectations, and judgments that distract us from what is right in out midst. When we chase the things we think make us happy, we’re chasing the effect instead of the cause. While laughter can lead to presence, presence doesn’t lead to happiness; presence is happiness itself. And we can have presence anytime we want, if we’re willing to practice it, whether we’re laughing or not, whether there’s any coffee in sight. To realize that happiness is presence and presence is always available right here and now is to finally begin to hear Jesus’ words, because kingdom is presence, which means kingdom feels like happiness too.
Dave Brisbin | 1.15.17 Just completed the move of our family home of 17 years to a downsized house closer to work and faith community, and just about every nightmare scenario that I could imagine and project on to moving day and was working and praying to avoid came to pass. Escrow was delayed so that new flooring was only half completed when moving crew arrived with all our belongings in the hardest driving rain that southern CA has seen in years with cable and internet crew arriving in the middle of it all to add to the chaos. Trying to just stay out of the way and survive the day, I slowly became aware of the undaunted moving crew taking the rain as an adventurous challenge: to keep our stuff dry and keep their schedule intact while being unfailingly energetic and personable. Then arriving at the new house, the Hispanic crew laying the floor was blaring their music in Spanish and singing along as movers stepped over them with wet shoes and furniture... What is happiness and how and when is it experienced? Does it come from circumstances matching our expectations and prayers or as Jesus is trying to tell us, from a completely different direction, a direction we can choose anytime, even in a driving rain watching muddy footprints trailing off on newly laid floor.
Dave Brisbin | 1.8.17 The beginning of 2017 also marks the first anniversary of a dear friend’s death—his suicide to be truthful. Can’t help the re-flooding of mental images and emotion imprinted almost exactly a year ago on a rainy Wednesday night when I got that first phone call. And yet, a year later, an email from his sister says that after a year, having now been put into contact with me and all of us as result of her brother’s death, to lose a brother but gain new friends that have become so important in her life carries its own “strange beauty.” That phrase, strange beauty, sticks with me like flypaper on the brain, and I realize that she had captured so much of what life is really about. Seeing the strange beauty all around us that is always present, but disguised or invisible because of the mental judgments we make on what is good or evil in the narrow window of our emotional vision. To breathe through the hardest times and keep breathing until the strange beauty of watching new life always following any ending, any death—giving it time to coalesce, trusting that it always will-- is another hallmark of Jesus’ Kingdom.
Dave Brisbin | 1.1.17 The beginning of each new year, with its imaginary line in time, has also become, or has always been, a time for reassessment and for resolutions for the new year. We all have made them and break them almost as quickly. Stats show that 97% of new year’s resolution won’t be kept and 30% will be broken in the first week. Why is it so hard to keep new year’s resolutions? Because they are lifestyle changes that can’t be kept solely in our minds. No matter how resolved we may be mentally, it’s only in living, day to day, in new directions that we remain resolved. And this is why it’s also so hard to follow Jesus. We’d like to believe that our spirituality is really a mental affair: a one-time pledge of allegiance to a creed or the correct reading of scripture leading to a permanently correct theology and doctrine, but Jesus’ Way is really a radically different lifestyle that can only be followed with ongoing movement. All day every day. Remaining resolved has to do with letting go of our fascination with “bucket lists,” those things we want to do once before we die. Jesus’ Way is not a bucket list and salvation is not what we do once. Because we are not defined by what we do once, but by what we do over and over, all day, every day.
Dave Brisbin | 12.11.16 In the run up to Christmas, what does the infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew have to tell us that is relevant to our day to day lives and choices? Especially, what are the details in those narratives that, understood from a first century, Jewish point of view, can not only make the story real, but clue us in to the central principles the authors were trying to convey? When we know what the word that has been translated as “inn” really means—start erasing our modern western concepts—the story takes on new life. The essential details of mangers and inns begin pointing us in the right direction: toward the personal character and circumstances of Jesus and his family, their status as “anawim” those so destitute that they have only God as their provider…dependent, vulnerable, yet fully grateful and present even to their poverty. Francis of Assisi, who 800 years ago returned himself and his followers to the state of anawim, was also the first to recreate a nativity scene, a full nativity play, in order to recreate the experience of mangers and inns in a truly life-transforming way.
Dave Brisbin | 12.4.16 With all the big news happening constantly, especially leading up to and from the presidential election, it’s easy to get caught up in the all these pressing macro events and even obsess over them, become the stereotypical political junkie, environmental junkie, or whatever. But regardless of what is happening in the macro, our lives are always lived in the micro—one moment and one person at a time. Often, focus on the macro becomes a way of avoiding our real life’s work in the micro. What is our basic purpose in human life? What does Jesus have to say about our priorities and where our emphasis should be placed? If he’s really telling us that the quality of our lives is always determined by the quality of our micro relationships and our ability to be fully present to them, then questions and choices become much sharper in focus.
Dave Brisbin | 11.20.16 When a person gets up to accept and award or honor, whether a politician to a movie star, I’ve always wondered what exactly is meant when he or she inevitably says they are “humbled” to accept this award. That statement can be authentically heartfelt and can mean many things, but if we really break down what humility means, is it really humble? What is humility and why does Jesus hold it as such a primary value? In Jesus’ stories and parables, it is obvious to scholars that he is tapping into the ancient Jewish tradition of the “anawim…” those who are poor and lowly, meek and gentle, those who have been oppressed and marginalized to the point that they have nowhere left to turn except directly to God. Jesus was born anawim to anawim parents, and what he’s really pointing to is that we are all really anawim, completely dependent on God for every breath, if we would only see the truth. And that is the real point: that as AA puts it, humility really is stark raving honesty—the ability to see ourselves as we really are. Completely dependent and imperfect, yet completely loved and accepted at the same time.
Dave Brisbin | 11.13.16 Nearing the end of a year of almost constant change, worn out, ready for some sort of plateau or break in the action, the realization reaffirms that there is no plateau. There is no time in life that change isn’t constantly in process. Sit for a few minutes and watch the shadows move across your living room—subtle reminder of just how fast things are really moving in our lives. Most of us don’t like change, but if we’re not changing and moving, we’re not part of the action of God’s spirit, which is always in motion, always bringing change. How can we know if we’re resisting change in our lives? It can be pretty sneaky the way resistance creeps in and takes over our character, but there are three clues implied in scripture that we can use to apply to ourselves and see whether we’re free to blow about with God’s wind or if our heels are leaving dark skid marks behind us.
Dave Brisbin | 11.6.16 Walking my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day was just about everything I could have hoped for in such a moment. She was absolute beautiful in her dress, her mother and I love her groom, the setting and preparations couldn’t have been better. But even in a perfect moment such as this, I was of course aware of fractures between families and family members that had remained either unresolved or unspoken for years, and yet as the evening unfolded, there were moments of reconnection and reconciliation that deepened the experience. I couldn’t help thinking of all the mistakes we’d all made over the past twenty five years, all the hurts and resentments, anger that somehow led to this perfect moment of reconnection. We need to look again at our notion of sin and failure if we’re ever going to see what Jesus is telling us about Good News and the shape of the Way to his Father. Julian of Norwich, a medieval contemplative writer and visionary tells us that “sin is behovely,” meaning useful or necessary to the experience of God’s love. Is there a place in God’s plan even for our sins and failings? Paul seems to think so as he guides us away from law and into the realm of radical grace.
Dave Brisbin | 10.23.16 Why does Jesus speak in such paradoxical terms? Why is he always taking the world as we know it and turning it upside down, inside out, and backside front? There seems to be a way of seeing life from the Father’s perspective that turns it all around in a way that is essential to our spiritual growth and identity. Some people call this moving from a first half of life to a second half of life spirituality. The first half of life dealing with the external tasks and details of accomplishment and acquisition, of identity building from the outside in, and the second half learning to see the deeper task within the task, the universal task that builds identity from inside out. Second half spirituality understands that while the external task is ultimately unimportant in itself, the process of doing it, and doing it well, accomplishes an inner task that is eternally important. Just as the master in the Karate Kid makes his student wax cars in a very specific way—it’s not well-waxed cars that are the goal: it’s the ingrained movement, the muscle memory gained for a very different purpose that will take the kid where he really wants to go.
Dave Brisbin | 10.16.16 One of the most fundamental truths of life is that it all happens, is all contained, in one moment: this moment, this day. Like a person with amnesia who wakes every morning with memory washed, each of us must learn and live everything necessary to fulfill our purpose as humans in the space of just one day, one life, one generation. But because we have the capacity to think beyond the moment—into the abstract, into yesterday and tomorrow, and because we fear the finality of our deaths in this life, we project purpose and meaning into the future, into a legacy that exceeds our own space and time. We want to be remembered, revered, to make a mark that will last. We live our lives working to build, accomplish, impress, and grow, and we do this until we realize none of that matters, that what matters remains elusive in spite of all effort. In his book, Ecclesiastes, Solomon poetically expresses these concepts in his ruthless search for what is truly meaningful. And though the book at first glance reads as a deeply depressing and hopeless view of the human condition, little gems punctuate the raw reality of his observations. These gems, when uncovered, are our signposts to real, simple, and immediate purpose and meaning. To the realization that after all, this life is not an exterior journey, but an interior one that is always bounded by this moment, this day, and this generation.
Dave Brisbin | 10.09.16 Any look at the contemplative way has to include a close look at what since Thomas Merton in the fifties has been called the “false self.” This sense of personal identity is based on the emotional programs for happiness and survival born out of basic human need and nature and as a by-product of self-awareness/consciousness. But it is tailored to each individual by our hurts and traumas, primarily from early life where our deepest fears, attitudes, and worldview are formed. How can we identify this false self that, just as the sun obliterates the nighttime stars, obliterates the true self that remains purely connected to God’s presence deep within. Looking at Pauls’s comments in Romans and Philippians; at the offline and online practice of meditation, centering prayer, and mindfulness; at the church’s and AA’s steps of self-examination and confession, we come closer and closer to Jesus’ goal of bringing us to the freedom that only comes from knowing the truth. And the truth is, that the voice that talks to us in our heads, the emotions that trigger us to compulsive behavior patterns, is not who we really are. Who we really are is a Kingdom resident waiting to happen, like a tree in winter waiting for the thaw of spring.
What worries you most? Honestly going through the pantheon of all that occupies our thoughts and disrupts our sleep not only shows us our fears, but what we expect will relieve them in terms of the outcomes over which we obsess. Now imagine that you were suddenly free of all that worry, anxiety, and stress. What would that actually feel like? Jesus says it feels like Kingdom. Maybe we’ve not had the experience since we were still in the garden of our childhood, not knowing we were naked, with nothing separating us from the moment of waking through the cool of the evening with Presence. Arguably, all of human life is a working through a return to the Garden of our childhood. How do we do this? What keeps us from seeing the journey clearly? An often overlooked passage in the New Testament has given the church fits trying to interpret why John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, sends his own disciples from his prison cell to ask Jesus if he is the “expected one,” or if they should look for someone else. It’s amazing that someone with John’s credentials should ask such a question, and the church has scrambled to find mitigating reasons, but the simplest answer is that even John was blinded by his expectations of what Jesus as messiah would do and be and was not finding what he expected in his cousin. If John, the “greatest prophet born of woman” could be blinded by expectation, then we can too, and the way to Kingdom, back to Garden becomes a concerted effort to be present enough to see what is right before our eyes.
Dave Brisbin | 9.25.16 How important is prayer? A kneejerk reaction says of course it’s important, essential to our spiritual lives. But a more important question may be what kind of prayer is essential to our spiritual lives? When you take all the different types of prayer that we commonly think of as prayer—recited prayer, freeform prayer, petition, intercession, thanksgiving, praise—what is common to all of them are words. Words form the basis of most if not all our prayers, and yet words can never capture the deepest parts of our spirituality or the relationship we have with a God who can’t be seen or expressed in any way. The Hebrew word for prayer, slotha, points back to the roots, sela, which is actually a hunting term for laying a snare or setting a trap. Prayer to an ancient Jew meant to incline toward, lean in, focus, adjust, tune in, or literally to set a trap for God--to clear a space interiorly and exteriorly and prepare to receive and connect with God’s presence. We need more of this kind of wordless prayer, time regularly spent stepping aside from the words and images, the shields we carry around in our minds that limit God’s presence and scope in our lives. One form of this kind of prayer, centering prayer, comes from the earliest years of the Christian tradition, and practicing it regularly will take us a long way on our journeys of faith.
Dave Brisbin | 9.18.16 The Bible makes a big deal about knowing God. There are dozens of references to knowing that tell us this is an area to which we should pay attention. And we have been, but the solution of Western Christianity for the past 500 years to search scripture for any and every bit and piece of data to add to our collected theology has nothing to do with what the writers of scripture had in mind. To know in Hebrew is something borne of long, close association. It is an experiential knowing that could never come out of a book. Our word for such knowing is intimacy, and tellingly both words also serve as euphemisms for sexual relations: the closest and most intense knowing we experience as humans. Jesus tells us that eternal life is the state of knowing God and himself, since he is one with Father. All these figures of speech—the best we can do in words to describe the infinite—now coalesce to form a picture of knowing as intimacy, the oneness that grows out of years of daily practice and simple showing up. It is not intense emotion that shows us our intimate moments, it is the quiet certitude of bare belonging, the trust of acceptance that comes with all that time together.
Dave Brisbin | 9.11.16 On the 15th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, we take a moment to remember the shock and grief of that day, how it changed us and the world, and just what kind of journey was begun that day for both our nation and for us as individuals. Especially for the 20% of the nation’s population that knew someone hurt or killed that day, 9/11 began a hero’s journey, a rite of passage for those who were willing to answer the call, and move through the pain and grief to enter a new place in their lives. When the returning Jewish exiles gathered within their newly rebuilt walls around Jerusalem, their elders read the law of Moses to them and explained what it meant to generations who had not heard it while in Babylon. And the people wept at all that had been lost to them as a people. But Nehemiah reminds them that this is a day of celebration, even in the midst of the pain and loss; that they need to eat and drink and remember that the joy of the Lord is their strength. So answering the call to our hero’s journey has as much to do with holding on to the joy of the Lord as it does with any specific task we must perform—to perform those tasks with our tools in one hand and a sense of both adventure and humor in the other that will take us through even the most terrible challenges as happy warriors.
Dave Brisbin | 9.4.16 Ever notice how Jesus is able to get out of every thorny situation the religious leaders of his day throw at him? They bring him a woman caught in adultery and ask whether to stone her knowing he’ll run afoul of either Roman or Mosaic law no matter how he answers. Or they ask whether it’s lawful to pay Roman taxes or which is the greatest commandment of all and many others with the same intent. Each question is a carefully crafted attempt to put Jesus between a rock and hard place where any answer would discredit or condemn him with the people. How does Jesus know what to say, how to wiggle off the hook? Is it just because he’s God’s son that he has special knowledge or is there some principle or perspective he’s using that can guide us as well. Jesus is showing us that whenever we’re caught on the horns of a dilemma, forced to choose between bad and worse, there is a third force or element that when brought into play, raises our perception above the rock and the hard place and shows a safe passage home.
Dave Brisbin | 8.28.16 There are some days that are just hard. Hard to break through to meaning and purpose, hard to get up in the morning, hard to do what is required this day. On one such day, wondering if I could really do the day with my car at the intersection where a right turn took me to work and the day’s activities, I sat and thought and then turned left toward a local wilderness park. Not knowing what I was really looking for, I found a bench with a plaque dedicated to a child, an infant, Gavin, who had died fourteen years before. The parents’ pain screamed through the engraved words until I looked up through bright green leaves lit by a perfect morning sun to the flawlessly blue sky beyond and asked no one in particular, “Why does it have to be this way?” I asked for Gavin and his parents, but I was really asking for myself. This is life lived as a human. The juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty, joy and pain. How do we navigate between the two and keep our cars turning right toward the activities our daily lives? Jesus shows us we need to turn left regularly too, to sit on Gavin’s bench and just breathe and be for a while, feel the morning sun and remember why we’re here. I left Gavin’s bench feeling better, not because anything had changed in my life, but because a small reconnection with all that is changed me—for that day.
Dave Brisbin | 8.21.16 Most of us have heard the line that freedom isn’t free, usually in the context of supporting our military, but is there a truth in that slogan that can help us along Jesus’ Way? When we examine what the goal of Jesus’ Way really is, we start thinking of love, peace, tranquility, service to others, closeness or knowledge of God, but what are any of those without the complete freedom to be all of those? Jesus tells us that if we follow his Way, we will know the truth and that truth will set us free. It’s all about freedom, because any love, peace, service, relationship, or knowledge that is coerced or born out of fear is not part of Jesus’ Way. The Way to radical freedom costs us everything—everything we think we know about ourselves, life, the world, God, and until we are willing to “pay,” let those things go and die, we will never see the radical freedom to simply be that is right in front of us.
Dave Brisbin | 8.14.16 Before you can teach someone to practice presence, whether “online,” throughout the rough and tumble of each days details, or “offline,” in meditation, centering prayer, or silence—you first have to stoke the desire for presence, which means you have to show some benefit to the effort. The truth is, who we think we are in our minds, described to us by the voice that speaks in our heads, is not who we really are. We are not the voice in our heads that speaks in English or Spanish or any language. There is a deeper identity that remains hidden as long as we are listening to the voice. That deeper identity is the one that can play in Kingdom and follow where Jesus leads, but until we quiet that voice, we will never know what we are missing. We have literally forgotten who we are, who we were as the child that Jesus holds up as emblem of Kingdom. But these moments of pure presence, where the voice quiets or at least we stop listening, are the moments of unforgetting, moments we begin to remember that child inside, who we really are.
Dave Brisbin | 7.31.16 What are God’s greatest creations? When it comes right down to the nub, arguably, they would be space and time. Space, because matter doesn’t matter if you don’t have a place to put it, and time because nothing exists at all unless it has duration—exists for some time. Jesus said to seek first the Kingdom and all else would be added…in this life, apparently, we must seek that kingdom first through the experience of space and time before all else is added. To be present to what is now is at once the goal and practice of spirituality properly understood. Did Jesus practice presence? Absolutely. Reading between the lines of story after story of Jesus’ life and work and prayer, we see the unmistakable marks of deep presence both in the midst of a busy, detailed-filled ministry and at times of solitude and silence that he sought in the wilderness as respite. To read between the lines and understand the Way of Jesus from the point of view of presence to space and time is the first step to following that Way ourselves.
Dave Brisbin | 7.24.16 Any look at the contemplative way of life eventually brings us right up against mystery, against the limit of what we can and can’t know in much the same way that science reaches the limit of its ability to describe phenomena edging closer and closer to infinite temperature, velocity, size. How much can we really know in this life? But more importantly how much is necessary to know in order to live in such a way that we can fulfill our purpose here as humans? If you really think about it, what would life be without mystery? The mystery in magic and stories, Christmas presents and each other is what keeps us interested and alive, guessing and engaged. To solve a mystery, to kill a mystery with an intellectual solution is to experience a momentary resolution and then the grief of the loss of the aliveness. The sin of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day was to kill mystery with the law—as if following the law perfectly gave us the understanding and control over life and God that we crave. In defense of mystery, Jesus holds up the child as the image of kingdom, because kingdom is the experience of the magic of mystery, the ability to live contentedly without the fear-based obsession to know and control…to experience a world where God’s presence is real and where trust and vulnerability and fearlessness can all live together at the same time.
Dave Brisbin | 7.10.16 What is the greatest impediment to gratefulness? To the trust of gratefulness? Seems it would have to be the hurts and traumas, the victimization, the evil that we encounter in our personal lives, and those of others either close or in the world at large. How do we continue to see God as compassionate and fair, how do we see life as fundamentally nurturing or safe, when there are monsters about hurting us and others? The problem of evil in our lives seems to contradict the portrait of God painted by Jesus as loving father. The oldest book of the bible, the book of Job, deals with these essential themes—as they’ve been questioned as long as there have been human being experiencing them. And the final answer to Job as God speaks to him from the whirlwind is that there is no answer that can be given to us in this life that will satisfy our minds, but there is an answer that can satisfy our hearts. A way of living that brings the paradox of the reality of perfect love and the experience of evil together in a way most unexpected.
Dave Brisbin | 6.26.16 In our society, and especially in the midst of a presidential election cycle, it is easy to become completely polarized—to “drink the kool-aid” and go all in with one group or another, one party or another, one religion or another. To become completely imprinted with the tenets, the groupthink of our choosing. From this perch, it is easy to imagine that we have the corner on truth, all the truth, and all others do not, that we are good and others are bad, are less than, need to be persuaded or controlled for their own good, and ours. It is a perch from which personal growth stops as we hunker down to convert the world to what we already know. In this mindset, there is no dialog or conversation, there is no relationship or love that is not conditioned on first meeting our standard of belief. But Jesus and the great contemplatives of the world show us another way: a way to live on the edge of inside, on the threshold between groups and belief systems that keeps us open and aware, watching the comings and goings, alert to truth wherever it presents. This is sometimes called liminal space, but Jesus simply calls it Kingdom, the place where like children we are open to the moment as it presents and not always imagining it as we believe it should be.
Dave Brisbin | 6.19.16 Fathers’ Day: Ancient Hebrews envisioned their God the way they experienced the patriarchs of their clans—as king, judge, executioner, administrator—as the strength of their houses, which is what the Hebrew word for father, Ab, actually means. And though they also had a balancing notion of God as mother too, as wisdom, compassion, love—the glue that held the family together, it was Ab by which they referred to God. Jesus had an ingenious solution to create balance. He called God his “abba,” the name children would use for their fathers…a term of intimacy and affection. It created the perfect balance of respect and connection, masculine strength and feminine compassion. Then he went on to illustrate in story after story how this played out. And in the story of prodigal son, if we’re really paying attention we realize that it’s not so much the extravagant, even wasteful spending of the son that is the focus, but that of the father who lavishes all he has on his son, no matter the quality of his behavior. In that extravagant love, we see that our Father is prodigal too.
Dave Brisbin | 6.12.16 Speaking of the contemplative way of spirituality in conceptual terms is necessary at the outset, especially for those of us from the West, who are so intellectually based, but it is in many respects, a contradiction in terms. The contemplative way is not intellectually based at all—it is by definition a stepping away from the intellectual in order to non-judgmentally experience the lived moment. But how do we do this? How we step away? There is prayer and there is suffering that can guide us in intensive and specific ways, but there is another. Br. Lawrence called it the Practice of the Presence of God. Instead of specific times of prayer and devotion, there is a constant awareness of God’s presence that we can cultivate through all the daily details of our lives, an awareness that will give us the continual prayer, the constant contact that Paul speaks of. Today, this is sometimes called mindfulness—but mindfulness without the awareness of Presence may still not take us where we want to go, so it’s a blending of the two that Br. Lawrence is showing us. How do we do it, what are some day to day exercises we can use to bring us another step closer to kingdom?
Dave Brisbin | 6.5.16 One of the words ancient Christians used to describe the contemplative way was the word “apophatic.” From the Greek, it literally means to deny speaking or saying. In Latin, it is sometimes called the “via negative” or negative way—negative in the sense of emptying the mind of words, images, ideas in order to rest in God’s presence. In our contemporary culture, this seems somehow perverse in terms of coming into a connection with God. But as we look as Jesus’ time in the wilderness, his staring down the temptations of the adversary from a place of emptiness, his wild, paradoxical sayings of accomplishing by letting go, finding our lives by losing them, his insistence in the Beatitudes of the centrality of “negative” aspects of poverty of spirit, mournfulness, meekness, hunger and thirst as characteristic of kingdom, we see the apophatic way illustrated. To sell all we have and give to the poor in order to follow Jesus into the father’s presence is a letting go of all we think we have and know and believe in order to stand like children in the father’s presence and see what is really before us again for the first time.
Dave Brisbin | 5.22.16 As we dig deeper into the contemplative way of spirituality, we need to break down religious and cultural barriers. Contemplation, as we’re using it, is a stepping away from the all the thoughts, worries, concerns, and noise in our minds that keeps us from mindful presence right here and now—the only place we will ever meet our God: here and now. Modern Western Christian churches have expressed concern over contemplative practice, labeling it occult, but there is nothing occult about Christian contemplative practice that dates all the way back to the earliest generations of Jesus’ followers, and of course to Jesus himself. How did Jesus practice contemplative prayer and life? Where do we see this practice in scripture, and how do we enter into such practice in our lives today? We need to know more about a contemplative how.
Dave Brisbin | 5.15.16 Jesus is often seen, from a modern, Western viewpoint as a social reformer, a radical revolutionary, the founder of a new religion, working to tear down existing systems in favor of the poor and marginalized. Though Jesus was revolutionary in his expression of his relationship with God/Father, to see him as a social reformer or radical is to misunderstand his message, mission, and Jewishness. Jesus wasn’t trying to start a new religion, but purify the one he was already in. He was an observant Jew to the core, but his sense of oneness with his Father, our Father, made him one with everyone and everything else in creation, including those his religion had excluded. When you look at Jesus and his way of life from a Jewish point of view, what you see is someone so immersed in life and relationship and the lived moment as to be truly radical, but the radicalness is only accidental, a by-product of purposeful immersion in life.
Dave Brisbin | 5.8.16 On Mother’s Day, we look at the role of mothers and fathers in ancient Hebrew society as illustrated in the language itself. Father in Hebrew means “strong house” and mother means “strong water,” that when understood in context means the “glue that holds the family together.” Strong house and strong water speak to the necessity of both doing and being, of accomplishment and relationship that undergird human life as a whole. We won’t find meaning and purpose without both father and mother in our lives, and we won’t find God either. God is neither masculine nor feminine and is both at the same time. Hebrews understood that their God carried the qualities of strong house and water in perfect balance, and that though God as king was indeed the strength of the house, we always experience him first as mother—the compassion, mercy, and wisdom of the glue that holds everything together. That Jesus always led every encounter, every relationship with compassion and mercy shows us the Way of God, loving first no matter how unlovely we may be—loving as only a mother could love.
Dave Brisbin | 4.24.16 Continuing to look at the method and approach to spirituality at theeffect, one of the hallmarks is the contemplative life and contemplative prayer. How to understand contemplation? Simply stated, it’s the letting go of habitual thoughts, feelings, and behavioral patterns, letting of what we think it means to be ourselves, our ego-self in favor of what really is here and now present in the form of God’s spirit. What does that feel like? It feels like waking up inside your dream, to realize you’re dreaming, that the dream isn’t real, and that you can make a different choice than the one your habitual thoughts and triggered feelings have always dictated. How do we do this? Through contemplative prayer and practice, the constant practice of presence, stepping away from all our mental activity to find that Paul called prayer without ceasing, not unceasing words, but the unceasing presence and awareness of someone who has awakened in waking life.
Dave Brisbin | 4.17.16 We continue the thread started in the last message, which summed up the approach of theeffect ministry as working to help each individual find acceptance, get involved, build trust, and live theeffect of God’s love. Now what was that second point, again? Getting involved is really all about participation. Participation in what? Faith? Well, a much better way to put it is that participation is faith and faith is participation. Biblical faith is always action, not thought, but biblical faith is also not obedience. Obedience is not faith because it is based in fear of punishment, and the moment obedience is no longer based in fear of punishment, but love of the one to whom you’re submitted, then obedience is no longer obedience, but the action of trust. How do we get there? By diving into relationship headlong. But then relationship is only as good as our participation in it, so it’s really all about participation.
Dave Brisbin | 4.10.16 As we near our ninth anniversary as a ministry, seemed time to step back redefine what theeffect was founded to be and what we work to do each day in the minds and hearts of those with whom we connect. Our approach can be summed up as a working to help each individual find acceptance, get involved, build trust, and live theeffect of God’s love. That love, the Good News, Kingdom, the quality of life lived steeped in the awareness of and participation in the Father’s presence is theeffect we seek and without which there is no purpose to a spiritual life.
Dave Brisbin | 3.20.16 On Palm Sunday, we look again at our expectations and biases and try to pry loose all we think we know of Jesus: from what he looks like to what we believe of his mission and teachings to test whether we, like those greeting Jesus along the streets of Jerusalem would miss the moment of our visitation. What we think we know limits what we see and are willing to accept as truth. Jesus rides into our lives on the back of the foal of a donkey, bringing a message and truth that unless we have conditioned ourselves to see with the eyes of a child, we will miss completely.
Dave Brisbin | 3.6.16 As we look at religion and church practice, it all looks so polarized, so black and white, right and wrong—so binary, as if all our spirituality comes down to a choosing of sides. Which side is right and has the power to save and which does not. A young poet writes about why he hates religion and lists all the evils for which religion is responsible. Religion is bad; Jesus didn’t do religion; Jesus ended religion. Really? Jesus didn’t do religion? Truth is, Jesus was more religious than most of us could ever imagine or approve. He followed the written tenets and practices of his faith to the letter, but within that practice, he cleared a path to the freedom that actually fulfilled the intent of his religion. Jesus didn’t choose sides, and though he revered and followed his religion, he never put mere religious practice above the pure relationship his religion was meant to convey. When we study Jesus carefully, better, when we live Jesus carefully, we realize it was never about choosing sides, but about seeing both sides as one whole: each side contributing the structure, discipline, mercy, and compassion that is kingdom.
Dave Brisbin | 2.28.16 James Series 8: In this final session on the book of James, James makes the transition from more commentary on harmful practices and attitudes among those in his community—speaking ill of each other, arrogantly believing one’s own capacity to control circumstances independently of God, swearing—back to prayer and submission to God. And in this transition, he comes full circle from the acceptance of life’s difficulties and challenges with which he began, to the acceptance of our most basic relationship with life. From the endurance created by accepting life challenges and working through them to the realization and acceptance of our complete dependence on God for the life we lead. From acceptance to acceptance. James has taken this journey himself, and he is inviting us to take the journey as well. Only one question remains: we will accept the ride?
Dave Brisbin | 2.21.16 James Series 7: James continues to hammer on the theme of making our actions match the ends we seek in Kingdom. He points to counter-kingdom practices and action he witnesses in his community—the fights, quarrels, covetousness—and harshly admonishes his people. But again, we need to resist the temptation to just see more rules to follow here. James tells us to draw near to God, humble ourselves, submit, and allow ourselves to let go and descend into a kind of mourning, a sense of loss of all the things we held dear in order to find what is really dear in life. We have built the idea that kingdom is achieved by following rules, when what Jesus and James are telling us is that kingdom is realized by falling in love—in love with a life that looks like kingdom, so that our behavior matches the kingdom we seek. We need to let the rules fall away so we can fall…into the embrace of the Father.
Dave Brisbin | 2.14.16 James Series 6: Continuing to develop his theme of the law of liberty, James is determined that we understand how fully becoming the law as Jesus framed it—the fulfilling of law as opposed to mere rule following—was the embodiment of faith. His famous passage about the power of the tongue comparing it to rudders on ships and bits on horses is a colorful way of restating Jesus’ teaching that it’s not what goes into man that defiles him, but what comes out. It’s tempting to see these admonitions as more rules to follow, but James is trying to convey that we must use the same means as the ends we seek. If we wish to live in the unity of the Father, then we must begin practicing that unity and connection first. Sounds like a catch-22, but only if you think of heaven, understood as God’s ultimate acceptance, as the end of the journey. What if, as Jesus says, the kingdom, God’s acceptance and love is already within? What if heaven isn’t the end of the journey, but the beginning? That would be really Good News.
Dave Brisbin | 2.7.16 James Series 5: James launches into another major theme of his book, the law of liberty. At first glance, his phrase seems to be an oxymoron—joining two completely contradictory terms. Isn’t law the opposite of liberty? But its very definition, law limits and restricts freedom for the greater good of the group. So what is a law of liberty? James speaks of being a doer of the word and not just a hearer, that action is necessary, that hearing without doing is just another way of saying faith without works is dead. James is zeroing in on the essential point that though law as we understand it, restricts, and such law is not what Jesus or James are teaching. When we follow a law with which we have no connection in terms of purpose and highest good, then our freedoms—things we desire to do--are restricted, but when our purpose and highest good in life has become the same as the law’s purpose and highest good, then in what way are we any longer obeying? We and the law have become one and what we desire to do falls entirely within the code. And when that code fully expresses God’s purpose and highest good, then we are completely free to live life abundantly without restriction…and without ever restricting the liberty of others.
Dave Brisbin | 1.31.16 In the aftermath of our good friend, Lenny Rosenbaum’s suicide, we have felt an onslaught of the usual questions, anguish, and second guessing as well as those specific to each of us…depending on our relationships with Lenny, our last contacts with him, and a million other factors. The realization dawns that as long as we draw breath, we will be faced with loss in life—the loss of people and things dear enough to cause the questions and anguish and second guessing. In a very real way, we are defined as a people by how we handle the losses we experience. Facing loss brings our deepest beliefs into question, strips life down to its essence—in effect, shows us what we really believe and trust regardless of what we may say to ourselves and others. What Jesus seems to be telling us in his Good News is that nothing of value is really ever lost--it just changes form. Just as the stars that disappear at dawn are still right where we left them in our blue sky, everything we need and love remains as well. The changing is painful, but if we really believe the Good News, it is also temporary.
Dave Brisbin | 1.24.16 James Series 4: James was Jesus’ brother or close relative or friend—the language of the New Testament can mean any of the above—and perhaps because of such closeness, James teaches in much the same style as Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins with the Beatitudes, a picture of the finished product, an end view of the process of kingdom. James also first presents the big, general principles that function the same way. But as does Jesus in the Sermon, James now begins to break down the big concepts into day to day details. How do these principles play out moment by moment? How should we be treating each other in home and synagogue in light of the principles of discernment and judgment? But following the Way is not about following rules, and though James gives us rules, directives for our comportment, he couches it in his concept of the “law of liberty,” a seemingly oxymoronic phrase until you realize that this law is not a law of conformance, but of transformance and moves in an entirely different direction—toward an experience of a completely degreeless love.
Dave Brisbin | 1.10.16 When a beloved friend and integral member of a community dies, it sends shockwaves through each connected life. But when that friend has taken his own life, the shockwaves compound and merge with deeply human questions and the added remorse and even guilt that frustrates healing both individually and collectively. With Lenny’s Rosenbaum’s death last week, we find ourselves in just such a moment, with just such questions and shock. How could a person like Lenny, who was one of the most intelligent and humorous individuals you could meet, who was a fixture at our gatherings and meetings, always bringing such life to each event have gotten to a point of such hopelessness right under our radar? Is his suicide forgivable by God despite what we may have been taught in our religious circles? How do we move through the grief and pain and perhaps the guilt and remorse as well? The beautiful irony of Lenny’s life is that even though he was the one who has caused our immediate grief, he is also the one who is showing us just how to move through it and beyond it back to a healed whole, back to Jesus’ Kingdom of God.
Dave Brisbin | 1.3.16 James Series 3: Coming back to the book of James after Christmas and the start of a new year, we are reminded that time, all we know of time, the passage of time, is circular. The only reason we know time is passing is because earth and moon, planets and stars turn in their circles. The movement of circles is the movement of time. Life is circular too—circles within circles, and James’ book, taking us on a journey to define life on Jesus’ Way moves in circles as well. His topics don’t neatly lay out along a straight logical line, but recur in circular patterns. At first glance, it seems chaotic and disordered, but as a metaphor for life, it makes perfect sense. Starting with the initial theme of endurance, the acceptance of life on life’s terms, he moves on to wisdom and faith and then patience: the waiting for completion as a gardener waits for rain and soil to do its work, once all the work he can do is done. The serenity of this kind of patience, rooted in the endurance, acceptance, and wisdom of a faith defined as steadfastness brings us full circle, but only in preparation for the next circle to begin.
Dave Brisbin | 12.27.15 As Christmas moves into the rearview, there is one more look we should give the birth narratives to see what they may have for us herenow. It’s always the tiny details of a story that give it its authenticity, show that the storyteller was fully present to the moments described. And in Jesus’ birth narratives we have some details that shouldn’t be missed: wrapped in cloths, lying in a manger, no room at the inn. These details have graced millions of nativity scenes for two millennia, but do we have them right? What do the swaddling clothes and manger tell us about our God that we can use to experience him right herenow? And was there really an inn in the way we think of an inn? And if not, what would a more accurate translation tell us about Jesus’ family and our families and character and nature of those, like the Magi, who see through the details to the God they travel so far to worship.
Dave Brisbin | 12.13.16 In the run up to Christmas, one of the more striking elements of the Nativity narrative in the Gospel of Matthew is the story of the Magi and the Star. What was this star and who were these Magi? Was this a miraculous event or the good timing of a supernova, comet, conjunction, or some other celestial event? But if it were there in the sky for all to see, why were the Magi the only ones to see it? Why did Herod and his court have to be informed? And as we examine the possible true nature of the star, what is its significance for us today? Is it just a miracle story foreshadowing the miraculous ministry of Jesus, or is there more? When we look at the nature of the Magi, the lifelong dedication to their astronomical science, their passionate desire for a king who would usher in a new age, their courage in taking the long perilous journey to greet that king…we are still not prepared for their seeming naïve openness in accepting a poverty stricken infant as the figure for whom they worked so long to find. Whatever our expectations in life, truth rarely presents itself as we expect. If we, like the Magi have not prepared ourselves to see truth exactly where and when it appears in our night sky, we will miss the opportunity to greet our king.
Dave Brisbin | 12.6.16 James Series 2: James tells us in the opening verses of his book that we should count it all joy when we encounter various difficulties because the testing of our faith produces endurance and the endurance produces a perfect result in which we lack for nothing. James then moves on to talk about asking for wisdom, asking without doubt, persevering to reward, the nature of temptation and presence. If we look at these verses from a Western point of view, we will have a complete misunderstanding of what James is saying in his Eastern way to an Eastern audience. We in the West rely on our eyes rather than our hands looking to form over function; we see life through an intellectual, passive lens rather than an active, experiential one; we see life broken into separate, dualistic compartments and time as a linear segment between endpoints rather an a holistic whole. Unless we can begin to understand that James and his fellows always saw function over form, active experience over passive mental concept, and everything existing in a now moment, we won’t see how “asking” only exists in endurance as a working definition of faith, and how doubt and temptation are not evil or weak but the very elements that make our choices and our faith real, and how reward is never delayed in time but is the experience of enduring through the trial to God’s presence in every moment. We need to see James and Jesus from an Easter point of view—it only changes everything when we do.
Dave Brisbin | 11.29.16 James Series 1: James, the brother of Jesus, the man who led the early Jerusalem church for the first thirty years after the crucifixion was the pillar of the Eastern Church and yet is relatively unknown in the West. Western tradition portrays Peter as the head of the early Jewish followers of Jesus, but the East has always maintained James in that position. The book that bears his name was quite possibly a catechism for early Jewish followers and converts and is beautiful in its clarity and brevity and focus on the big questions as well as the essential details of life. Moving nearly verse by verse, we’ll take a look at how James led his brother’s followers through those first difficult years, trying to follow Jesus’ Way through persecution from both Jewish and Roman authorities. And because of that persecution and the religious and cultural upheaval of trying to follow Jesus and Judaism at the same time, it’s no coincidence that the first issue James addresses is that of suffering—of how we are to face the trials and difficulties of life. But to count it all as joy when we are confronted with our challenges speaks to a necessity of the descent into brokenness that precedes the ascent into wisdom and reward. James is telling us there is a beauty to brokenness that we must understand if we’re really to take any further steps along the Way.
Dave Brisbin | 2.22.15 The Fifth Way Series 12: “Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.” I think Father Arrupe is dead on here. The Fifth Way is as different from the four ways as falling in love is from following traffic laws or the tax code. Laws and codes may keep us safe and secure, but will never get us to the thrilling, out of control-ness that we really desire in life. If you strip away everything we think we know theologically and legally and religiously, what is left at the bottom of the dogpile is Jesus simply asking us to fall in love as he has fallen in love—with life, with each other, with him and Father and spirit and the entire cruel, crazy, beautiful world.
Dave Brisbin | 2.15.15 The Fifth Way Series 11: Reacting to a statement made in a sermon the previous Sunday, a woman told me it was the first time she had not been “completely won over” by what I had to say, that she and her husband had had a very “lively” discussion about it on the way home. I told her that was great! That I would much rather have her disagree and think on it and discuss it rigorously and research it, than just say it was a “lovely sermon” and never think on it again. Truth is, approaching the Fifth Way of Jesus is only possible as more and more of our four ways mentality is stripped away, as we become willing to “sell” everything we think we have, think we know, in favor of the radical truth to which Jesus beckons. That means, if we’re not being disturbed, we’re not approaching the Fifth Way, but are still traveling the other four. The Fifth Way is never familiar, never settled, and never boring. Like the true adventure it is, it gives no guarantee of safety and flatly defies agenda and itinerary. Our sense of risk and anticipated loss is the disturbance that precedes the letting go of all to which we cling that will forever keep us from kingdom and presence and the Father Jesus knows so well.
Dave Brisbin | 2.18.15 The Fifth Way Series 10: When most people hear the title of this book, The Fifth Way, most immediately want to know what the first four ways are. Pretty insightful, because we really can’t know the nature of Jesus’ Fifth Way without understanding the nature of the first four. The four ways, like the cardinal directions of the compass rose point out the sum of all the ways we as humans go about acquiring the things we need. They are rooted in the four “philosophies” of first century Israel, but they are as old as humanity’s birth and as active today as then. The four ways are about our means of acquisition, whether physical or emotional, and begin at the assumption of need, of emptiness. The Fifth Way moves in a completely different direction and turns the four ways inside out, downside up, and backside front. Instead of beginning at the point of need, it begins at the point of abundance--that everything we really need is already here—within, among, and in the midst of every moment of our lives. To see the abundance in the midst of very real physical and emotional need is the purpose of the Fifth Way…training ourselves to see the Father’s presence, which makes each moment perfect despite our needs, and makes each of us perfect too…despite our flaws.
Dave Brisbin | 2.1.15 The Fifth Way Series 9: Chuang Tzu, a 3rd century BCE Chinese philosopher said: The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. Once the fish is caught the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch a rabbit. Once the rabbit is caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. Once the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I want to speak with. To that I add: The purpose of theology is to catch God. Once God is “caught,” theology can be forgotten. To find a person who has forgotten theology is the goal of the Fifth Way of Jesus. Theology is our best attempt to express the inexpressible truth that is God, ultimately. Any theological truths we find along the Way can point to God, but are not God themselves, and in the light of God’s presence, if they are not forgotten, then we are not really seeing the light.
Dave Brisbin | 1.18.15 The Fifth Way Series 7: One really ancient view of cosmology was of a flat earth resting on the back of an enormous turtle. What was the turtle standing on? Well, it’s basically turtles all the way down. As our minds struggle with the impossibility of an infinite stack of turtles, we are seeing the problem of theology. How can we possibly use finite language and physical rules of logic to describe something that by definition stands outside everything we can use to describe it? We long for one more turtle on which to stand, but eventually there is only the unseen God. We can’t prove God to one another, we can only prove him to ourselves…once we’ve moved beyond theology, once we realized that understanding theology is not knowing God. Jesus tells the story of workers who come to work first thing in the morning with a contract for a certain amount of pay and workers who come later in the day with no contract at all, just a promise of fairness. When all are paid the same, the contractual workers are outraged, as we are with our theology, our implied contract with God, our entitled understanding. Until we move beyond all that, we will never understand the goodness of the Good News.
Dave Brisbin | 1.11.15 The Fifth Way Series 6: The ancient Hebrews who wrote our scriptures envisioned us humans living our lives between heaven and earth—between the pure connection and unity of God and the individual form and separation of the material world. And our job as humans was to bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven: to merge the two, bring the unity and connection of heaven into our daily lives while retaining the individual form by which we are recognized. To live this radical reality is not an intellectual task as much as an experiential one. No one can give us the answers, we must live with such purpose until we know truth. Jesus tries to illustrate just this way of living with unity and disunity in one embrace in his parable of the wheat and the tares, because life between heaven and earth is much less about learning to pull weeds as it is about learning to accept the imperfections in life and ourselves and not allowing them to keep us from moving toward the harvest.
Dave Brisbin | 1.4.15 Called to lead a study group at a treatment facility, I found myself in front of about 20 women I’d never met before to talk about the intersection of faith and life and scripture. Immediately I saw a few who were not interested at all, another few who were interested for while then mentally checked out, some who seemed animated throughout, and others who wanted to talk afterward about next steps. I realized that I was seeing all of the four soils that Jesus described in his parable of the sower and the seed. To take some time with this parable in its Hebrew setting can really bring it home as we begin a new year, because we normally think of Jesus as depicting the difference between people, between believers and non-believers when he’s really portraying different parts of ourselves. Who among us is completely integrated and whole, has no weak or dissenting parts of our psyche? The truth Jesus is trying to convey is that each of us has all four soils within, and if we’re not carefully aware, we’ll miss the opportunity at this time next year to realize how much we’ve grown.
Dave Brisbin | 12.28.14 Heading into a new year, there seems to be a lot of fear about the direction of the world in general and our country and our lives in particular. Jesus said he came to bring life and life abundantly, but where is that abundance in the fearful attitudes being displayed? Victor Frankel said that the last of human freedoms is the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. Paul of Tarsus said he’d learned to be content in all his circumstances. How did they do this? How do we? There are three songs that I believe convey the heart of the life toward which Jesus is calling: Crazy World, Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World, and for the new year, Auld Lang Syne. To first understand and then to begin to live the crazy contradictions and disparate themes played out in these songs is to again glimpse talya—the attitude-word Jesus used that means both child and servant at the same time—the means to find that we can live with abundant trust even if we lack the clarity of a risk free world.
Dave Brisbin | 12.21.14 The birth of any child is a big deal. So the birth of Jesus is a very big deal. But why? Any answer to such a question that is merely historical or theological, may be true, but leave us personally untouched at the same time. In a theological fight that consumed much of the 5th century, church fathers debated and excommunicated over whether Mary should be called theotokos—“God bearer” in Greek. Some didn’t believe that a spirit God could take material form, but eventually the church rallied around the belief that Mary really did bring God into this world. In the Gospels, Jesus is called immanuel—“God with us” in Hebrew—the reality of God’s presence in our midst. When we remember who we are: sons and daughters of God’s image—when we live as if that is true, we become theotokos too. Bearing the image of God into our moments is the very experience of immanuel, of having God with us right here and now this Christmas.
Dave Brisbin | 12.14.14 Approaching Christmas, what do those ancient wise men who traveled so far to reach Jesus have to say to us today? Is there any significance to those three famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh? In the midst of the crush of modern Christmas gift-giving, is there a gift or an attitude of giving that speaks to us from a deeper place? In his famous short story, written over a century ago, O. Henry writes of a young couple, down on their financial luck, who sell their most prized possessions to buy Christmas gifts for each other that have no purpose once the prized possessions are gone. Have you ever loved someone like that? Nothing you wouldn’t sell, lay down for him or her? Anyone so dear that the thought of not giving was simply intolerable? The gifts of the Magi have great significance as we look at them through the lens of ancient culture and sacred writing, but we’ll never know what they really mean until we’ve loved someone, anyone, like that.
Dave Brisbin | 12.7.14 The Fifth Way Series 5: Ancient Chinese philosopher said you cannot speak of ocean to a wellfrog, the creature of a narrow sphere. We may think it’s safe to ignore or minimize the enigmatic musings of a man dead over twenty three hundred years half way around the world, but this truth lies at the heart of our search for truth. Whatever we think we know about life, reality, faith, spirituality can only take form in our minds after having traveled through the filter of our beliefs about life and reality and faith and spirituality—whatever really is, is limited by our belief of what really is. Like the wellfrog in his narrow cylinder of water, we will never see the vast ocean of Father and love Jesus is trying to show us until we first acknowledge we have a filter, worldview, and second, work to let it go—see just how radical Jesus is and how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Dave Brisbin | 11.30.14 The Fifth Way Series 4: Do you want to know the meaning of life? I assume that’s why you’re here, at least in part. But if you’re looking for an answer to a question, a solution to a problem, any answer to the question of meaning will itself be meaningless. Life is not a question to answer or problem to solve…it’s more like a magic trick: as soon as you know how it’s done, you’re no longer interested. The irony is that the very answers we seek of life would kill the experience of life if we ever got them. But we won’t get them. We can’t, because as Jesus is trying to tell us, life is not a concept to understand, but a person to experience. Once we realize that life is a person, we realize that the meaning of life is to fall in love with the person who initiates life. This is what Jesus calls Kingdom--the process of approaching life, truth, and the Way between the two as we would a relationship with a beloved person—because that’s exactly what it is.
Dave Brisbin | 11.23.14 The Fifth Way Series 3: A seventeen year old boy asks his father, an elder in his church, whether what he believes is really true or just what he believes. What a question! The central question. We have come to equate doubt with a lack of faith. But faith without doubt is no more possible than courage without fear—doubt defines our faith, makes it possible. Common sense tells us this, but once we’ve agreed to a certain set of beliefs, drunk the kool-aid, we set our common sense on the shelf if it leads to a different conclusion than our beliefs dictate. Our religious institutions have been especially good at beating common sense out of us in a headlong attempt to maintain our faith by maintaining our ignorance of the things toward which common sense points. If we’ve never doubted, we haven’t taken our faith seriously enough. If we’re unwilling to ask the hard questions, the ones our seventeen year olds are asking, we will never be able to follow Jesus, who asked all the hard questions of his own religion on his Way to oneness with our Father.
Dave Brisbin | 11.16.14 The Fifth Way Series 2: Having looked at our relationship with God, God’s nature, and the nature of our attitude toward God, what should be the primary metaphor for our spiritual lives? Most critically, the metaphor we choose, chooses us, shapes us, but most often, we have not consciously chosen the metaphor. It was chosen for us by our parents, teachers, pastors, church, and society at large. And the primary metaphor of Western Christianity seems to be that of the warrior. We speak of being soldiers for Christ, taking the land for God, organize ourselves in paramilitary fashion. We speak of spiritual warfare and face daily life as an emotional and psychological battlefield. Jesus on the other hand, never uses the image of the warrior to describe life in his kingdom, favoring that of the gardener or farmer. To work diligently day in and day out in rhythm with wind and weather, carefully planting and tending—never coercing—is the model Jesus presents. If the means we use must match the ends we seek, then we need to carefully examine and question our most basic attitudes toward life or they will shape us in ways that will never fit along Jesus’ Way.
Dave Brisbin | 11.09.14 The Fifth Way Series 1: First in a series presenting the main concepts and themes of Dave Brisbin’s book, The Fifth Way: A Western Journey to the Hebrew Heart of Jesus. The book traces the journey to the journey, the fundamental changes in worldview necessary for a modern Westerner to approach the ancient and Eastern message of Jesus. The New Testament has been amazingly preserved for us in the modern world—we have the right words, we just don’t know what they originally meant. Words such as heaven and hell, good and evil, sin, faith, salvation, and especially kingdom all mean one thing to us and another to those who first listened to Jesus. To step back into the sandals of Jesus’ first followers and see Jesus and his Way of living life as he first presented it, is the goal of The Fifth Way. In this first message, we look at the fundamental relationship we have with our Father in heaven through the eyes of an old man dying of diabetes and his last words to Dave and his wife. Is God an angry God? Does God have to be angry with us in order to be perfect? How does Jesus’ attitude toward life show us how we’ve been designed to live and love and be in love?