Broken

What Matters?

What Matters?

I don’t believe that God looks on sons and daughters, however wayward, with contempt or condescension because he sees them as somehow too morally compromised. And I certainly don’t believe in nonsense like, “God cannot even bear to look at us in our sin, God can only look at Jesus.” The primary function of the story of Jesus of Nazareth is to show us that we in fact have a God who looks us eyeball-to-eyeball. The remarkable proclamation of the gospel, is that God looks at us with the same perfect love and delight with which the Father looks at Jesus. So in this regard, humans are not mere worms or wretches. Love has already dignified us too much for that.

(Jonathan Martin)

Give Up

Give Up

If the Catholicism that I was raised in had a fault, and it did, it was precisely that it did not allow for mistakes. It demanded that you get it right the first time. There was supposed to be no need for a second chance. If you made a mistake, you lived with it and, like the rich young man, were doomed to be sad, at least for the rest of your life. A serious mistake was a permanent stigmatization, a mark that you wore like Cain. I have seen that mark on all kinds of people: divorcees, ex-priests, ex-religious, people who have had abortions, married people who have had affairs, people who have had children outside of marriage, parents who have made serious mistakes with their children, and countless others who have made serious mistakes. There is too little around to help them. We need a theology of brokenness. We need a theology which teaches us that even though we cannot unscramble an egg, God’s grace lets us live happily and with renewed innocence far beyond any egg we may have scrambled. We need a theology that teaches us that God does not just give us one chance, but that every time we close a door, he opens another one for us.

(Ronald Rohlheiser)

Logic of the Cross

Logic of the Cross

Normally I would start off one of these posts with some witty excerpt from a book or song that has struck a chord in my heart, but this one feels different. As I sit in bed writing this my mind races at the uncertainties that have been rushing through my mind over the last few months. I have had many questions that have dominated my thoughts recently. Most of them come back to the one that has most stumped me:

What truly matters in this life?

Weight of Eternity

Weight of Eternity

Do you ever just think about forever? The immensity can feel overwhelming and even lonely in a way. We cannot really understand it. There are too many unknowns. Honestly, eternity scares me, the depth and pressure of it all leaves me befuddled anytime that it crosses my mind. Thinking about the importance of life here in relation to eternity is where my brain decides to sit and soak in thought, at times.