Money on the Floor

Doubt is mostly viewed as a negative trait or as even as the opposite of faith. We think this way largely because we imagine doubt and faith in still life, or rigidly defined - devoid of motion. Such attempts at crystallization lose sight of the inner dynamics and play when we struggle with doubt. When we doubt, a number of forces arise within us: curiosity, fear, urgency, to name only a few. 

These forces compel us to know - to experience - and to do so we act. We move. We seek answers. We position ourselves to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears.

Doubt drives the struggle - without it we would never see potentiality give birth to actuality. This is precisely why God does not present himself as an irrefutable fact. He wants us to struggle. He wants us to be curious and to move toward Him. He wants us to pursue him until, like the moth whose new wings are strengthened by its endeavor to escape the cocoon, we emerge transformed into a new creation that exchanges the rigidity of an earthbound life for the boundless skies.

Today we will rediscover the nature and purpose of doubt - and how to allow it to serve as a positive force for transformation.

Source Scripture

Matthew 11:1-6; Luke 7:18-23

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We have unwittingly exchanged the active experience of being alive in the present for living in a dank library filled with atomized facts that we read not with just our eyes, but with our whole physical bodies. We willingly plug ourselves into a matrix of technology and information that, given the right combination, can summon fleeting fulfillment of our selfish desires: popularity, prosperity, pleasure, and power.

These four pillars serve as the supports that bear the table of lifeless and soul-less reductionism where we spend our lives attempting to put together the one-million piece puzzle from the box of pieces that, even if accomplished, would result only in a flattened and ghoulishly carved representation of the real world that awaits us in plain sight - if only we would just turn around, leave the puzzle behind, and embark on a journey of adventure, purpose, and meaning.

We live in blueprints rather than homes. We exchange the territory for the map and the symphony for the sheet music, both of which can be neatly tucked into our day planners. We have abandoned the rapture of a starry night for a lifeless book where the front cover has faded under the white-washed sky of light pollution, the back cover boasts of the data contained within, and the pages between them offer not stories, but columns and charts, distances and densities, enormity and expansion. 

We have stripped sacred symbols of their resonance and reduced them to tokens and trinkets to buy, sell, or appropriate for monetary gain. Two-handed scrolls enchant no longer, now lost to mindless single-handed scrolling. Pythagoras marveled at meaning in mathematics, envisioning the number one as the symbol for unity and ten for perfection. He found astonishing connections between music and ratio. But now hear the name Pythagoras and all we can muster is a-squared plus b-squared = c-squared as a formula to conquer algebra tests and solve occasional problems. Mathematics are now mere means to ends.

We have wandered from wonder, only to wonder why we wander.

Today, we delve deeply into the hope that this wretched wasteland in which we wander is not our home - the hope that we may yet wake up and rise up and return to reverence, recapturing rapture and seizing the sublime.

Welcome back to wonder.

Source Scripture

Luke 7:11-17

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Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves; for if our virtues did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike as if we had them not. William Shakespeare

Such words capture the essence of a latent power within us, awaiting the spark of purpose to ignite.

From our first breath, we are cradled in potential, but our world orbits around primal needs, each cry a beacon of dependence. Yet, as the veil of infancy lifts, the tender choreography of growth and guidance train us to wield the sword of power. And once trained, we are free to choose how to fulfill our potential. 

The easiest path, perhaps, is to mold power to the whims of desire, where the ego eschonces itself as the unyielding center, its gravitational force gripping all it covets.

As we grow older, the spectrum of power broadens—intellectual, political, social, occupational, extending its tendrils into the vast garden of human endeavor. And with every strand of authority entwined around it, there emerges a dichotomy of choice—will we use our power be a vessel of selfish craving or a conduit of collective good?

The news often paints a grim tapestry of power misused—a teacher betraying trust, a politician trading integrity for gold, a city council weaving webs of defamation, a police badge morphing into a shroud of fear, a shepherd fleecing his flock. 

Yet, amidst this gloom, rays of hope pierce through— a policewoman’s badge shining as a shield of protection and service, a school principal crafting a haven of learning and respect, a city council sowing seeds of prosperity, a politician being the voice of the voiceless, a pastor trading earthly gold for the treasure of service.

In this grand theatre, the power of choice orchestrates every act. It's the silent custodian of all other powers, holding the potential to either plunge us into an abyss of self-indulgence or elevate us to beacons of hope amid the encroaching shadows. The path we tread in wielding this primal power echoes the essence of today’s passage—the reverence of recognizing a power beyond ourselves, an authority rooted in the heart of divine love.

Source Scripture

Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10

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To see is to discern with clarity what is…

C.S. Lewis addressed what he saw as the oncoming blindness to what is in his book The Abolition of Man.

Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful. In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.

Reason, both C.S. Lewis and Plato insist, follows a natural conformity to the existing harmony of the Universe - to what is. To see is to recognize this, much like a beginning piano player must strain to learn the existing workings of the piano and how dancing her fingers across the keys can create something beautiful.

To see and know what is, then, precedes reason. Reason flows into us once we take in the wonder - the splendor - of the true nature of being.

Today’s episode is a review of the previous six episodes, where Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount as a revelation of the true nature of being and then proceeds to immediately fulfill the deepest desires of a man gripped by suffering to be restored to his true nature.

And in all of these episodes, all the while as Jesus is opening our eyes to us what is, he is also peering directly into the depths of our souls to reveal our longings, our needs, and our blindness to the truth and whispers to us, “I see you - and I want to heal you.”

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:13-14
Matthew 7:15-20; Luke 6:43-45
Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46
Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49
Matthew 7:28-29
Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16

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Acceptance - we yearn for it in our inmost being. We long for others to accept us as we are, and yet we are terrified that who we are - which includes our shortcomings, our fears, our secret stories of horror, the terrible things we have thought and done - will repel others and deny us the very acceptance we seek.

And so we don costumes, adapting some role that isn't us, hoping to finally earn acceptance. But is it really acceptance if we gain it as someone other than our true self?

Maintaining the false self requires exerting so much effort that we then collapse when in solitude and wonder why we feel so empty, lonely, and starved for the very thing we created the false self in the first place - acceptance.

Your deepest desires for acceptance cannot and will not be met until your true self can safely and wholly emerge in full view of another that has an enthusiastic willingness to approach, to touch, to wipe away tears, to gently clean away all impurities to reveal the beauty that lies beneath - you. 

When your desire for acceptance, free of costume, meets and grasps the divine desire to accept you for who you really are - you have reached the most sacred space on all earth - the axis mundi - where heaven meets earth. Where the divine meets - and embraces - you.

Source Scripture

Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16

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Recommended Reading

The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus

Our modern way of thinking has created a false dichotomy between truth and experience. We have become obsessed with the reduction of truth into facts: atomic sentences and numbers and equations that we can use as a periodic table of elements.

But this obsession holds no real power. No matter how well you know that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen combine to form water, this fact will not help you when you are on your knees in the desert and dying of thirst.

Water is life, and your experience of consuming it is vital.

Spiritual truths exemplify this need for active participation even more deeply.  A sacred text is not sacred because it reveals truth in written form. It is sacred when and only when the truth in the text connects the spirits of both reader and writer and the experience of sacred communion takes place.

Facts stripped of truth and immersive experience are lifeless at best and oppressive at worst. But when spirit meets truth - yours and the divine - you lose your mind and find your soul.

So if you're stuck in your head and dying of thirst in a land of facts, it's time to strike out on a new adventure.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:28-29

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Our quest for peace - contentment, rest, fulfillment - is, paradoxically, most often filled with frustration, anger, exhaustion, and even rage. Make more money, acquire necessary things, secure fulfilling relationships, and fulfill sensual desires.

Over and over again, great obstacles present themselves. Storms arise. Obstacles roll over us. People thwart us. Disasters destroy all that we have worked for and take away those that we love.

And when we find ourselves naked and afraid - when all is lost except loss itself - where do we go? What do we do?

We could, like the great phoenix, resolve to rise from the ashes and rebuild our lives by starting over and repeating our quest.

Or, perhaps we could reconsider the quest itself and reexamine what it is we seek.

If what we seek is peace, which is an inward state of being - a mode of consciousness - then why do we assume at the outset that our quest must be the triumphal conquest of external circumstance?

If what we truly desire is an inward oasis, then our quest must be an inner odyssey.

The journey to fulfillment lies wholly within. And the deeper we go, the more this truth becomes clear to us, until in our spirit we arrive at the very ground of our being and discover there that the truth really does set you free.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49

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Without conscious and concerted effort, our focus will always be on ourselves. What we want. What we need. What we'll do to get what we want and need.

This focus reveals our purpose - which, if we are honest, is to bend the world and all that is in it in our favor. We desire to be seen and to be valued, and with this focus we devise actions that will garner attention, gain praise, and earn love. When we fail, as we inevitably will, we become increasingly discontent and grow more likely to reduce others to the role of competitor, ally, enemy, or tool.

Such self-centered living is destined to fail, despite our rational thoughts to the contrary and despite seeing those we idolize post their social proof. The human soul is not designed to be selfish - it is designed to serve. It is designed to be a cup that receives divine love from above and pours it out freely here below.

Soul-centered living brings freedom and opens the doorway into the kingdom of heaven. Self-centeredness, in its desperation to justify itself, has a way of pretending to be righteous with magic tricks that may fool the eye at first glance. But all that hocus focus cannot and will not ever serve us or others.

Today, we'll expose the magic tricks that attempt to make self-centeredness disappear, and we'll rediscover the true meaning of life.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46

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What gives? The sun gives light and warmth. A mother gives milk and hugs and nurture. Birdsong brings smiles. The forest offers solace. The moon and the stars above give a sense of awe and perspective below. Friends provide comfort. Children bring joy. Trees bear fruit. Sheep provide wool. 

What takes? Light pollution takes away the splendor of the night sky. Thieves seize what is not theirs. Accidents, war, and disease take loved ones. Litter takes away beauty. Thorns take blood. Wolves take life.

We are attracted to what gives. We are suspicious at best or terrified at worst of what takes.

Knowing this natural law of attraction and avoidance, some costume themselves as what gives, but behind the mask is a liar. A thief. A murderer.

Today, we learn how to identify these masked marauders - particularly those who claim to give goodness and truth and guidance when in fact they are only after what they can get out of us.

To take is human. To give, divine.  

Let's open our eyes to the divine to see what gives.

Source Scripture

Matthew 7:15-20; Luke 6:43-45

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To attain what we desire most, we mistakenly believe that we must move forward, acquire more, learn much, guard relentlessly, achieve fame, win awards, and stockpile power.

And yet, our true desires are never met by our effort, ingenuity, or winsome charisma. Our true desires - the ones that emanate from the ground of our being and refuse to quiet their call until we fulfill them - are found through simple, quiet, effortless means.

Finding fulfillment in this life does not come by learning, but by unlearning. It does not come by grasping, but by releasing. Not by pursuing, but by surrendering to being pursued. Not by leading, but by following. And not by demanding, but by accepting.

The gateway to paradise - the kingdom of heaven - exists on this side of the grave. It stands open for all who would enter.

Finding that gate....is the focus of today's episode.

Source Scripture

Mathew 7:13-14

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