Tag: grace

Non-violence

Slowing Down Becomes Non-Violence

February 1, 2026

Given a long enough timeline, you can do anything. The work must happen on the inside, which means you must slow down. That is what all this inner work is aimed at doing: giving you control over your internal experience. Meditation, then, is not just an end in itself (trying to rid yourself of thoughts). It is a practice that is fundamental to redeeming everything that has come from outside you and has become your inner experience. Once you ...  Keep reading

Deconstruction

Free God

November 29, 2025

It’s not that I don’t believe in God. It’s that I don’t believe in your God – the one you have made in your image and that seeks to protect and preserve only the people you can tolerate, excluding the people who are not like you and do not believe like you do. God is not who you think God is. And God is not who your religion says God is. If that were so, then God would be small and containable inside your finite brain. God is not who I think God is, either. God is bigger than that.

We ...  Keep reading

Deconstructing Is Saying You Don’t Know

April 6, 2025

Be thankful for these little frailties, mistakes and woundings that routinely throw you off your path. They remind you of your true nature: you are human and wanting. When you are in pain, worried, weak, disoriented and confused, slow down and pay attention. These are your entrance into what you really need: an experience of God in God’s tenderest form. Your little weaknesses are also what keep you tender and vulnerable. That is the best thing that can happen to you.

These little setbacks and ...  Keep reading

The Spirit of Things

February 12, 2025

There is this Spirit we all know. You know it when you see it. And just like heaven, it always takes you by surprise. That’s because it will not be contained in any one place or by any one person or by understanding itself. It is free, and it is traveling around, in and out of spaces, and weaving itself through and around things. Then it appears, like a bird landing on a rail in front of you, out of nowhere and for no good reason except just to make itself known to you again.

You can feel its ...  Keep reading

God Absorbs Darkness And Tragedy

April 7, 2021

Part of the problem with this transactional view of the gospel – that Jesus just came to offer forgiveness of sins and get you into heaven where everything is perfect – is that it doesn’t help us deal with the darkness we are still presently in. You get forgiven and punch your ticket, but you still do and think bad stuff and the world is still full of brokenness and tragedy.

This transactional gospel focuses on sin and sin management. It’s like this: God can’t put up with sin ...  Keep reading

Non-Violence Is Superhuman

March 29, 2021

I think what I want to communicate with pointing out that grace is everywhere is that what God is doing in the world here and now is just as important as yours and everybody else’s “salvation transaction.” If “getting people saved” is the only thing that is necessary, we can have this attitude of all but giving up on this world because it’s so crazy and tragic. The thinking is, “make sure you are going to heaven and try to bring as many ...  Keep reading

Grace is Pervasive

March 27, 2021

When I said I was deeply Christian, I wasn’t just saying that. Grace is the number one reason. Most of my life, I have been captivated by the phenomenon of grace in the Christian story. Maybe it’s because I was a guilty child, but maybe it’s because grace is a revolution in thinking for all of us. Maybe we are just built to be big containers for grace. When you drink from that well, a big reservoir opens up inside you and grace is the only thing.

It is just the most beautiful story. You ...  Keep reading

The Contempt In Us

January 31, 2021

Search any human heart and you will find contempt. It comes in many forms and is unfortunately as natural to us as breathing and eating. It organizes us. Somewhere along the way (probably in adolescence), we start identifying everything we hate – everything we think we are not and everything we do not want to be. This is probably a necessary process of forming our identity; the problem is too often we get stuck there and believe that is the only way to “be somebody.” Long into our adulthood, ...  Keep reading