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Grace and mercy teach us that we are all much larger than the good or bad stories we tell about ourselves or about one another. Please don’t get caught in your small stories; they are usually less than half true, and therefore not really “true” at all. They’re usually based on hurts and unconscious agendas that allow us to see and judge things in a very selective way. They’re not the whole You, not the Great You, not the Great River. Therefore it is not where your big life can really happen. No wonder the Spirit is described as “flowing water” and as “a spring inside you” (John 4:10-14) or, at the end of the Bible, as a “river of life” (Revelation 22:1-2). Strangely, your real life is not about “you.” It is a part of a much larger stream called God.

I believe that faith might be precisely that ability to trust the Big River of God’s providential love, which is to trust the visible embodiment (the Son), the flow (the Holy Spirit), and the source itself (the Father). This is a divine process that we don’t have to change, coerce, or improve. We just need to allow it and enjoy it. That takes immense confidence, especially when we’re hurting. Usually, I can feel myself get panicky. Then I want to quickly make things right. I lose my ability to be present and I go up into my head and start obsessing. Soon I tend to be overly focused in my head to such a point that I don’t really feel or experience things in my heart and body. I’m oriented toward goals and making things happen, trying to push or even create my own river. Yet the Big River is already flowing through me and I am only one small part of it.

Faith does not need to push the river precisely because it is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing; we are already in it. This is probably the deepest meaning of “divine providence.” So do not be afraid. We have been proactively given the Spirit by a very proactive God. Jesus understands this gift as a foregone conclusion: “If you, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit?” (Luke 11:13).

Simone Weil said, “It is grace that forms a void inside of us and it is also grace that fills that void.” Grace leads us to the state of emptiness, to that momentary sense of meaninglessness in which we ask, “What is it all for? What does it all mean?” Without grace we will not enter into such a necessary void, and without grace the void will not be filled. All we can do is try to keep our hands cupped and open. And it is even grace to do that. But we must want grace and know we need it.

Ask yourself regularly, “What am I afraid of? Does it matter? Will it matter at the end or in the great scheme of things? Is it worth holding on to?” Grace will lead you into such fears and emptiness, and grace alone can fill them up, if we are willing to stay in the void. It is a kind of “negative capability” that God seems to make constant use of. We mustn’t engineer an answer too quickly. We mustn’t get settled too fast. We all want to manufacture an answer to take away our anxiety and settle the dust. To stay in God’s hands, to trust, means that we usually have to let go of our attachments to feelings—which are going to pass away anyway (which is the irony of it all). People of deep faith develop a high tolerance for ambiguity, and come to recognize that it is only the small self that needs certitude or perfect order all the time. The Godself is perfectly at home in the River of Mystery.

1. Experiences of “voluntary poverty” to shock middle-class people out of the conventional model of self-fulfillment through possessions and prestige, and into a model of self-emptying, as a pathway for personal and planetary well-being. It can become a form of “wild space” [what I would call liminal space], a space where one is available for deep change from the conventional model of living to another one.
    
2. The focus of one’s attention to the needs of others, especially their most physical, basic needs, such as food. This attention changes one’s vision from seeing all others as objects for supporting one’s own ego to seeing them as subjects in their own right who deserve the basic necessities for flourishing. We see everything in the world as interdependent.
    
3. The gradual development of a “universal self,” as the line constituting one’s concern (compassion or empathy) moves from its narrow focus on the ego (and one’s nearest and dearest) to reach out further and further until there is no line left: even a caterpillar counts. This journey, rather than diminishing the self, increases its delight, but at the cost of one’s old, egoistic model.
    
4. The new model of the universal self operates at both the personal and public levels, for instance in the planetary house rules: (1) take only your share; (2) clean up after yourself; (3) keep the house in good repair for those who will use it after you.

We used this prayer this morning

Gracious Spirit,

Who makes the first to be last and the last to be first,

Who makes the rain to fall and the sun to shine upon all,

Help us to understand that life is not an contest

Where having the most toys is the point of the game,

To realize that the victor’s circle can be the loneliest spot on earth,

To recognize that the greatest rewards don’t come from winning

but from relationships where both triumphs and tears

can be celebrated and shared.

Powerful Spirit,

Infuse us with your lifegiving strength

And grant us the inward security of knowing our own goodness

without needing to prove it to the world;

Lift us above both envy and pride --

the need to feel superior to others

and feelings of inadequacy alike --

Enabling us to walk together as equals,

At home in the great community of life.

Wise Spirit,

We know that life is not a race to be won

But a journey to be savored.

Grant us the faith to live each day with the finish line in sight

So that when our days are over

Our achievements will be measured not by the degrees we’ve earned, or the size of our estate,

but by the dimensions of our character,

not by the quantity of our possessions

but by the quality of our love

Triumphant Spirit,

Instil in us a yearning for the prizes that matter most:

Not the laurels of celebrity or acclaim that bring just passing pleasure,

But grant us the more enduring gold

Of a life well lived,

Spent in gratitude for what we’ve been given rather than in pining for things we lack,

Gratitude for friends, for work, for opportunities to use our gifts in service to the world.

Holy Spirit, hear our prayer.

There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in bracket (Leonard Cohen) 37

All the great religious traditions acknowledge that God is a mystery beyond human comprehension; it has its own subtle methods for subverting black and white outcomes about who or what God is. In Judaism the name of God quite literally cannot be uttered since it only consists of Hebrew vowels. If you try to speak the word, (rather wonderfully) just makes the sound of breath. - rabbi Lawrence Kushner insists that it is no coincidence that the holiest name in the world, the name of the creator, is the sound of your own breathing. 38

To Dishley, Western Christianity has been preoccupied with understanding God through conceptual and rational terms-through beliefs, doctrines and Crete. These are undoubtedly significant. Yet purely rational, verbalise faith is a miserably impoverished one.49

Sophie Sabbage The cancer: how to let cancer heal your life

Astrophysicist carl Sagan calculated that if Jesus had literally flown off into the sky, even at the speed of light 180 6400 mi./s he still wouldn’t have made it out of the Galaxy! Actually he would still have 93,000 years go, Even to get that far. It is silly point, I know, and Sagen had his tongue firmly pushed into his cheek, but it was meant to demonstrate how ridiculous he thought a little belief in the ascension was. 178

Apparently, in the original Aramaic Jesus‘s followers used, there is no word for salvation. Salvation was understood as a bestowal of life; to be saved was  to be made alive, or to be fully alive. For the earliest Christians, therefore, Jesus was not the Saviour (as we have come to think of that) but then life giver.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus never speaks of receiving salvation; he called people to follow him, to be part of his way and therefore come alive. In more contemporary language, Jesus liberated ( saved) people from enslavement to ego, the drug of self importance, and invited them to discover the path of vulnerability, love, generosity and service. The cross speaks of this more than anything else; the abandonment of ego, winning by losing, love given without measure. Indeed, the whole Jesus event  imagines a guard separated from self asserting power, a God whose only existence is love. This is the path Jesus invited his followers to enter, the path of salvation. 

The path begins with repentance, a word now Wronglet enmeshed in associations of guilt and shame. But the Greek word metanoia actually means change of mind, a new mindset. To repent is to open up to a new consciousness: about ourselves, about other people, about the world-about God.Yes, this will include turning away from taxes and thought patterns that are selfish or damaging and driven by ego alone, a century, to repent is to come alive; to discover a new wholeness; to begin to involve spiritually yes, this will include turning away from practices and thought patterns that are selfish or damaging and driven by ego alone, but essentially, to repent is to come alive; to discover a new wholeness; to begin to evolve spiritually; to be saved. 151