Love

The Radical Freedom of Being Chosen

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Called and Sent

We live in a world obsessed with worthiness. From the resumes we build to the curated versions of our lives we post online, we are constantly trying to prove that we belong, that we matter, and that we’ve earned our spot at the table.

But what if the most important invitation you will ever receive has absolutely nothing to do with your qualifications?

In a recent daily meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation, Father Richard Rohr unpacks a beautiful, challenging truth from the Apostle Paul’s writings in Romans: God’s chosenness is definitive, irrevocable, and entirely unearned.

The Trap of the “Tit-for-Tat” Mind

Most of us carry a transactional mindset into our spiritual lives. We think, If I pray enough, behave well enough, or believe correctly enough, then God will choose me.

Father Richard beautifully dismantles this:

“God’s choice has to do with God alone, not with us being worthy or ready. No one is ever ready! In fact, the readiness comes from experiencing and surrendering to the chosenness.”

The biblical narrative is packed with proof of this. God consistently bypasses the powerful, the put-together, and the self-righteous. Instead, God chooses the weak, the broken, and the deeply flawed. Why? Because it keeps us humble. It reminds us that when we love others well, it isn’t our own finite strength doing the heavy lifting—it’s God working through us as raw instruments.

From “Elitism” to Overflowing Mercy

When religion stops at the first stage, it becomes dangerous. It’s easy to fall into the trap of elitism—believing we are the chosen ones, we have it right, and everyone else is out. Father Richard warns that without a real, transforming love relationship with God, religion becomes a petty sideshow for exclusivity.

True chosenness doesn’t make you feel superior; it makes you feel deeply, wonderfully small in the wake of an overwhelming ocean of mercy.

We are chosen for one primary reason: to know what it feels like to be God’s beloved.

Once you let yourself be gazed upon by God with total, unconditional acceptance, something shifts. You realize you can never love God back perfectly, and that beautiful gap keeps you hungry, longing, and humble.

The Ultimate Destination: Everyone

The most radical part of the divine mystery is where it’s all heading. While the biblical story begins with the chosenness of a few, it always moves toward an egalitarian reality: everyone is chosen.

You cannot give away what you haven’t received. The only people who can authentically communicate the boundless, inclusive abundance of God to a fractured world are those who have first let themselves experience that abundance within their own hearts.

Reflection Questions for the Week:

  • Where are you still trying to “earn” God’s love or validation?
  • How can you shift from a transactional “tit-for-tat” faith to a faith of pure surrender this week?
  • Who in your life needs to be reminded that they, too, are beautifully held and chosen by God?

What are your thoughts on this meditation? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Finding Love in the Fray: Redefining a “Text of Terror” on Father’s Day

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We’ve all experienced moments where a specific piece of text, a song, or a memory triggers a wave of discomfort. For many churchgoers, Matthew 10:24-39—the lectionary reading that unexpectedly lands on Father’s Day—is exactly that. On the surface, it paints a jarring picture of a Jesus who brings a sword to divide families.

In her latest Sunday Musings, Diana Butler Bass wrestles honestly with this difficult passage, sharing how she moved past her own spiritual triggers to find an unexpected message of profound hope.

Key Takeaways from the Article:

  • The Weight of Bad Theology: Bass recalls hearing this passage at age 15 in a fundamentalist church, where it was preached as a threat that “unbelieving” parents would go to hell. This colonized her spiritual imagination with fear for decades, illustrating how toxic interpretations can become deeply embedded spiritual earworms.
  • The Reality of Modern Division: The passage hits incredibly close to home today. Bass connects the scriptural text of familial separation to modern realities: a 2024 study showing 26% of American adults are estranged from parents, the rise of controlling religious movements, and her own painful 9-year estrangement from her brother due to political divisions.
  • “Reading for Surprise”: To break through her resistance to the text, Bass utilizes a hermeneutic practice she taught her church history students: approaching the text simply asking, “What most surprises me here?”
  • A Shift from Threat to Promise: By looking past the institutional clutter, she noticed a repeating refrain she had previously missed: “So have no fear… Do not fear… So do not be afraid.” Rather than a threat of condemnation, the text acts as a condolence. It acknowledges that while living out truth and compassion will inevitably cause friction with a broken world, we are deeply cherished and held by God’s love through the upheaval.
  • Love as the Only Way Through: In a world where religious abuse, family estrangement, and political polarization seem to be worsening, Bass concludes that Jesus wasn’t approving of division, but describing human reality. Ultimately, the call is to lean into a self-giving love that is stronger than our deepest divides.

“Life may be frightening — and the work of compassion hard — but know that God cherishes you in the midst of the upheaval. You. Are. Beloved.”

Read the full SubStack article at: https://open.substack.com/pub/dianabutlerbass/p/sunday-musings-7a4?r=45tsh&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

#Faith #Spirituality #DianaButlerBass #BiblicalInterpretation #Deconstruction #Healing #FamilyDivision #SundayMusings #GospelOfMatthew

“To you who say”

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To you who say

God is not a person

I say God is my friend.

To you who say

God takes a human form

I say God is boundless space

in the brain of an ant.

To you who say

God is beyond the body

I say God is this breath.

I hold opposite teachings

in my chestful of wonder.

To you who say

God dwells inside

I say God spills over the rim

of the star chalice

like silence from an empty bell.

You say God is One,

I say God is love

longing for a companion.

You say God is your paramour,

I say yes, yes,

God hides in the plum blossoms

dancing as pure light

through the wings of a dragonfly.

— Fred LaMotte

Seeing with the Eyes of Christ: A Shift in Perspective

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In his final 2025 Daily Meditation, Father Richard Rohr invites us to reconsider a familiar phrase: “the light of the world.” While often used as a title for Jesus, Rohr highlights that Jesus famously turned the phrase back to his followers, telling them, “You are the light of the world.”

This shift suggests that light isn’t just something we look at, but rather the lens through which we see everything else.

The Messenger vs. The Message

Rohr argues that many Christians have fallen into the trap of worshipping the messenger (Jesus) while ignoring his actual message. He points out that:

  • Jesus asked us many times to follow him, but never once to worship him.
  • The goal of faith is not just to have “faith in Christ,” but to develop the “faith of Christ.”
  • A mature spiritual life is marked by the ability to look at the world with Jesus’ eyes—a perspective that is broad, deep, and all-inclusive.

The “Forever Coming” of Christ

Drawing from the Gospel of John, the article describes the Incarnation not as a one-time historical event, but as an ongoing, evolutionary movement.

Rather than viewing the “Second Coming” as a future threat, Rohr reinterprets it as the “forever coming of Christ.” It is the constant unfolding of the Divine within creation, a promise of eternal resurrection that has been at work since the beginning of time.

A New Definition of a Christian

Ultimately, the post defines a mature Christian as someone who sees Christ in everyone and everything. This way of seeing leaves no room for:

  • Fighting or exclusion
  • Rejecting others
  • Pious substitutes for active love

When we allow the “true light” to enlighten us, we stop seeking a provable conclusion and become a conduit for love in the world.

Practicing Gratitude: A Path to Rewiring Our Minds

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In the November 28, 2025, edition of Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, the spiritual practice of gratitude is highlighted through the lens of psychological and spiritual growth. The meditation — titled “Minding Positivity” — makes a startling claim: our brains may be wired to cling to negativity. Like Velcro, we instinctively hold on to problems, fears, and regrets, while letting positive experiences slip away like cheese on hot Teflon. 

This tendency — to dwell on what’s wrong rather than celebrate what’s good — can shape how we view ourselves, our lives, and the world. But Rohr draws on neuroscience (notably the work of Rick Hanson) to show that the brain is malleable: by consciously choosing to hold onto positives for at least fifteen seconds, we can recondition our minds. 

In other words: gratitude isn’t optional. It’s a spiritual discipline. By repeatedly turning toward love, trust, patience, and goodness — even in small moments — we gradually build “neuroplasticity”: an increased bandwidth for freedom, openness, and compassion. Rohr frames this rewiring as the very heart of authentic spirituality. 

Why This Matters More Than Ever

  • We live in a negativity-saturated world. Between media cycles, social pressure, and personal anxieties, it’s easy to let negativity dominate our inner narrative. This meditation cuts directly across that tendency.
  • Spirituality isn’t just about morality — it’s about psychology. By linking contemplative practices to brain science, the text bridges faith and neuroscience. Gratitude becomes a practical, embodied discipline.
  • Small shifts can lead to profound transformation. You don’t need great insight or dramatic experiences — just small, regular conscious choices to linger in gratitude. Over time, that can change how you see yourself, others, and your place in the world.

Key Takeaways and Invitation

  • Start simple: notice one small good thing today and hold on to it, mentally or in a journal, for at least 15 seconds.
  • When negativity or fear arises, gently reorient to something authentic, lovely, or kind — even if it feels small or insignificant.
  • See gratitude not as a passing “positive vibe,” but as a spiritual and neurological discipline: a way to expand your capacity for love, acceptance, and presence.
  • Recognize that this kind of transformation — from fear to trust, from reactivity to stillness — is not optional or secondary. It’s essential.

Source: Minding Positivity – Richard Rohr – https://email.cac.org/t/d-e-gjulhtt-tlkrhtkhkt-e/

The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage – Book Interview

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Oprah and Rohr explore the transformative power of embracing tears as a path to healing and societal change, drawing on decades of theological study. Father Rohr weaves the wisdom of Old Testament prophets into our culture, showing how their cries for justice and renewal offer examples for our own breakthroughs. Throughout the episode, Rohr responds to questions from guests seeking to embody his philosophy in their careers, relationships, and everyday life.

One Source of Love – by Richard Rohr

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Yet before you can love your neighbor—your brother or sister—as yourself, you must first love yourself. And to first love yourself, you must know that God loves you now and loves you always.
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream 

Richard Rohr connects our ability to love others with our ability to receive God’s love. 

Authentic love is of one piece. How we love anything is how we love everything. Jesus commands us to “Love our neighbors as we love ourselves,” and he connects the two great commandments of love of God and of neighbor, saying they are “like” one another (Matthew 22:39). So often, we think this means to love our neighbor with the same amount of love—as much as we love ourselves—when it really means that it is the same Source and the same Love that allows us to love ourselves, others, and God at the same time! That is unfortunately not the way most people understand love, compassion, and forgiveness—yet it is the only way they ever work.  

We cannot sincerely love another or forgive offenses inside of dualistic consciousness. Many pastors and priests have done the people of God a great disservice by preaching the gospel to them but not giving them the tools to live it out. As Jesus put it, “Cut off from the vine, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The “vine and the branches” offer one of the greatest Christian mystical images of the non-duality between God and the soul. In and with God, I can love everything and everyone—even my enemies. Alone and by myself, my willpower and intellect will seldom be able to love in difficult situations over time. Many folks try to love by willpower, with themselves as the only source. They try to obey the second commandment without the first. It never works long-term. 

Finally, of course, there’s a straight line between love and suffering. If we love anyone or anything deeply and greatly, it’s fairly certain we’ll soon suffer because we have offered control to another, and the cost of self-giving will soon show itself. Undoubtedly, this is why we are told to be faithful in our loves, because such long-term loyalty and truly conscious love will always lead us to the necessary pruning (John 15:2) of the narcissistic self. 

Until we love and until we suffer, we all try to figure out life and death with our minds. Then a Larger Source opens up within us and we “think” and feel quite differently through “knowing the Love, which is beyond all knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). Thus, Jesus would naturally say something like, “This is my commandment: you must love one another!” (John 13:34). Authentic love (which is always more than an emotion) initially opens the door of awareness and aliveness, and then suffering for that love keeps that door open for mind, body, and will to enter. I suspect for most of us that is the work of a lifetime. 

Reference: 
Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 206–207. 

Shared from Center for Action and Contemplation – Daily Meditations

We are on a Journey

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Where are we going? After a very short visit to earth the time comes for each of us to pass from this world to the next. We have been sent into the world as God’s beloved children, and in our passages and our losses we learn to love each other as spouse, parent, brother, or sister. We support one another through the passages of life, and together we grow in love.

Finally, we ourselves are called to exodus, and we leave the world for full communion with God. It is possible for us, like Jesus, to send our spirit of love to our friends when we leave them. Our spirit, the love we leave behind, is deeply in God’s Spirit. It is our greatest gift to those we love.

We, like Jesus, are on a journey, living to make our lives abundantly fruitful through our leaving. When we leave, we will say the words that Jesus said: “It is good for you that I leave, because unless I pass away, I cannot send you my spirit to help you and inspire you.”

Lead a Loving Life – Henri Nouwen

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Self-knowledge and self-love are the fruit of knowing and loving God. You can see better than what is intended by the great commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Laying our hearts totally open to God leads to a love of ourselves that enables us to give wholehearted love to our fellow human beings. In the seclusion of our hearts, we learn to know the hidden presence of God; and with that spiritual knowledge, we can lead a loving life.

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” – Ephesians 4: 2 (NIV)

Love Deeply

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Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love even more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds.