Making Connections

Connection, Delight, God, Love 0

I heard a preacher in Lakeside Chautauqua speak of “the grace of the wooing God who welcomes and includes everybody and brings us all together in Christ.” God is infinitely in love with us and wants only to make that connection. A Trappist nun, before she died, prayed: “My God – help me accept how you see me – no matter how beautiful it is.” As my friend Chris Hoch says, “The homies are used to a ‘Department of Corrections’ God. We want to propose a ‘Department of Connections’ God.” We are being “wooed” to see this.

— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 25-26

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, October 9, 2026

Untamed and True

God, Letting Go 0

Order is good. It is not that I think God lacks order. I just think God’s ordering is in the form of wind. And we neglect the wildness of wind at our own peril.

God is the wind over the deep. God is the mom who knows a toddler does not yet comprehend crayon and paper as separate substances, so She will lovingly guide the way, but not without some truly spectacular splatter art first. And so to encounter God, untamed and true and old and holy, is to lay down our need for control, our need for God to fit within the lines on our coloring pages. We have to let God wield the paintbrushes that have always been in Her hand.

— Lizzie McManus-Dail, God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us, p. 4-5

Photo: Bay of Mont Saint-Michel, France, June 20, 2026

Be Willing to See.

Beauty, Creativity, Joy 0

And so, dear reader, this is my final encouragement: Love like the sunshine and the rain. Ask forgiveness of the birds. Be a drop more gracious, tender, and kind. Go gently in this mean world. Offer up prayers of Thanks, Help, and Wow. Recover your sacramental wonder. Count your blessings. Look to the horizon in the Valley of Dry Bones. Remember that you are a child of God. Rush to kiss the lepers. Listen to the voice in the night calling you to the cross. Turn your attention to the God dancing right in front of you. God is everywhere present, breathing on this world and turning it to fire. Where you stand is the gateway to heaven. The world is shining like transfiguration. Even the eels.

It only takes a little willingness to see.

— Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels, p. 234

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, October 6, 2026.

Cocreators

Calling, Community 0

Navigating this life requires that others hold our hands as we do the hard work of discovering and discerning and imagining who we could be.

What does it mean, then, that the Spirit of God is described as playing these exact same roles in our lives: supporter, encourager, and advocate? A God with a womb may not resonate with all of us as not all of us have birthed, but all of us were birthed once and all of us, in one way or another, are involved in a process of birthing. As image bearers of the divine, we are thus cocreators – midwives and doulas – for one another.

— Kat Armas, Sacred Belonging, p. 176

Photo: Monet’s Garden, Giverny, France, June 22, 2026

Open to Curiosity

Love, Universalism 0

Judaism understands that a diversity of opinions gets us closer to the truth. Certainty is not the goal; wisdom is, and wisdom is often found in the contradictions.

This way of thinking is unfamiliar to evangelicals, but letting go of the need for certainty can be liberating. We are free to continue to change our minds through our lives without the need to figure it out once and for all or land somewhere permanently. The goal is not “knowing the right thing” or even “believing the right thing.” Believing the wrong thing won’t send you to hell, so you can relax and just focus on believing the loving thing. You can focus on living in a way that reflects love for God and your neighbor and makes you feel deeply like your truest self.

Opening up to curiosity is one of my favorite things about realizing that there is no hell. God is not going to punish us for “wrong-think.” We are free not to know.

— Brian Recker, Hell Bent, p. 125

Photo: Abbaye de Royaumont, France, June 24, 2026

Sacramental Noticing

Blessing, Joy, Life, Love 0

It is my hope that the wilderness will restore your capacity for wonder. It’s my hope that you’ll relearn how to ask questions and you’ll be startled by ladybugs and the return of a robin will make you glad. It’s my hope that children and elders will find you a patient presence. And it’s my hope that you’ll realize that being useful and having answers isn’t everything. There has to be room for nonsensical, wasteful, and sacramental noticing, because through it you begin to witness God’s heavy pour of love into your cup.

— Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness, p. 101

Photo: Grounds of the Abbaye de Royaumont, France, June 24, 2026

Prayer of Resistance

Beauty, Community, Prayer 0

Sacred Multitude,

We hear you in every language, every dialect, every sound that stirs the heart and shakes the earth. At Babel, you shattered the walls of a singular tongue, and in that shattering we found our freedom. We confess the times we’ve sought comfort in sameness, when we’ve turned away from the beauty of difference. We embrace your mercy so that we may walk in wholeness.

Open our ears to the voices we have ignored, open our hearts to the beauty we have feared.

— Kat Armas, Liturgies for Resisting Empire, p. 147

Photo: Parc Botanique de Haut Bretagne, June 19, 2026

Always Growing

Faith, Growth 0

This is the heart of what it should mean to be a Christian of any designation: the desire to continue to move and grow and learn and change, even if those things place us in opposition to the person we once were or the beliefs we once held firmly or the testimony we once gave. As we move through space and time, our faith should be in continual evolution. We should always look back at the previous version of ourselves and realize how much we didn’t know then. We should be able to see how far we’ve come in matters of spirituality.

— John Pavlovitz, Worth Fighting For, p. 75

Photo: Étretat, France, June 23, 2026