“When you _[action]_, I felt _[emotion]_, because the story I told myself about that was _____. Can you help me understand?” ^ I’m convinced that memorizing these words and using them in conflict will eliminate 95% of the unnecessary relational pain in your life.

"Write something. Draw a doodle. Paint a picture. Make music. Volunteer. Get involved in political organizing. Seek out your local scene and find out what it’s all about. These individual acts cannot break the chains that capitalism binds us with on their own, but they’re a start."

For 10 million kids to live in poverty in a society where the 100 richest people grow their wealth by $1.5 trillion is a form of child sacrifice.

We imagine our “free will” lies in our ability to choose against God, but what if choosing against God is actually evidence that our wills are not truly free (yet)?

"This is the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress." - Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). This isn't disagreement over "policy," it's grotesque and evil to cut off millions of people from healthcare to even further line the pockets of billionaires.

What if love is the “almighty” power that will eventually enfold the whole world in its embrace? What if saying that God is almighty is the same thing as saying that God is love? What if God’s power has been constantly operating in a hidden way since the dawn of creation?

“The trouble with bad religion – what makes it toxic – is that it’s a way of teaching you to ignore what is real… One of the tests of actual faith, as opposed to bad religion, is whether it stops you ignoring things.” - Rowan Williams

An observation: The oneness of heart and soul that the Holy Spirit created among the early church issued forth in communism, and this was a sign of God’s grace at work among them (according to scripture).

Naming God as “Father” has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with origin (and Jesus).

A reminder: if you have to work for a living, you are *already* in solidarity with 99% of the population. The trick that wealthy people play on us is convincing us that our solidarity lies somewhere else (with other "white" people, e.g.).

"ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills." Ya think? You are literally outsourcing the thinking required to write.

What a chilling piece: “Even if most Americans haven’t abandoned their private sense of empathy, many don’t seem terribly bothered by the rancidness of their leaders... the rapid normalization of spectacular corruption, the desensitization to lawless power, the acceptance of moral collapse."

What percentage of our national politicians are NOT millionaires? A serious question.

A reminder: fascists only have as much power as we’re willing to give them by our compliance.

In the interest of not getting used to the unconscionable actions of our current administration, it’s worth saying that grabbing people off the street and, without due process, sending them to foreign concentration camps is not “deportation.” It’s kidnapping and enslavement.

The paradox of the Ascension is that “Jesus goes away in order to be more fully present. Jesus has taken humanity into the presence of God, and now is present on earth in his divinity through his body, the church. Jesus is in heaven *and* on earth. We are on earth *and* in heaven..."

Sometimes the story I tell myself is that my tears are a problem to fix, so it was encouraging to be reminded of the Orthodox tradition of weeping. Especially these days, we ought to go and weep. There is no other way but this.

Deportation is big business. www.wsj.com/us-news/trum...

Just say no to shame-based dentistry.

“The members of the Republican majority are behaving not like traditional conservatives but like revolutionaries who, having seized power, believe they must smash up the old order as quickly as possible before the country recognizes what is happening.”

The "thorns" of Jesus's parable don't kill the plant, they just render it perpetually adolescent, unable to produce fruit. It's an easy place to get stuck in our faith.

A meditation on God’s vulnerability and ours.

Tariffs are a tax on the poor.

A sacrifice AND an example? In this economy??

"It is possible to clearly name harm and injustice without scapegoating. The refusal to scapegoat actually *sharpens* your critique, rather than diminishing it." - Pádraig Ó Tuama (at a workshop I attended today)

"There's a maxim I try to live by: Do good. Don't be a dick. Take no shit. All three parts are important." - Pádraig Ó Tuama (at a workshop I attended today)

Social media, on a structural level (not just a content level), participates in the "enclosure" of the human psyche for the purpose of atomization and value extraction. I deeply doubt its ability to do real good in the long term, and it's part of why I've been thinking about vacating it entirely.

Our action in God's kingdom is not mere *performance*, it is *participation*. We do not merely *imitate* the actions of Christ in our own strength, we *inhabit* the life of Christ in the power of the Spirit. Discipleship is not a *simulation* of Christ's life, it is a *sharing* in Christ's life.

O Lord, remove from me this languid spirit this grim demeanor this petty lust for power and all this empty talk. —St Ephraim of Syria 4th c

The technological environment is designed to "enclose" the human psyche to make it more manageable, so its value can be more easily extracted. - @lmsacasas.bsky.social

Every bad thing about modern life seems to have its origin story in "policy changes in the 1980s" - including food deserts (I live in one). www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Almost time to get our Advent pants on.

A theorem: To outsource your writing to ChatGPT is to outsource your thinking to the Algorithm, which is to surrender one of the final bastions of your freedom to a machine that cares nothing for you, except how you can be exploited for better profit margins.

"There is no middle when the other side would rather kill than compromise." - Wilco

Your baptism makes you ungovernable

“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.” - Iris Murdoch ht @lmsacasas.bsky.social

Disorienting: the music I was listening to in high school is now as old as the Beatles’ music was when I was in high school.

If you care about religious liberty and/or freedom of the press, this bill is very bad news and needs to be stopped.

Ok I’ve listened to it enough times now to declare a verdict: *Faith Crisis, Pt. 1* by Middle Kids is a perfect album.

In order for Christians to move forward beyond Christian Nationalism and heal, we must first reckon with how we are NOT exiles; we are Babylon www.missioalliance.org/we-are-not-e...

"Despite an election that revealed our country still runs on weaponized fear that scapegoats the most vulnerable among us, God is still present and at work in this world to frustrate the ways of the wicked and sustain those trampled by oppressive power."

Far from being a nice, harmless little prayer to make us feel better, the Lord’s Prayer is a radical, empire-subverting, seditious declaration of our belonging in and allegiance to the kingdom God has established in Jesus.

A few reflections on what I'm learning about asking God to "give us today our daily bread."

Given the audacity of praying "Thy kingdom come," the earth-shattering implications of its fulfillment, and the ubiquity of its repetition in our liturgies, it’s really remarkable that Christians found a way to believe that faith was about "going to heaven when you die."

How can we "make holy" what's already holy? Reflections on "Hallowed by thy name" (Part 3 in a series on the Lord's Prayer).

We were given a spirituality that assumed a specific cultural milieu, Thus, when the cultural context began to change, the spirituality easily “broke,” and stopped working for many people.

Why is prayer necessary, if God already knows our necessities before we ask?

A little parable (courtesy of David Graeber) about the destructive silliness of capitalism.

I’ve become increasingly convinced that, for Christians in the U.S., a vital part of our discipleship to Jesus right now is to actively oppose the wave of Christian Nationalism we see surging in the run-up to the presidential election in November.

In an age when many lack basic sustenance, we should be able to agree on the obvious immorality of hoarding (or frivolously spending) wealth.