If you notice, there are no posts below in this weekly compendium. Nope, this is it!

The creative winds are shifting for me again. I’m learning to ride these waves rather than fight them. It’s been great posting daily for the last few months or so. It’s given me the boost I need to get back into the creative flow and was just what the doctor ordered.

However, as of late, I’ve felt like I’ve been striving for quantity over quality. And that’s not what anyone needs - especially with the expanding waistlines of our email inboxes and social feeds these days (happy election season, y’all!).

Another thing that struck me was… I’m getting really bored of myself here. Ha! I know, it’s wild to admit! But it’s true. I think I’ve been falling into the trap of what a lot of spiritual writers fall into - the trap of heaviness and abstraction. We lose our playfulness and joy and sink under the world's weight. We forget how to speak about the finitude of our own particular lives, and everything becomes a grand concept or principle.

Sometimes, this is good. It has a place. Concepts and principles help us navigate life. But if that’s all you dwell in, you easily lose touch. You lose your spark and your work becomes a chore. The world becomes humorless and serious and loses its romance. (And this is the opposite of why we fall in love with spirituality to begin with - because it adds joy and freedom to our lives!)

Anyhow… I want to have more of a focus here. Again, popping off a quick musing about what’s on my mind every day has been nice. But I’m wanting to make more of this space. To give it more of a direction and intention. I hope to have more on this in the coming weeks.

For now, I’ll close by wishing you a blessed week ahead. I’m happy to announce that autumn has come to the California central coast. When we first moved here last year, we lived closer to the shore, where there were only palm trees and a few evergreens. I didn’t even know fall was happening. I fell into this weird, low-key reverse seasonal depression where I wanted to see signs of fall, but was met with open skies, sparkling water, and sand (I know, can you believe I’m actually complaining about this?). In this area, fall is actually our sunniest time of year, it seems. But now we live in this canyon in the forest. The maple trees here are straight-up FLEXING with yellows and oranges right now. So I'm delighted to see that fall actually does come here.

Autumnal blessings to you and yours. As always, thanks for being on the other side of this transmission. Until next time...

When I watch the news1, I astound myself. It’s amazing how easy it is for me to sit on my sofa and flawlessly pick apart every bad behavior I see.

“Wrong choice, person who didn’t evacuate... Next.”
“Bad move, government official who accepted bribes... Next.”
"Should NOT have juggled those fireworks like that… Next.”

But I know better. And you do, too.
It’s never just about behavior.

That’s the surface-level stuff. The tip of the iceberg. There are leagues beneath any human behavior. When we fail to look behind the behavior, our hearts become hardened. It’s why we’re often more merciful to ourselves than others. We’re more in touch with the complexities that swirl around across our own interior landscape. We know how doubled we are - we know we should be doing one thing (namely the right thing), but we end up doing another. We know how contradictory we are.

We know how hard it can be for us.
Yet we think it should be easy for them.

Motive is far more complicated than behavior. 
But this is where the healing happens.

I won’t knock communion wafers. If that’s your jam, rock on. But when I feast on the body of Christ, I want something that tastes like… Joy. Not… Meh.

We bake our own communion bread at our church. I inherited the recipe from my home church back in Chicago.

To give you an idea of how good it is, I’ll confess… For years, we’ve occasionally packed a loaf into Rory’s school lunch. She’ll sit there at snack time, and while her friends are ripping into their Gogurt packs, she’s digging into a piece of communion bread1 (yes, total pastor’s kid move). Sometimes, she’ll opt for a warm piece of it on Saturday mornings over pancakes.

We make it together, Rory and I. It’s been our ritual for years since I got the recipe. Here’s an old timelapse of us I made for one of my seminary classes:)

Part of the communion bread-making liturgy is music. Our go-to is the one and only Audrey Assad, particularly this album…

Or this playlist…

I don’t know if your church is open to baking your own, but for what it’s worth, I wanted to share the recipe here for you. Or maybe you just want a delicious snack for you and/or our kiddo to balance the Doritos and Goldfish like us. Either way, you can go as solemn in this liturgy or as light as you’d like.

Ingredients

• 2 cups whole wheat flour 

• 2 cups bread flour

• 3 tsp. baking powder 

• ¾ cup molasses and 

• ¼ cup honey 

• ½ cup milk 

• ½ cup cold water 

• ¼ cup canola or vegetable oil 

• ¼ tsp. salt 

Method 

• Preheat oven to 400° F.

• Spray baking sheet with cooking spray or use parchment paper. 

• Sift together dry ingredients in a large bowl and set aside. 

• Combine honey, molasses, milk, water, oil, and salt and mix well. 

• Add wet ingredients to the flour mixture and mix until combined (it helps to have two people here - one to pour and one to stir). Be careful not to overmix. The dough will be quite wet and sticky. 

• Pull off a baseball-size lump of dough and knead in flour so it’s not so sticky. Plop that bad boy down on a floured surface and roll it until it’s about 1/2 inch thick. (You can sprinkle a little more flour on top for aesthetics.)

• Do this with the whole batch. ☝️

• Score top of each with a cross, slather a little olive oil on top, and bake in batches for about 7-8 minutes. Bread may appear undercooked.

• Remove from sheet immediately and place on a wire rack to cool.  

• Freeze what you don’t use.

I’ve never seen Jesus in person, so I can’t say that I know exactly what freedom in Christ looks like in the flesh. But I got a glimpse of it just a moment ago, right here in the Home Depot parking lot…

He was a tall, bearded man who wore cargo shorts that stopped just above the kneecap. Carhartt brand. The belt held them just below his stomach - a solid barrel that protruded with aplomb.

He donned a JCPenney-style button-down shirt.
Short-sleeved.
Tucked in.

He rocked off-brand Birkenstocks. With socks.

He had a huge smile. Ear to ear. And why wouldn’t he? He got the best cart there! Not the grocery cart (too small for most tasks at Home Depot) and not the huge one (too big for most lay people). He got the mid-size carrier that could hold just enough materials for a solid Saturday project. It was waiting for him like a golden chariot, within one step as he exited his very reasonable mid-2000s midsize GMC SUV.

This man has won the day.
He is completely free.
I envy him.

We live in an aspirational culture. A lot of this has spilled over into the church. But I’m a big believer that Jesus calls us to a life not of aspiration but of radical acceptance. To accept that we are loved and accepted by God just as we are right now…

and right now…
and (wait for it)…
Right now.

The hard part isn’t getting GOD to accept us as we are.
The hard part is letting OURSELVES accept us as we are as much as God does. 

Acceptance does not mean that you’re thrilled about everything that happens in your life. It just means you accept where you are with it. 

It’s not necessarily acceptance of the way things are out there, but acceptance of who and where you are in the present.

So, if you’re angry,
the goal isn’t to aspire to a place of peace
but to accept your anger.

If you’re blue,
the goal isn’t to aspire to a place of happiness
but to accept (and even love) your blueness. 

No, this doesn’t mean that you’ll always stay there. The point isn’t to always be angry or blue. But if you are now, accept it. Give yourself the holy nod. Not to validate or justify it. But just to be like, yeah… This is where I am. 

So much of our mental anguish comes from fighting and resisting life. From bypassing and escaping. Idealizing and idolizing. 

But when you sink into that divine radical acceptance, you cut out so much of that mental cruft. 

If you can’t accept that, well,
accept that you can’t accept it.
(I know, now we’re getting into Jedi-level acceptance.)

And if that doesn’t work, let me just tell you this:
You are accepted by a divine love that dwarfs your own.
So there… At least you can’t say you didn’t know. 

Now it’s your turn.
Onward. 

Freedom.

We see the word thrown around recklessly these days.
Left. Center. Right. 

What does freedom mean to you?
It’s a worthy question to ponder. 

The word elicits good ole’ American self-determination. But self-determination for what ends?

In our culture, we usually define it in the negative sense. It means when we’re NOT being oppressed or ruled over by another. It means broken chains and the unseating of crooked rulers.  

However, this kind of freedom is insufficient. It’s empty when it lacks the complementary meaning of the word. Here, we see that freedom isn’t just freedom FROM external domination but equally vital is freedom FOR. Sure, you might be free FROM the oppressor, but are you free to move you toward your neighbor - and your life - in love? This freedom is the freedom to act. No one else can grant this kind of freedom. It must be cultivated and nurtured in our own life. 

Think of any worthwhile endeavor… Maybe for you, it’s playing a musical instrument. Yes, in the first sense of the word, you are free to play it. Your hands are not shackled. The first kind of freedom is taken care of. But the second deeper kind of freedom is an internal struggle. And that is the freedom to commit and take action. That thing ain’t gonna play itself. You find your freedom to play in the action of playing itself. It’s attained through giving yourself over to what seems like the OPPOSITE of freedom. Being chained to your guitar for hours on end while your fingers bleed and your ears hurt is not the first image you think of when you think of the word freedom. But it is. 

This internal kind of freedom is the more mystical and kenotic kind of freedom. It’s the freedom wrought from the permission to give yourself to something finite. To pour yourself out in self-emptying enthusiasm. And to watch God fill you right back up.1 

I don’t know what’s happening… I’ve long declared that the only kind of Christian music I like is stuff that is at least 100 years old. You can keep your Elevation Worship, Hillsong, and Jars of Clay. Give me JS Bach and Martin Luther.

And yet, just earlier today, on the ride home from school, Rory started playing Justin Bieber’s new video, Holy Jesus, in the car.

[UPDATED: I just learned that it’s actually an AI-generated song and was not created by Mr. Bieber himself. But it’s okay. The story still stands. Continue on…]

Pssssht… I told myself. This is gonna be awful.
The first seconds of the video that I caught out of the side of my eye as I drove confirmed my cynicism.

“Do you like this song, Dad?” she innocently asked.

I straightened up in my seat… “Naaaah, you know. I like old hymns. It’s more my style.”

And then, about a minute into the song, I felt moisture welling up around my eyes. Yes… I was crying at a praise song by none other than… The Biebs.

What can I say? Jesus softens us. I’ve lost all pride in this area, and you know what?

I think I’m fine with it.

(Here it is, in case you’re curious…)

It’s easy to carry a narrative that God wants us to be independent and self-sustained beings.

But I just don’t see that in the story...

I see a God who crafts humanity out of the dirt, breathing life into our lungs. Even when the nightmare of Sin and separation befell us and distracted us from the goodness that God made us in, God did not leave us in that state to fend for ourselves.

Our Creator drew near.

In Jesus, God entered into the form of a newborn child.
The same God
who spoke the cosmos into being
became entirely dependent
on humanity.

The disciples thought that Jesus came to be a militaristic savior. They thought his goal was to set them free from Roman oppression. (I mean, that was the most glaring and expedient problem in the headlines of Jesus’s day.)

But then there was the betrayal. And then the confusion. And the cross. The empty tomb. Followed by the resurrection. And then, as the dust of the ascension settled, it seemed to become more apparent (in a mysterious sort of way)… 

Ohhhhhh…

He wasn’t here to give us power OVER people
but UNDER people. 

It’s pretty great when it sinks in. And it doesn’t always sink in. In most distracted moments, I’d say it slides right off the back. It drifts directly over our heads when we’re caught up in our thinking, our anxieties, our obligations, etc. But sometimes, it hits you…

There came a time when the God of the universe who fashioned solar systems, mountains, and molecules made…

You.

Stitched you together with reverence and delight. Not because God needed you. But because God, being love, makes lovely, loveable, and beautiful things.

You’re always on God’s mind. God holds you in such high regard. Yes, you will experience hurt, anger, abuse, and sorrow. But God remains faithful to not let those things have the last word in your story. God works redemption and restoration through them, weaving them into the grand tapestry of your life. Those are the imperfections that just really make it pop.

Ezra Klein recently interviewed the brilliant author Zadie Smith for the New York Times. You can read/listen to the whole thing here, but Smith likens us to amorphous selves who, in our current age, are pressured to solidify into finite identities such as “protesters, activists, marchers, voters, firebrands, impeachers, lobbyists, soldiers, champions, defenders, historians, experts, critics.”1

I envy little kids because they live in such a wonderful state of innocence. We allow them the freedom to be amorphous. To be ambiguous, complex, and contradictory.

But soon, the world asks them to pick a side. To move from being a constantly shifting, complex, learning, growing soul into a solid and static identity.

Give us something to judge, kid.
Give us a label to put on you.

In the Christian tradition, it’s really easy for us to get all hung up in the emotional juice of: Woe is me, I’m so broken! Look how broken I am! I’m a pitiful creature with little more to offer than a worm in the nearest dunghill! Woe is me! 

I get it. To an extent, it’s healthy to have a clear view of the challenges and limitations of our human situation.

Very healthy, actually. 

I just think we’re framing it in the wrong way.
Because here’s the thing…

God doesn’t make busted and broken stuff.
God does not suck at creation.

God has made an amazingly beautiful and intelligent design in you
and me
and them
and in the world.

And I think our framing around ‘brokenness’ is a faulty one.

Life scruffs up our surfaces, and though these rough parts sometimes snag each other, they also make us bond better.

By adding a narrative of “broken,” we wallow in a false state of reality and perpetuate our stuckness. 

In Christ, we follow a risen Lord. All is redeemed. The wallowing is an echo of what once was, but now… It is finished.

There’s a very big gap
between who you think you are
and who God knows you to be.

A precipice between
knowing yourself
as you’ve always known yourself
or as God created you. 

The good news is,
the former matters far less than the latter.
The bad news is,
the former speaks loudest.

My heart breaks when I see faith portrayed as a struggle or an individualistic feat. But in these cases, the effort almost always outweighs the outcome. 

Jesus makes it clear that we can’t earn our way into heaven or to God with our best effort or good intentions. And not only this… Even if we put our nose to the biggest grindstone imaginable, we won’t ever feel as if we’ve earned the designation of someone of such worth that we deserve all that God would freely give. It’ll never be enough. And so, we’re left with one option…

To die to this notion altogether. And know that the kingdom is ours. Not to squander, but to cherish and pass on in enthusiastic relief to others.

The life of faith isn’t about doing a little bit better (or even a lot better). It’s not about continuity at all. It’s about the end of the old and the beginning of the new. It’s about which world you’ll inhabit (or which will inhabit you) from this moment on. 

Is it one where you need to work your way in? Is it one where you and everyone/thing else are locked in opposition? And even where God opposes you? Is it a grind or a hustle where your resentment of those who haven’t worked as hard as you have grows deeper? Is it a world where you need to struggle and strive and earn your accomplishments?

Or… 

Is it a world where you ARE God’s accomplished? Right now. Is it one where you realize that, from the very start, the struggle for Ultimate worth is and has been completed? And instead of having to prove yourself, you can just move freely in your fully accomplished state and show off all the different expressions of fullness that God has made you out to be in this moment? And then this one? And then this?

Is it more of a ladder or a slide?

What makes more sense? To continue attempting the climb that endless others have tried and failed to accomplish?

Or to leave behind the old
and trustfall into a new albeit eternal way,
a way in which you become
more and more of the accomplished
which you already are
and bring the new into fuller expression?

In Christian theology, things are often put in terms of the “old” and “new.” For example, at the cross, the “old” way of being a separated and sin-ridden self meets its death, and the “new” way - life experienced as a beloved child of God intimately connected with God, neighbor, and all of creation - is ushered in. 

Though I love and get this terminology of the “new,” it isn’t entirely new. To be ushered by grace into this mode of being might be “new” for us, but it’s actually reality as it’s always been. It’s just that now, we’re reminded of it. We walk in it. And this remembrance creates a new way of life. And a new world altogether. 

Christianity is so radical... I didn’t see this until I was almost 40 years old.

It’s not just about going through the motions every Sunday (though it’s nice to have a routine). It’s not just about being “good” and staying out of trouble (though this is wise and I highly recommend it). It’s not about merely spouting teachings and doctrines ABOUT Jesus (though these are good to know).

The kicker is, in Christ,
We get a brain and heart transplant
And the mind and the heart
become connected.

In Christ, we live
and ARE LIVED
in a new way.

As Paul says,

Let the same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus
who, though he was in the form of God
emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

This is a depiction of Christ consciousness. 

We see the movement - the choreography, if you will - of God taking up residence in, with, and for us in Jesus. God finds us in our most fearful places. While we are cowering in a corner. Or overcompensating for our insecurity and posturing over others.

This is what “the world” teaches us. An old and tired way of life that is left at the foot of the cross. But in Jesus, we are brought into the new. Though it is a new way of life for us, it’s a remembered way because it’s the only real way there has ever been. It’s the only way that life has ever really worked.

In the way of Jesus, we don’t just ascribe to this new way, mentally. We live it. Actually, we are lived BY it like surrendering to the mighty flow of a stream instead of fighting it. 

This is what turns our upside-down world right-side up. It drastically changes our personal lives - our relationships, how we carry ourselves at school and work, how we show up for our friends and family, and how we talk to ourselves in the mirror. We move not with a conquerers spirit, but a servant’s.

And so, we get really curious about ways to look out for those who are typically overlooked. We live with ourselves more comfortably. This is the deeper physics of love that we can only find in the eternal embrace of God.

This is what will save our lives. This is the cross-shaped pattern the new life in Christ is shaped around. The death of the ego and the rebirth of Christ consciousness and neighborly love.

Christians bash on the ‘new-age.’ But if Christianity isn’t “new age,” I’m not sure what is.

The cross is an eschatological event that ends the illusory separation between creation and God and reveals the new age where all live in eternal belovedness. 

If that’s “new age,” well, count me in. 

The faster you go,
the longer it takes. 

Recently, I was running late. (Okay, fine, it happens a lot.) My GPS showed an ETA of 1:04 and I REALLY wanted to get there by 12:58. So, I decided to, well (obviously)… STEP ON IT. I was going a solid 12-15 MPH over the speed limit. What was supposed to be a 22-minute drive turned into a (can you guess?) 21:30 time. I got there as the clock turned from 1:03 to 1:04. By hauling tail and risking life and limb (or at least a fat ticket), it didn’t help one noticeable bit. 

Today, I felt the same urgency, but I reminded myself… Jonas… Slow. Your roll. Breeathe. Move on the Spirit’s time. And wow, have things moved a lot more smoothly today. 

It seems true… 

Spiritual physics defy the laws of our ego mind. 

Jesus reveals to us a great mystery that deep down under the crust of creation, there’s a physics more profound than the surface level of things driven by power, status, and violence. In the center of it all, love, humility, compassion, and generosity are what truly make the world go around. On the surface, these things seem weak, fickle, and fragile. But the ultimate reality is that they are the strongest things out there.

When we try to save our lives, our go-to is to lean on the superficial physics of force. When we try to save our lives, we grip tighter around it. But if we truly want to live a full and free human life, they are what we must have wrested from our hands.

We must lose what we think of as “our life” in order to save it. We must lose the urge to control, and we must surrender to the love, humility, joy, and compassion that overcomes even the grave.