Today’s post is my contribution to the Eighth Letter project, which invites participants to compose letters to the North American church in the spirit of John’s seven letters of Revelation.  A handful of these letters will be chosen for public reading at the Eight Letter conference in October.

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To the Church in North America,

Much love you my brothers and sisters.  Our journey is about remembering.  It’s about discovering what has always been true.  As we enter a new age, one defined by media, social networking, and a longing for life, we’re beginning to see a change in culture that is unprecedented. People are beginning to question everything, including what it means to be a follower of Jesus in a unstable world.  In the midst of this doubt, people are longing for answers to the most fundamental questions of the soul.  What does it mean to be human?  Who am I?  And, what am I supposed to do?  But deeper than that, we’re all wondering, is there anybody out there who will love me?

The answer is yes.

I invite you to return to love. Return to the beginning of time, to the words that inform your soul and define your dignity. Return to the declaration that is imprinted on every human mind, “It is good.”  These are the very words of God, and inform the heart of love.  Love is simply a judgment of good.  These words inform our judgment of each and every person we encounter. Love reminds us that there is nothing we can do to lose the love of God?

God’s love can’t and won’t change because it was never dependent on circumstance.  We can’t change what was true.  But we can forget what is true.  We can judge ourselves as outside of God’s love and create a reality that blinds us from God’s love.  Much of the problem we encounter is biological.  As human beings created in the image of God, we do what God does.  We create and we judge.  But unlike God, we’re bent towards seeing ourselves as unlovable because we assume God is like us.  We’re bent towards seeing love as dependent on tangible things, as conditional. Once we enter into the space of doubt, our minds are biased towards thinking God can’t love us.  So we run.

Thank God for the cross.  I implore you to remember that the cross is not defining God’s statement of love. Grace was always true, from the beginning of time. The cross is God’s defining statement that reiterates the love that was always there. Thank God that Jesus was willing to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will always love us.  God never loses site of good.  God never forgets his own words.

So we embrace love because it is the defining act of humanity.  To be human means getting the judgment right.  This is wholeness. When we love we are remembering who we are. It strips the blinders off to the one thing that gives us peace, what is true.  We know its true because it produces something valuable. It allows us to rule over the body in a way that produces life.  Love allows us to step into the spaces of pain and suffering, and remained undefined by it.  It allows us to give without the necessity of obligation or receiving.  It allows us to see past the constructed identities of black or white, Muslim or Christian, American or African, or homosexual or heterosexual, to the one true identity that informs the soul, one of child of the living God. It allows us to rule over the self in a way that produces Shalom.

When Jesus simplified everything to the command of love, He was giving us God’s original structure.  Everything came down to the simplicity of love.  We’re free to do anything but we’re guided by love.  To love was a return to God’s rule, to the Kingdom of God.  When we love we’re revealing heaven in our midst.  To love is to see the God image in each and every human being, including ourselves.  Love validates our own dignity as much as the other.

So I invite you to return to love so that you may experience life in its fullest. Much love.

Your brother, Jonathan

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If you haven’t seen the double rainbow guy, you need to.  This guy captures a moment on video that is priceless.  The original video blew up to 11 million hits and was featured on the Huffington Post.  On Huffington, it was shared over 12,000 times and tweeted over 6,000 times.

He’s in Yosemite and sees a double rainbow, which I’ve never seen, and then proceeds to enjoy it for about four minutes on video.  But his enjoyment is not a mere pleasure.  Its a deep resonance with beauty.  At the end of the video he literally starts crying.  And because he’s capturing himself on video, he’s completely uninhibited in his expression. I was amazed at his ability to appreciate beauty as much as what he was appreciating.  To take in beauty is a rare art that requires an almost complete surrender to the moment.

As funny as it originally seems – the guy might be on drugs – there’s also something deeply spiritual about it.  I would suggest that we long to appreciate beauty in a very tangible way.  There is so much chaos in our lives on a daily basis, that it’s easy to completely miss beauty. It’s easy to just pass it by because we’re consumed by our pain and suffering.  So when we see someone connecting to it in a deep and meaningful way it captures our attention.

What shows up for you in this?

A friend of mine recently said, “I came to this conference for soul care.”  When I heard that it resonated with me.  I too had come not just for the speakers and event, but for the nurturing soul care that happens when I gather with people who reflect love.  Sometimes I need to receive. And it made me wonder.

What restores your soul?  What do you do or encounter or practice that feeds you and gives you soul care?

A friend once said to me, “You think too much for people and it allows them to blame you when things go wrong.” To be honest, when my friend said it, it hurt.  I didn’t like it.  It stung me to the core.  But after getting over my own drama, I realized that it was probably one of the most important things anyone has ever said to me.  It forced me to confront my own BS and deal with my won issues.  I was creating my own problems.

What’s the one thing a friend has said to you that you didn’t like but has stuck with you?

Donald Miller started it.  But this guy kills it. This is so creative it made me stop and think about my own confession. (ht)

Today we celebrate one of my true heroes, Martin Luther King Jr.  What I love about Martin was his courageous sense of willingness to face his fears.  The cost of fighting for the “less than” ended up being his his own life.  Martin understood this and in his biographies expressed to those around him a keen sense that his life would be taken.

And here’s why we celebrate Martin.  Deep down we understand that to face death is where we find life.  To face our fears and still walk forward into the fire hoses, into the bullets, into the beatings and the hate filled speeches, for the sake of human dignity is one of the greatest acts a human begin can do.  To fight for the God image in each person, regardless of race, creed or color is an act of love.  And it is this love that we celebrate.

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It’s so easy to get bogged down in our daily troubles isn’t it.  Sometimes we just need a little perspective, a comparison to jar us out of our own self pity.  I dare you to watch this video.  It will remind you that courage begins with overcoming adversity.

Living the Adventurous Way begins with discovering not what are our limitations but what are our gifts in the midst of them.  I appreciate the father’s honesty to ask, “Why me?” But I honestly love his willingness to find out the answer.  Our limitations keep us from finding the answer.  And the people who inspire us are the ones who were willing to take the risk of going beyond our limitations.

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This is my new favorite song.  And I have Sarah to thank for it.  Matisyahu is a poet in the deepest sense of the word.  I love the rhythm he brings to the imaginative idea of reconciliation, lifting up humanity and dignity and dreaming about a world without war.

My favorite line is: Sometimes in my tears I drown, but I never let it get me down. So when negativity surrounds I know some day it’ll all turn around.

I’ve been contemplating missed opportunity lately and its cost in my life.  And I’ve come to realize that it isn’t what I thought it was.

Life is filled with possibilities.  And In every situation of decision there is always a potential outcome.  And we’re usually trying extract the most value in the outcome.  We want what will make life the best for us.  And so we fret and manage and worry over extracting every little possibility of value, that last three percent.

Yet how often is life really like this?  How often do we even reach 97%.  Truth is, we’re lucky if we reach 33%.  Think of all the dreams and ideas we never even came close to, the ones that make up about 60% of our dreaming and possibilities.  They never come true.

I’m beginning to think that life a little bit more like baseball.  If we’re batting .330 we’re firing on all cylinders. We’re reaching so much of our potential. Yet how often are we spending our time wrestling with the other 67%, the part that was never meant for us?  It was an idea but not a reality.  How often are we worrying so much about what will never come true?  I’m realizing that much of my life is filled with that 67%, and it drags us down.

My fear is that if I’m not extracting every possibility from life, I’m not living.  I’m missing out.  Yet in the worry and doubt I’m missing out on the part that God has given me, the 33%.  I’m missing out on the part that gives me life.